The emotion of love can cause a person to lose control over multiple aspects of their life. People are often blindsided by what they are capable of doing because they lose control as they fight to hold on to the sense of love. The Dolls Alphabet written by Camilla Grudova unfolds the extant people will go in order to maintain love in their lives. In efforts to protect the love one feels towards others or themselves, it can result in inflicting pain to oneself, and pain to another and going against social norms affecting a multitude of people. I argue through Parker's Structuralism ideas that love is a major emotion that causes people to do irrational things that can ultimately have a large impact on others or themselves. By looking at it from …show more content…
Defamiliarization is present in the story Unstitching where the protagonist Greta has discovered a way to unstitch her outside skin to reveal her true self. This can be interpreted as challenging traditional gender roles within society. As Greta unstitched herself, “She admired herself in the mirror for a short time” (Grudova 1). Greta taking the time to look at her true self in the mirror shows the love she has for her genuine appearance aside from the mask she must wear on top. Unstitching exhibits defamiliarization from how women are perceived within society. Men within the society are appalled by the women's true form and believe that they “always knew there was something deceitful about women” (grudova 2). The text presents the courage women to showcase their new form and deviate from gender norms in society depicting a sense of defamiliarization. Grudova displays defamiliarization in unstitching and exemplifies the love women have towards their bodies as they digress from familiar narratives of gender in a gothic …show more content…
Within the chapter Waxy, there are multiple binary oppositions that show the contrast within this society. For instance, the audience discovers that Paul isn’t registered for exams due to him not having identification papers. This leads to the difference in how men are treated based if they are registered are not. A binary opposition could be between registered men and non-registered men and the differences in their day-to-day life. As the story continues, the protagonist decided on a plan to protect her family. “Paul and I decided we would have to make her pregnant whether she liked it or not” (Grudova 47). This exhibits what the protagonist will do to protect her family, which ultimately involves Paul abusing and assaulting a woman in order for her not to report them as she will be in the same situation (Grudova 46). The main protagonist developed a scheme to inflict harm on another woman out of her love on behalf of her family. Waxy consists of multiple binary oppositions that demonstrate the a gothic society. The audience witnesses what a woman will do even to the extent of harming another woman, in order to defend the family she
The patriarchy consists of men holding the utmost power in government where women have been excluded. Women have been viewed as sexual objects therefore if women only find their value in men, then our only other threat and competition are other women. This is further ` exasperated in the conditional phrase “If [..]plain little creature”. The concrete noun creature is used to dehumanise those who do not adhere to strict societal beauty
Within the field of literature, the exploration of the monstrous-feminine has served as a captivating lens to examine the intricacies of female identity and the depths of the human psyche. Gillian Flynn’s haunting novel Sharp Objects and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s gothic novella Carmilla both delve into this dark territory, focusing on the monstrous qualities of motherhood and the complex dynamics between mothers and daughters. This essay argues that both Sharp Objects and Carmilla depict the monstrous-feminine archetype of the archaic mother as a product of societal expectations and unresolved trauma, thereby challenging conventional notions of motherhood. By examining the entwined narratives, we gain a deeper understanding of the enigmatic
Essay 1 In “There is No Unmarked Women”, Deborah Tannen explains how women are forcibly “marked” no matter what. During a small work conference, Tannen observes many women’s appearance. She looks at their haircuts, clothing and the makeup they wear. She feels the women are all “Marked”, while men wear nothing to stand out.
The majority of the characters in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and John Gardner’s Grendel comprises of men, often travelling or going on adventures while the women stay at home and wait for the men to return. The passive role of women is offset by the more aggressive nature of men in Frankenstein and Grendel, but the perceived submissiveness of the women does not necessarily detract from their strength and stability that they provide to society. In fact, both novels are full of the men’s oversight that consequently leads to devastation, revealing the idea that women make up the foundation of society. In both novels, women are the ones to soothe conflicts.
‘Because love is irrational,’ I tell Vosch. ‘It doesn’t follow rules. Not even its own rules. Love is the one thing in the universe that’s unpredictable.’” (Yancey, 294)
The Island of the Dolls (Isla de las Muñecas) The island of the dolls is located in San Lorenzo, Xochimilco, Ciudad de México. It is known for all the dolls hanging in the trees throughout the small island. Don Julian Santana Barrera, owner of the island, was responsible for hanging up the dolls. The spooky island wasn’t discovered until the 1990s according to a Daily Mail article.
