Paradise Lost Gender Roles

In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, gender divides are not readily apparent however they do exist, resembling many real societies. In Bradbury’s society the government has the most power followed by the firemen. There is no evidence of any women being firefighters in their society, resulting in women having less power than men. Also in Montag’s case, he works while his wife is at home. Montag’s wife, Mildred, is not expected to work, nor are there any jobs mentioned that she, a women, could perform.

Women’s place and role in the society is something that has been discussed and changed over time. Should their rights be the same as men’s? Should they be superior? Inferior? The world faces a dilemma on weather they should be or not equal as men. It seems like we arrived at a deadlock, where no progress can be made about it. We still have feminists fighting for their rights, but I doesn’t seem to work that much, although they have much more rights than they had fifty years ago. But the question that remains is: what is women’s and men’s role?

Burak defines gender socialization as “the process of interaction through which we learn the gender norms of our culture and acquire a sense of ourselves as feminine, masculine, or even androgynous” (Burack, 1). According to Burack, people of different genders behave differently not due to biological factors, but due to socialization that teaches individuals to behave in a particular way in order to belong to a certain gender. For example, women may tend to be nurturing, not because they are biologically programed to be caretakers, but as a result of society teaching them through toys and media to act as mothers. In this way, gender becomes a performance based on expectations rather than natural behaviors or biology, a phenomenon called “doing

The literary criticism “Shelley’s Frankenstein” offers background information into the world of the Greek god Narcissus. Narcissus was the most beautiful being in the entirety of the Greek world, but was oblivious to his looks. One day, Narcissus drinks from a pool of dark, idle water and spots a reflection of himself. He is immediately entranced by his own appearance and cannot look away; he later dies of dehydration. Author, Terry Thompson, compares Frankenstein’s monster to Narcissus through appearance, saying that extreme physical appearance led to the demise of both. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley alludes to the Greek God Narcissus through her creature during a telling scene at the De Lacey home. The creature, like Narcissus, drinks

In the article, “Bernward and Eve at Hildesheim” written by Adam S. Cohen and Anne Derbes, they describe the images on the panels of the bronze doors of Hildesheim. They talk about the Fall and Redemption of humanity centering around Eve and Mary. Along with the Bishop Bernward and his struggle against Sophia the abbess of Gandersheim. Cohen and Derbes’s thesis is that the bronze doors present the Fall as a sexually charged encounter with presenting Eve as the main person to blame.

It is noteworthy that this story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is the foundation of the religion with the largest number of followers worldwide. Why does it continue to resonate with so many people even today? The reason is that this utopia contains archetypes that reflect the collective unconscious that is found across all cultures. This is the result of universal themes in this story about humanity’s needs and desires that we still see occurring in our society today. The story of Genesis contains three archetypal characteristics that illustrate these patterns that still demonstrate humanity’s needs.

With their son Milton, a delineation in these gender roles can be identified. Men of his generation were expected to go to war, while women stayed home as mothers and housewives. Milton, unable to stand the “dullness of military life, the endless repetition of duties, the standing in line to eat”, and the vigorous demand of the Navy during World War II, did not hesitate to take the first opportunity to escape the Navy (Eugenides 188). This shirking of his masculine duties, along with his increasing disconnect with the Greek Orthodox church and declining ability to write in Greek, represents a deviation from traditions of the previous generation, especially gender roles. However, Tessie, Milton’s wife, remains a housewife while Milton is “preoccupied with business worries… began to leave a little more of himself at the diner each day” as an admirable man would be traditionally expected to do (Eugenides 225).

Equality of genders is a basic human right that all should posses. However, in the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, the reader explores Afghanistan’s true nature of extreme gender inequality towards women and how it affects all the characters within the novel. The novel explores how within a marriage, women have unequal rights, undergo major amounts of physical abuse, and are emotionally and mentally tormented by their very own supposedly beloved husbands.

“The creature is bitter and dejected after being turned away from human civilization, much the same way that Adam in “Paradise lost was turned out of the Garden of Eden. One difference, though, makes the monster a sympathetic character, especially to contemporary readers. In the biblical story, Adam causes his own fate by sinning. His creator, Victor, however, causes the creature’s hideous existence, and it is this grotesqueness that leads to the creature’s being spurned. Only after he is repeatedly rejected does the creature become violent and decides to seek revenge” (Mellor 106). This creation allegory is made clear from the beginning with the epigraph from John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), which begins the novel.

In both poems “Before I Got My Eye Put Out” and “ We Grow Accustomed To the Dark” by Emily Dickinson. She talks about adjusting and change. The former poem is about recollecting memories of one 's vision before the loss of sight the and the dramatic change experienced . In the latter poem, Ms. Dickinson speaks about how things are going to always adjust and how we get used to the darkness. The speaker in ‘We grow accustomed to the dark’ would react to losing one’s sight the same as the speaker in ‘Before i got my eye put out’.

In today’s society men and women are often expected to perform different tasks, and occupy different roles based on their sex. Within different cultures, the view of how women and men should act and interact varies with political and religious influences, as well as personal influences. Geoffrey Chaucer suggests that people’s ability to understand the opposite sex is divided because of the stereotypes set in society for the opposite genders. Women are more likely to work as secretaries, and men are likely expected to work as managers and executives in the working field. With views like these people are less likely to empathize with other people for the plain idea that we feel that we must be separated.

In the scholarly article, “Gender As a Social Construct in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake” by Shaista Irshad and Prof. Dr Niroj Banerji, Irshad and Banerji focus on Atwood’s use of gender stereotypes and using them in unconventional ways to shows that society and culture shape one 's, “feminine and masculine gender identities” (585) through Jimmy, Oryx, and Crake.

Trophies are not always made of gold, or even placed on a high pedestal. That’s right, housewives can be trophies as well (at least, that’s what men thought during the early 20th century). Unless they wore an apron, had food in hand, and maintained an hourglass figure, society forced women to believe that this was the only way the could be housewives, and deserved to be married to a husband. Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie featured Amanda Wingfield, a housewife that is unfortunately a victim of societal pressures. As showcased by Amanda’s regimented beliefs, The Glass Menagerie demonstrates how society’s gender roles objectify women.

Although John Milton’s Paradise Lost remains to be a celebrated piece recounting the spiritual, moral, and cosmological origin of man’s existence, the imagery that Milton places within the novel remains heavily overlooked. The imagery, although initially difficult to recognize, embodies the plight and odyssey of Satan and the general essence of the novel, as the imagery unravels the consequences of temptation that the human soul faces in the descent from heaven into the secular realms. Though various forms of imagery exist within the piece, the contrast between light and dark imagery portrays this viewpoint accurately, but its interplay and intermingling with other imagery, specifically the contrasting imagery of height and depth as well as cold and warmth, remain to be strong points

Just within the recent decades, men and women started to fight against the gender stereotypes and started to challenge their roles in a family and in the society. The play, A Raisin in the Sun, portrays the lives of African–Americans during the 1950s. Lorraine Hansberry, a writer and a social activist, reinforced the traditional gender roles, especially female’s, by depicting how the Youngers interact and how they act in an economical struggle. Throughout the play, A Raisin in the Sun, she uses Walter Lee Younger, Ruth Younger and Lena Younger to reinforce the traditional role of fathers, wives and mothers within a family.