With the popularization of the Confucian Four Books during Ming dynasty, female-authored writing achieved a new level of importance. Instructional texts written by female authors including Ban Zhao, Madam Cheng, Song Ruozhao and Empress Xu were compiled as the Four Books for Women as a parallel to the Confucian canon. Through writing, these female authors receive social recognition, discuss public affairs and elevate women’s social status within households. However, writing could only allow women to attain limited social power in pre-modern China, as popular female-authored texts are all written by women from privileged background, circulate with limited impact among a small group of audience and further exaggerate gender inequality.
The Civil war brought large amounts of despair for people of both the North and the South. However, women during this time period were subject to a new sense of opportunity that would that would influence many to become leaders and take on important roles both on and off the battlefield. On the battle field many women were nurses and helped take care of soldiers who were wounded while others actually fought in the war disguised as men. Furthermore, women had important roles besides helping on the frontlines. Many took on new roles at home when the men in the family left to fight in the war. In addition, a number of women would take up leadership roles in abolitionists movements in both the north and the south. Many historians argue that without
After skimming through Volume 1 of The Norton Anthology Literature by Women, I noticed the reoccurring themes of patriarchy, women subordination, and the strength to be creative despite oppression. During the times that these literary pieces were written, women were constantly battling the patriarchy in order to get basic rights. During the earlier time periods, intelligence was seen as a sign of an evil spirit in a woman, resulting in miniscule amounts of literary works written by women. Women were not provided with equal spaces to creatively express themselves, as mentioned by Virginia Woolf. Moreover, they were not given the same publishing opportunities, many women either went anonymous or by a fake male name to have their works published. The women authors of these times used their frustration and anger as fuel in order to write powerful pieces
Both poets are very similar to each other in a way that both of them lived in the nineteenth century. "The two giants of 19th-century American poetry who played the greatest role in redefining modern verse are Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson (Burt)". Both Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are considered as the founders of today’s modern American poetry, whose they put the keystone, and which was further developed by other poets over the years. The poetry has been redefined. The modern poetry becomes more discreet which uses the topics of everyday life. However, both of them were two different personalities from a completely distinctive society because Emily Dickinson came from a conservative and strict family. Therefore, she is withdrawn, and on the other hand, a controversial personality because she dealt with the modern poetry. For that reason, her contradictory feelings often fight a battle with each other in her poems. Walt Whitman came from a simple civilian family, whose parents were very hardworking people who had big national values, thus according to his revolutionary and national ideology Walt Whitman fits into the modern American poetry. Nevertheless, the ideas of two poets are similar at a certain point because in their poems both of them
In the award winning article, “Passages in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein: Towards a Feminist Figure of Humanity?” Cynthia Pon addresses masculinity and feminism in terms of conventions, ideals, and practices (Pon, 33). She focused on whether Mary Shelly's work as a writer opened the way to a feminist figure of humanity like Donna Haraway argued. The article has a pre-notion that the audience has read Frankenstein and Haraway's article. Pon has a slight bias, due to her passion as a feminist writer. It may skew her thinking and at times be subjective. The intended audience is someone who is studying literature and interested in how women are portrayed in novels in the 19th century. The organization of the article allows anyone to be capable of reading it.
Religion is undoubtedly something that is incredibly important for many people. It at times serves as a source of comfort, a sense of purpose, or even a sense of belonging. Because of this, it has been a common origin of inspiration for many poets regardless of origin and time. Anne Bradstreet and Emily Dickinson are no exception. Both reference religious beliefs and God numerous times throughout their works, but they do so in different ways. These differences serve as evidence of an advancement of self-expression and individuality concerning religion over the course of time. This is especially evident in Bradstreet’s poems “Before the Birth of One of Her Children” and “Verses Upon the Burning of Our House” as well as Dickinson’s poems “Heaven is so far of the Mind” and “Remorse – is Memory – awake.”