She points to the deficiency of the Bakhtinian theory that fails to establish dialogism between the grotesque body and the female one. While explaining that although he relates the grotesque body to the images of womb, pregnancy and childbirth, he fails to recognize their close affinity to “to social relations of gender” (The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity 63). She condemns the Bakhtinian contradictory treatment of the female body, which simultaneously celebrates its generative and subversively debasing potential and abbreviates it to be a mere vessel to give new birth (RW 240). While trying to explain what “remains repressed and undeveloped” in her male counterpart, Russo points to the subversive potential of the female grotesque to overthrow the normative constraints on female actand look (Russo 63). “[D]efined […] in relation to the ideal, standard, or normative form” of the twentieth century, this work tends to argue that the female grotesque in contemporary age still has the power to create horror as it plays a fundamental role “to identity formation for both men and women as a space of risk and abjection” (Russo 12, Miles
This common interest of postmodern feminists about women’s bodies and how it serves as a “feminine language” to define identity continues to represent explorations, discovery and opinions of the traditional mind and body dualism, the role of sexual analysis in the development of gender and the self as well as the analytical modes of exploration of the body which all in all defines what it means to discuss about postmodern feminist issues in this twenty-first century. For example, in Mislina Mustaffa’s opinion, the female body directly reflects an artistic subjection to what is considered a norm to women in society today. Nevertheless, the artist disagrees with such manner. The entire discovery of what makes a woman a woman in fact lies in the matter other than the body itself. One route of inquiry along these lines concerns reevaluation of the senses and the conservative materials that are fashioned into forms or ideas that define the identities of women today.
The article is able to cleverly start a discussion by sparking the reader’s interest. Curzan uses playful language and shows curiosity in her writing, making the reader feel equally interested in the blurred line between a female being a “girl” or a “woman”. She avoids protesting the lack
Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen was highly criticized for undeniably demonstrating woman’s issues in the 19th century. While the play doesn’t change setting much at all, Ibsen clearly focuses in on the characterization of three insightful characters: Mrs. Linde, Nora, and Helmer. Mrs. Linde is a minor character; however, that doesn’t alter her effect on the play. She provides the mold for the perfect, idealized wife. Nora, the main character, develops rapidly in the play, and her character is a stark contrast to Mrs. Linde.
Imagine being told as a female in today’s world you must look or act a ¬¬certain way in order to be accepted. Being what you want to be is not allowed and changes have to be made in order to be included. They say “pain is beauty, and beauty is pain” as they way a woman looks today are completely different from ten or even fifty years ago. In this paper, the reader will understand the mind of a woman in today’s society and the difficulties to be not only accepted but being her own person as well. Not only has the appearance of a woman changed but also role titles and job descriptions as well.
Margret Atwood’s short story “Lusus Naturae” is known as a work of fiction in which a monster uncommonly plays the role of the protagonist. Discussing character dynamics, it is interesting to examine the symbolic meaning behind the girl as a monster in this story. Is this text simply a fantasy created with the goal to serve solely as a horror story with a typical ending, or does this tale have a deeper meaning encompassing the treatment of women and their sexuality throughout history. Through close reading of “Lusus Naturae,” I plan to use evidence from the text to illustrate symbolic parallels between the unusual protagonist and the known historical role women held in society. To begin Atwood grabs attention by opening her story asking the
The Victorian age is characterized by gender inequality. Women were confined by social restrains. Female gothic becomes more complex in Victorian age. The term ʻfemale gothic’ is used by Ellen Moers to describe the conventions of women’s writings , back to Radcliffe’s gothic novels in which she employs the
The role of women in literature crosses many broad spectrums in works of the past and present. Women are often portrayed as weak and feeble individuals that submit to the situations around them, but in many cases women are shown to be strong, independent individuals. This is a common theme that has appeared many times in literature. Across all literature, there is a common element that causes the suffering and pain of women. This catalyst, the thing that initiates the suffering of women, is essentially always in the form of a man.
Rosemarie Morgan thinks that continuous censure, criticism and frustration is precisely what increased his sympathy towards women who were coerced to conform to the men 's world (Morgan, 2006, p.15). This chapter of the paper makes an attempt to discuss the importance and the influence that the society with its prejudices had on the portrayal of women in the novel, with special focus on the protagonist Tess of the d 'Urbervilles. Social influences and prejudices include the oppression that Tess receives from her family, the church 's denial of a proper burial for her baby, and the society 's judgments on being a mother of an illegitimate child. The second one is gender restraints, illustrated through male