The Reeve's Tale And The Honor Of Men Analysis

During the 1380’s a miller, who is the person who grinds flour, only made twenty dollars a year, while the cost of flour was 56 cents per pound. This might make it difficult to stay honest, because stealing 40 pounds of flour would be worth more than he made in a year. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, The Reeve’s Tale, is a story told by Oswald, the reeve, because he is angry about the miller’s tale. Oswald decides to tell this tale to embarrass the miller. The Reeve’s Tale, is a tale about a miller who stole flour and grain for profit. Symkyn, added cheaper grain to the flour, and stole the good flour for extra money on the side. Not only was Symkyn a thief, but he was also morally challenged. This tale crosses the line of immorality, while comparing street smarts and book smarts, but most importantly discusses an underlying desire for revenge.

As feminist issues go, rape is one of the most predominant topics that is brought up when discussing women’s rights. The concept is one that Aphra Behn chooses to write about frequently in her works; from The Rover and The Fair Jilt, which both contain scenes where the (attempted) rape is clear, to her poem The Disappointment, where the lines between consent and force are muddied depending on how the reader interprets her language. This essay will focus on comparing The Rover and The Fair Jilt in their depictions of their respective perpetrators, victims, and rationalizations of rape.

Chopin challenges the gender roles expectations imposed on married women during the nineteenth century in her novel, “The Awakening.” The main protagonist, Edna, initially symbolizes the conventional woman; she is married to Leonce Pontellier and they have two children. Later, at Grand Isle, she experiences dissatisfaction with her life and marriage. Edna experiences a stirring in her soul that exposes contradictions between her natural self and “gendered” self. She wants to break free from social norms that bind her to motherhood, and this is her natural self in conflict with her “gendered” identity. To be free, however, is not always an easy choice to pursue. The research paper discusses

Throughout history women have been portrayed in various ways; nevertheless, women have been predominantly viewed as weak, feeble creatures. However, in The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan, in addition to being viewed as weak, women are also viewed as wicked by male authors. This is historically incorrect, as in reality fifteenth century women were not thought to have been vile but rather compassionate and moral creatures. The Book of City of Ladies, although a pioneering work in the feminist movement, does not portray fifteenth century women’s social struggle completely accurately. Christine de Pizan exaggerates the misogynistic views of women in order to demonstrate their need for defense and stimulate compassion among her readers.

In the play, Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, characters both male and female conflicts deal with issues involving honor and fidelity or loyalty. The role of honor is shown throughout many instances in the play. In the play honor is sought after in many different ways. Men acquire

In Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, a short play about rural life in the early twentieth century, a strong standpoint on feminism is presented to the audience. Throughout the play, much of the plot revolves around contrasting the men in power’s perception of a crime scene with the more subjective, emotional women’s point of view. It shows the discriminatory mentality men had towards women that were commonly accepted. The play also includes elements of what the women’s suffrage movement was all about and incorporates the mood of society during that time towards women; being that their social status was viewed beneath that of a male. During the play, the Attorney and Sheriff see a mess of preserves in the kitchen. Instead of investigating

The combination of anonymity and free speech often leads to the expression of radical opinions. Unrestricted expression of these opinions often results in exaggerated social discourse, where positions are taken for the sake of argument rather than reason. Joseph Swetnam, a pamphleteer and fencer, used his literary freedom to publish The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women (1615), a polemic attack on women. While pamphlets were often produced solely to elicit a response, Swetnam could not have anticipated the response which he received. Rachel Speght, the young daughter of a pastor, made use of her knowledge of both religion and femininity to rebut Swetnam’s diatribe in A Muzzle for Melastomus (1617). Hinging on a feminist

Obtaining and defending one's honor defines a person's life the community conveyed in Gabriel García Marquez’s novela Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Honor is an intangible prize that is synonymous with worship and good reputation. In the small town that this chronicle takes place in is very divided through gender. For a woman to be respected highly and maintain her honor she must be pure and practice chastity before marriage. Opposed to that, for a man to be considered with honor, he perform hyper-masculinity in everything that he does, and treat everyone with this pugnacious attitude. The characters in the novela gain back their honor after the events of this crazy weekend, except for one, “ For the immense majority of people there was only one victim: Bayardo San Román.

During the Victorian Era, ranging from 1837 to 1901, there was a resurgence of medieval themes and characters in popular media as England sought a foundation on which to build its empire. Just as the medieval time featured a shift from paganism to Christianity (epitomized by the tale of King Arthur; he, a Christ figure, vanquishes the pagan, Morgan Le Fay), the Victorian Era saw a literary shift from Romanticism to Gothicism. Where once nature and the heart ruled, the media of the time skewed toward sullen settings and morbid characters. A fascination with the pain and death of women evolved, society using tales of female suffering to heighten the perception of their frailty and establish patriarchal dominance. Masculinity and femininity were

Feminism. Feminism revolves around the strength and independence of women and can be defined as the “women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men”. As Fyodor Dostoevsky’s audience of “Crime and Punishment” witnesses, one will find that the men within this novel have shown a

As it was stated earlier, one of the key terms in the present thesis is female grotesque. The researcher tends to see how the plays, Cleansed, Phaedra and Blasted, can be read in this respect. The point is that the narratives within these plays try to penetrate gender and sexual identities through the violence. This violence is not related to any gendered or sexual identity, whether male or female, it seems that Kane wants to put an end to these norms. This dissertation includes a group of women, fictional or real, these women symbolize the female grotesque. Some of them carnivalized by their societies and others bring about the inversion, comedy, and tragedy of their play worlds. Some of these women have the capacity

Most of the latest criticism has focused on the role played by women in Heart of Darkness, for some critics like Mclntire; the text seems to marginalize the role of women, and to exclude them from the world of men. For others like Biswas, women do serve to play more role than it seems to be, and the novel is not about men dominant power over women. Both Biswas and Mclntire hold contradictory views, even though they sometimes agree on some points. I am going to take advantages from this contradiction on view, based on it I will first analyze Biswas main arguments and show how it differs from other critics, then I will compare and contrast between him and Mclntire, finally I will relate his text to the feminism theory.

Mary Daly, a radical feminist philosopher of the 1900s, is the author of the famous literary work, entitled: Gyn/ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. In this book, Daly comprises her feminist ideas and beliefs into three separate passages. Despite the fact that the specific content in each passage explains different topics and theories, Daly’s overarching goal for writing Gyn/ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism is to fully describe the idea of women becoming a “Be-ing” and the “rough journey” of women becoming entrenched in a need to practice radical feminism (1).

Purple Hibiscus is the first novel and Bildungsroman written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The story is set in Enugu, a city in post-colonial Nigeria during the civil war in 1960. The Nigerian households in the 1960s worked in a patrilineal manner where the father is the head of the household and he is obeyed. The wife and children have little say and the wife is only seen has the one who gives the man his children (Qualls, A). The main character and also the narrator, Kambili Achike explains what it is like living under the roof of her patriarchal Father, Eugene Achike. The issue of patriarchy will also be further elaborated on in this essay and how it affects the characters in the novel, not only in the given passage, but in the novel in general.

“But in the afternoon, it being very hot, the seven Princesses all fell asleep, and when he saw they were fast asleep, the Rajah, their father stole away and left them (for he feared his wife), saying to himself, ‘It is better that my poor daughters should die here, than be killed by their stepmother.’” (Punchkin, p.3).