According to Priscilla L. Walton, author of He took no notice of her; he looked at me: Subjectivities and Sexualities of ‘The Turn of the Screw, a gender criticism of the Turn of the Screw, “The governess of the novel serves as a representation of the “problematic nature of single women and their sexuality” (Walton 349). Women with a job and no husband threatened the patriarchal society because she could not fulfill her motherly duties of having and raising children. But in some ways becoming a governess can fill some of those desires relating to children. Through being a governess, a woman can fulfill the raising children aspect of a woman’s identity as she was a substitute mother to the children she is caring for. A governess gets to take care of the children and raise them so that they are successful in the future.
According to Priscilla L. Walton, author of He took no notice of her; he looked at me: Subjectivities and Sexualities of ‘The Turn of the Screw, a gender criticism of the Turn of the Screw, “The governess of the novel serves as a representation of the “problematic nature of single women and their sexuality” (Walton 349). Women with a job and no husband threatened the patriarchal society because she could not fulfill her motherly duties of having and raising children. But in some ways becoming a governess can fill some of those desires relating to children. Through being a governess, a woman can fulfill the raising children aspect of a woman’s identity as she was a substitute mother to the children she is caring for. A governess gets to take care of the children and raise them so that they are successful in the future.
Desiree has grown up with the pain of knowing she was abandoned by her birth parents. With the brokenness of an orphan inside of her, she grows up "little more than a baby herself" (1) craving attention because her basic need for love and belonging is never truly satisfied. Due to her childhood, Desiree's motivation in life is her desire to find a pure love that will not abandon her in times of struggle and accepting her for who she is.
O’Connor also carefully draws out her characters. O’Connor made the Grandmother a women so that any reader felt lower than and feel below in authority. The grandmother is shown as a pushy woman with characteristics of selfishness. These characteristics show when she insisted on going to the old house. When she realized that Bailey was not too keen on the idea, she made up a story about treasure to get the kid’s to help beg their dad.
However, the book showed women in a strong light – taking control of the injustices set upon them. Olanna adopts a baby girl despite it being her husband’s love child because his mother refuses to look after the child. Kainene (Olanna’s twin sister) manages a refugee camp and banishes two priests after finding them soliciting young girls in exchange for food, showing Kainene’s strong character and protection of young
In society, women have expectations put upon them when it comes to their duties and responsibilities at home. Women are expected to be the caregivers in their families; therefore some women feel and have chosen to put their dreams and aspirations aside to fulfill the role society has placed upon them. Eveline gives up her lover, a chance to leave Dublin, freedom from caring for her family and most importantly her potential happiness in order to keep her mother’s dying request. For Eveline to make this decision, she tricks herself into remembering the happier times she had when she was younger despite the truth of having an abusive father. By using the psychological and gender strategies to summarize “Eveline” written by James Joyce, we can analyze how Eveline suffers from mental paralysis from not wanting to leave behind a home she knows because as a woman she bears the responsibility of making sure everyone is good with the exception of her.
Celie’s lack of a strong mother figure is a significant part of why she doesn’t develop independence in her early life, so strong mother figures such as Sofia, Shug Avery, Mary Agnes, Nettie, and even Albert’s sister Kate are crucial to her personal progress later on. It is these “surrogate mothers” that push Celie to understand how she truly deserves to be treated, and they also teach her how to fully live her life, thus resuming her development of ideas such as “separation, autonomy, and identity formation”(Proudfit 23). One especially important surrogate mother for Celie is her daughter-in-law, Sofia. Sofia comes from a family in which she does have several strong female presences surrounding her at all times, and that helps her to develop independence and a strong character of her own. This allows Sofia to stand as an example of female power for Celie.
Love is an involuntary factor that many people have come across in life. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character Lily, has an internal conflict with her mother which affects how open she is to love. Lily grew up with her father and the culpability of her mother's death. (more info) She was raised with a harsh understanding of love due to the lack of love given to her all throughout her life, for she was more open to love because she hasn't doted as a child.However, Lily found love through the Daughter of Mary, the Boatwright sisters, and Rosaleen, who later taught her how to love herself. Paragraph 1 Lily's form of love was altered due to how she was raised.
In fact, her efforts to protesting seem to be in vain when Mama condemn her and decides. Furthermore the hyphen magnifies the dramatic impact in Uma’s desperate plea; albeit Mama favours her son’s well being over her daughter’s education. Notably, this gives a slight hint of women participating in patriarchy, where the mother dominates over her daughter in another sense women dominating women. Considering this a contemporary reader will have been shocked that the parents values the son’s welfare than the daughter’s education, this act of gender discrimination was itself a patriarchal norm in the Indian culture, however, this kind of bias ethos sends a modern reader in disbelief
The character Lila had to leave her schooling and stay at home to look after her two sisters. Women experience social evils in society. They have been treated cruelly which affects them both physically and mentally. In Desai‟s novel Fasting Feasting, Uma‟s cousin Anamika has to face the cruel torture imposed by her husband and her mother-in-law. “Anamika was beaten regularly by her mother-in-law while her husband stood by and approved – or at least, did not object.”(Fasting Feasting, 71) She is beaten by her husband even when she is pregnant.