Judy Chicago Analysis

In the 19th century many debates raged on the correct way to showcase a women’s body in a painting. “What was the relationship between women’s moral and sexual nature?” (pg. 272), artist worked to find a balance between these two concepts. A successful combination of these two topics can be seen in the can be seen in Eclogue by artist Kenyon Cox. Cox’s painting depicts four women naked and partially clothed lounging about together in a field.

Judith Butler’s Gender Troubles emphasizes gender as the constant repetition of non-existent ideals to uphold a masculine-dominant culture. Likewise, “Body Politics” highlights this belief within the overtly feminine qualities of city women. As a whole, the poem contrasts idealized feminine “city women” with a “real woman” who possesses both feminine and masculine qualities. The mother figure challenges both the gender binary and the patriarchal order by rejecting the feminine gender norms of the society. This feminist reading of the poem makes many valuable and probable claims, however the feminist approach contains some weaknesses.

By using such descriptions, she makes the situation average and common. The couple becomes an typical American couple. Thus, as the story progresses and the reader is presented with cruel husband, the situation present a male dominated society. The “hotly embarrassed” husband says something “punishing” and “unkind” to his wife. He intentionally hurts her because

From the outskirts and fragile world of Berlin in the 1930’s, Bob vision of Weimar Germany is stylishly directed and choreographed featuring a show-stopping musical performance by Liza Minnelli in his commendable film Cabaret. Cabaret, an appropriation of Chris Isherwood’s masterpiece ‘Goodbye to Berlin’ follows protagonist Sally Bowles played by Oscar award-winning Liza Minella. Sally an extroverted American feminist makes a living singing in the seedy Kit Kat Club, whilst getting herself into trouble by being sexually involved with Brian an introverted bisexual. Promiscuous Sally Bowles essentially is a girl who’s bought what the cabaret is selling; she lives in the moment and refuses to take anything seriously.

Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” is an enthralling memoir about a young girl’s peculiar childhood, which involved her family’s funeral business, infatuating trips, family turmoil, solitude, and her befuddling relationship with her masterful artificer of a father; in which similarities ranged from obsessive compulsive disorders and literature to sexuality. The most profound being homosexuality. Bechdel utilized duo-specific, speech bubbles, as well as, subject-to-subject paneling to illustrate the complex father-daughter relationship where Alison and Bruce Bechdel perpetually attempted to compensate for each other’s eccentric gender behaviors. Initially, both Bechdals yearned for different genders, imposing expected behaviors upon the other.

In both The Story of an Hour and Hills Like White Elephants, the authors Kate Chopin and Ernest Hemingway describe women and the desire to express themselves and be free and how men influence their decision making. Women strive for a sense of freedom and independence and have the yearning to convey themselves freely. In Kate Chopin’s and Ernest Hemmingway’s stories, the authors suggest the two female main characters in their stories feel suppressed for liberty. Louise Mallard in The Story of an Hour is sick and very lonely. She is

The author brings up an African American’s ability to “alter space in ugly ways” (Staples 542). The word “ugly” in this line serves primarily to indicate how afraid people are and how Staples’ surroundings can change drastically in negative ways to support his message. Additionally, Staples uses diction in a contradicting way to help support his message. In order to illustrate the difference in societies, the writer employs contrasting words such as “affluent” and “impoverished” to emphasize the difference between the little park the author introduced to us in the beginning of the narrative with the overall city of Chicago and why a woman might have been afraid of him. This supports his message that stereotypes, even those placed on cities and races, can influence how people act.

In a time where social strictures denied most women a future in the field of visual arts, Harriet Hosmer defied all social convention with her large scale success in neoclassical sculpting. At a young age, Hosmer had already developed a striking reputation, one that qualified her to study abroad in Rome under the tutelage of renowned sculptor John Gibson. As if this opportunity wasn’t rare enough for women artists in her day, Hosmer’s outstanding potential earned her the luxury of studying from live models.6 The respect she gained from taking this unconventional route to her success is one that entirely transformed society’s perception of women. Not only did her unique story serve as a catalyst in the progression of gender equality, but she also hid symbolic messages within each of her sculptures to find a way to penetrate her beliefs of equality through to any soul.3 As the National Museum of Women in the Arts perfectly captures, “[s]he preferred Neoclassical idealism to more naturalistic trends and rendered mythological and historical figures, such as Oenone, Beatrice Cenci, and Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, with nobility and grandeur.

It attracts spectators’ attentions to think about what things the young female is facing as they replace themselves into the painting. The main target of this painting is female. Based on what Cayton, et al., the spectators recognize that Hopper was trying to tell us, “The workplace remained highly stratified along gender lines. Not until the political and cultural climate shifted in the early 1960s would women begin actively to resist the gender stereotyping so characteristic of 1950s social attitudes” (Cayton et al., 1993). Females sustained the pressure of taking restricted social role; otherwise, they will be discriminated by the public.

American historian, author, and educator, Nathan Huggins criticized the movement saying, “whose sensibilities, tastes, and interests were being served by such art, the patron or the patronized?” Huggins doubted the value or merit of the art in his discourse, “When it is racial, there is, at first, the suspicion that the patron values negro-ness, not the art.”

The memoir opens with Jeannette, the author and main character, sitting in a taxi, wondering if she has overdressed for the evening, when she looks out the window and sees her mother rooting through a dumpster. She recognizes all her familiar gestures even as she is at times hidden by people scurrying home in the blustery March weather. It has been months since Jeannette has seen her mother, but she’s more overcome with panic that the woman will see her. She slides down in the seat and then orders the taxi to take her home again. She listens to Vivaldi, hoping the music will settle her down.

The topic that I have chosen for my upcoming research paper is a comparison of the women in three literary works: Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, and Henrik Isben’s A Doll House. Specifically, I want to analyze the similarities between the five women—Louise Mallard, Minnie Wright, Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Hale, and Nora Helmer—such as their situations, motivations, and ultimately, the decisions at the end of their stories that stem from the same source: their society. I also want to compare the men in these stories, and how their similarities led to the stories’ outcomes just as much as the women’s. The decisions I am referring to are Louise’s death—which,

In society, there are several stereotypes and gender roles culturally influenced by women today. Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills series made between (1977-1980) shows different stereotypes of women in different everyday situations. This series consists of the artist posing as those female roles in seventy black and white photographs. In my opinion, by doing this series she challenges the way we view women regularly in pictures, by giving a different perspective. In this paper, I examine Cindy Sherman’s work and how my work is inspired by or relates to her work.

This shows a balance between gender roles, as well as the embracing progressive changes within culture and society. In the story “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin, a third-person omniscient narrator, relates how Mrs. Louise Mallard, the protagonist, experiences the euphoria of freedom rather than the grief of loneliness after hearing about her husband’s death. Later, when Mrs. Mallard discovers that her husband, Mr. Brently Mallard, still lives, she realizes that all her aspiration for freedom has gone. The shock and disappointment kills Mrs. Mallard.

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