The Second Sex In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

For centuries, women have been exploited by the society. Events of women being prohibited from doing things like voting or working and being forced to behave the way it is considered to be socially acceptable have been jotted down in history. Until today women are still viewed as the weaker sex. In some countries, women are regarded less than human and are treated like slaves. Khaled Hosseini goes into the oppression of women in his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns.

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays women in an extremely negative light. The idea Fitzgerald gives off is that women are only good for their looks and their bodies and that they should just be a sex symbol rather than actually use their heads. He treats women like objects and the male characters in the novel use women, abuse women, and throw them aside. I believe that Daisy, Jordan and Myrtle are prime examples of women in The Great Gatsby being treated poorly. In this novel, Daisy is the most abused by male characters.

Firstly, Atwood satirizes the way women are presented stereotypically in literature work. She implies that women do not have a voice of their own, and that they always act in the shadows of men because of lust or pity for men. This description is full of exaggerations and Atwood also indicates how

Based on the beliefs regarding men and women in society, gender roles and gender stereotypes have been created in order to label men and women into distinct categories, giving great disparity between the two in regards to what behaviors and characteristics are expected of them. There were both issues of gender roles and gender stereotypes throughout the film, ‘Collateral Beauty’. Women were stereotyped as dependent, sensitive to others’ feelings and supportive, whereas men were stereotyped as dominant, logical and aggressive. An example of this stereotype towards women is seen among Claire, a friend and business partner of Howard, Amy, a struggling actress who helped with the plan to make Howard seem mentally unbalanced while portraying the role as ‘Love’ and also Madeleine, a lady who lost her daughter and lead a grief supportive group. Dependence can be seen throughout the film when Claire agreed to engage in the plan to overthrow Howard of his job and sell the company.

Throughout history, women have often been subjected to prejudice and an inferior status to men. Due to sexist ideologies of men believing that women are not capable of controlling their own lives, women have often been reduced to the status of property. This concept is prominent in many pieces of literature to demonstrate the struggles women have to go through in a predominantly, male structured world. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, the author illustrates a woman’s battle in an extreme society ruled by men to express the misogyny occurring in the time period when it was written, 1894. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia summarizes Atwood’s story as one that “depicts one woman’s chilling struggle to survive in a society ruled by misogynistic fascism, by which women are reduced to the condition of property.” Although written 100 years earlier, this is also seen in the novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy, because both authors show the oppression of women through the experiences the characters go through and the means of survival they use.

Aleyn reduces her value, making her an undesirable woman for marriage since chastity is desired more than an experienced woman. Afterwards, Symkyn is punished by the wife and two scholars because he fails to control his women and is inevitably isolated with manhood. Unluckily, Symkyn cannot withhold social statuses or break down social barriers since he cannot maintain authority. John and Aleyn are worshipped in the tale, because they were able to hold their power, despite their lesser

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the author illustrates restrictive gender roles towards both men and women, such as forcing women to act like the traditional women and restricting them to their own social class, and forcing men to act strong and masculine, and shows that they are restricted to these roles because of machismo, in order to protest the effects of

Furthermore, the leadership uses various dehumanizing methods to achieve complete subservience of women to men. Some of these methods include destroying identity through classification, objectification, and indoctrination. Most women of Gilead are sufficiently repressed that they seem to accept their assigned roles, at least outwardly resigned to their fate. Atwood uses gender roles in The Handmaid’s Tale to show the lengths to which misogynistic totalitarian governments will go, to protect their dictatorships. The Republic of Gilead is a hierarchical society which requires complete submission of women to men.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” depicts the feminist gender seeking for being dominant and loved in both the readings in different forms. On the other hand “The Storm” depicts the reflection of the sexually oppressed women of the 19th century because of the male dominance. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, it is also believed by some individuals that the poem instead of showing the romantic features is also a criticism on the Edwardian society and a dilemma is shown that represents the inability to pursue a meaningful and a purposeful life. The author is facing rejection from society in various ways and is unable to fit into the situation. Prufrock is described to be in frustration and also impotence of the present individuality.

Alice is oppressed because she is a woman, as are the other ladies in the novel. Women have less to say about what they need or want but they have to pay much and also to face the results when the men around them botch. It is dreary to see these frail willed men delineated in the novel who failed to stay up for women, who recognize an overall population where women are set backs of their

Both the article Oppression by Marilyn Frye and the article Feminism is for everybody that includes men by Katherine Fritz both talk about the way women are demoralized by society on what society assumes about the person not what they know about the individual. That just because a woman dresses sexy does not mean she is sexually easy or deserves to be called derogatory names or harassed or worse raped. There should also not be one set of rules for men and another set for women. If a man has multiple sexual partners, he is labeled a stud and if a woman has the same number of sexual partners, she is labeled a whore or slut. Society attaches labels to us since birth, which is where female oppression starts.