Historically, women have been discriminated in many fields—art, science, and politics. People believed that women had no talent and they all needed to be housewives without doing anything special outside of the house. Even though women have been isolated from doing active roles in history, British female writers showed
Through the centuries writers have contributed to the local and global community written works that capture the reader’s inner most thoughts, ambitious, desires and perspective of reality. Poetry is a unique form of writing that has the ability to influence generation past, present and future. Through the a
Throughout time, women have typically had to work harder than men to be recognized in a field. This has made it difficult for women to receive recognition for their achievements and this has been especially prominent throughout history as the most famous artists have been men. Women have been used as an object and taught to be seen rather than heard. During the late Victorian era, women were reduced to their looks and their success in life was determined by how closely they fit the beauty standard and who they married. They were often seen as helpless and dependant through their restricting fashion and lack of freedom. As time has progressed, ideals of beauty, class and women’s rights were challenged in many ways. One of the most significant
The earlier gothic works as well as Dracula covered something that is outside the social norm. Female sexuality, something that was unacceptable and under the surface of society, it is exposed in these writings. The earlier readings such as Carmilla, as well as the poem of Christabel question the boundaries. The texts from these literature pieces contain passages of female sexuality and the passages contain phrases that hint towards the social taboos. In the era when women were thought of mere objects these pieces decide to give them a personality or at least a voice that can express desire, a voice that states women have a purpose apart from pleasing men. The literature pieces help explore the subject of female sexuality, as time progress the amount of female sexuality increases. Women can desire, they can have aspirations, even though shown as vampires the text still suggests that they are women. The gothic writing of Victorian era such as Dracula, Carmilla, and Christabel help
The continuing shift on the representation of women embodies the changes that occur in American literature. Each period in the American history seemed parallel to showcase the degree of which acknowledgement and acceptance were given to portray the roles of women. Dating back in the16th century, Svoboda (2013) argues that writings in American literature contained little reference to women at all thus illustrates the harsh reality of society's treatment of women. Women in American literature before the 18th century were inexplicit and almost non-existent. The chief literary work that portrayed woman character was Cabeza de Vaca’s The Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition that was written during
From the outset, literature and all forms of art have been used to express their author’s feelings, opinions, ideas, and believes. Accordingly, many authors have resorted to their writing to express their feminist ideas, but first we must define what feminism is. According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, feminism is “the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state”. As early as the fifteenth century is possible to find feminist writings. Centuries later, and although she never referred to herself as one, the famous English writer Virginia Woolf became one of the greatest feminist writers of the twentieth
The first wave of feminism has been a revolutionary social movement in terms of that it could lead to an overcoming of the previous social order (Newman, 2012 p. 487) through its social agents and create, through this, a new social ordering of time and space. Moreover, through reaching their previously described aims, the first wave of feminism has been able to literally “overthrow the entire system itself, (…) in order to replace it with another one.” (Skocpol, 1979, as cited in Newman 2012, p. 487). Thereby, one can even state that a new ordering of time and space by which routines and routinised behaviour has been challenged as well as changed took place. The interactions influenced the way how societies work today. (Allan, 2013, p. 323).
Sylvia Plath is considered to be one of the most significant female poets known not only to Americans but also to the whole world. Her death in 1963, followed by an unfortunate and short life did not end her input and influence inliterature, she became an icon to the female literary society. Sylvia's outstanding style of writing and themes which she portrayed in her works such as death, seeking for an identity or oppression on women in a patriarchal society began the feminist movementin America and changed the role of women. This topic is of a great importance because they way that Sylvia Plath was expressing her feelings and showing her negative view on a patriarchal society and oppression on women was a giant leap in the world of a women's liberation movement.
For this poster presentation we focused primarily on the poems which exemplifies the elements of the feminist movement by Charlotte Smith and Anna Laetitia Barbauld. The analysed poems are Flora by C. Smith and On a Lady’s Writing by A. L. Barbauld. As it is already discussed in the introductory part, Charlotte Smith and A. L. Barbauld present one of the greatest female poets of the period. The analysed poems are selected because of their obvious leanings and insinuations to the feminist movement. This research contains a discussion of women’s position in society in the period of Romanticism and it concerns with the analysis of the feministic themes in the poems of C. Smith and A. L. Barbauld. We relied heavily on the research conducted by