The Awakening was written based on Kate Chopin however more her concerns on women 's issues. It reflects a comment she had made once regarding her desire to write. Her novel “The Awakening” clearly shows the use of literary school of criticism of feminist criticism. As you can see, Chopin’s literary piece “The Awakening” she uses the literary school of criticism of feminist criticism to criticize the feminist standpoint in the novel and the time period the novel
Arlene Stein’s book “Sex and Sensibility” is a literary masterpiece that develops the framework of content that was essential towards explaining the rise of the lesbian movement; though solid in its message, Stein’s bias is recognized throughout the text, she was cognizant of issues and factors that affected the movement but she fails to piece together the entire spectrum. Stein captures three fundamental factors displayed throughout the text: (1). The recognition of new sexual identities and their associated orientations (2). The separation of the Feminist and Lesbianist movements, and (3). The differentiation of the “Old Gay” and “New Gay”lesbian identities.
The Odyssey by Homer contains multiple moments where female characters are oppressed or fit into a patriarchy, but there are several moments where these character show signs of rebellion against this oppression. Applying a critical lense of feminism to these characters and relationships create complexities and conflicts within the novel that shine meaning on the world. The character Penelope offers many of these moments. Analyzing the actions, situation, and comparisons with other characters using a the feminist critical lense will show a more enriched version of Penelope and offer a deeper insight of the patriarchy, and how is affects the world. To accomplish this analyzation I have structured this paper into an intro paragraph, four body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph.
The question of feminine insanity and madness within literature has been a topic of much debate within literary studies, particularly among those scholars who focus on feminist readings of the texts in question. Many of these new readings and analyses are based on or heavily rely on the influential work of Gilbert and Gubar, who focused on the issue of female madness within Victorian fiction in their work The Madwoman in the Attic. As they posit in their work, female authors of the time were confined to only two models of femaleness within their works, either the pure angel or the untamed madwoman. Here they also introduce the idea of the double, which harkens back to the dark doppelgänger from the gothic tradition. As they explain in the preface
We will analyse, in this essay, the differences as well as the similarities which exist between Jane Eyre and Incidents in the life of a slave girl written by herself. We will see that they differ in terms of genre, the period of history in which they find themselves, the way the characters are presented and so forth. However, they share some of the main values concerning womanhood, race and some other aspects of life which they both treat in different ways and yet they do so in a specific aim. Charlotte Brontë and Harriet Jacobs present to us two texts which are both based in totally opposite moments in history. While many differences exist between the two texts, they have several aspects in common.
Walker imposes terms for the suffering of slaves into the work of an upper class white British woman. The strange juxtaposition of these two realities help readers internalize what it might of been like for slaves. Comparing Walker’s use of Woolf as opposed to all the other cited works helps explain the reasoning behind it. The works of Toomer, Okot p’Bitek and her own personal poem are all devices to convey her argument, yet they go untouched. Only commenting on the piece before or after, Walker, makes a conscious choice.
Introduction (300) Judith Butler, in her Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), has portrayed gender and sex as social constructs, subjected to change and transmutable. Her feminist theories have added to theoretical trends of the late twentieth century, re-evaluating basic scholarly assumptions about the nature of reality and individuals within it. Thus, all major categories have undergone revision, with the idea of womanhood at its centre. Angela Carter 's Nights at the Circus 1990 [1984]) and Barbara Wilson 's Gaudi Afternoon (1990) are two contemporary novels that react on these trends, and depict gender identities in innovative ways, attempting to capture contemporary and past discourses within the feminist movement. This text is going to address the novels ' own assessment of gender, and their views on womanhood as a single category.
The following chapter analyses the description of mothering experience told from the maternal perspective in Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003). Despite their different socio-cultural and historical frameworks, these two novels are significant in the context of this dissertation because of the way in which they introduce the maternal perspective on mother-child relationship, which has predominantly been overshadowed in literature by the daughters’ totalising viewpoint. The first part of the chapter examines the representation of black motherhood through Sethe’s character, an enslaved woman who decides to kill her children instead of condemning them to a life of slavery. The second part discusses Eva’s perception of the gap between culturally-constructed expectations about mothering and reality from the perspective of a middle-class independent woman. The aim of the chapter will be to examine the two characters’ different conception of motherhood and to identify analogies and differences in their performance of the maternal role.
Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness portrays women in various different lights, through various different characters, such as Kurtz’s Intended, or his African mistress. Throughout much of the novel, Marlow does not consider any of the women his equal, and frequently maintains that they harbour naïve illusions. This in itself, however, proves that women hold a vital role; it is often argued that naïve illusions are the cause of social novels that aim to defend colonial development and commercial endeavours, which, in some instances, Heart of Darkness can be seen doing. Conrad perceives women from the Victorian perspective, and paints them as being the personification of the more innocent and tender aspects of human nature. This is likely due to the oppressive social structure that existed when Heart of Darkness was written; both the author and the characters of the novel were the effects of an exclusively patriarchal European world, where men were the sole possessor of positions of power.
Ismat Chugtai, (1915-1991) was an eminent Indian writer in Urdu, known for her indomitable spirit and a fierce feminist ideology. Chugtai 's most celebrated work is the short story, ‘Lihaaf’ (‘The Quilt’) published in 1941 in the Urdu literary journal Adab-i-Latif. However ‘Lihaf’ seems to be her most controversial work being charged of obscenity for which she had to fight a case in the Lahore court in 1944. Her work was largely inspired by Rasheed Jahan, a leading writer and political revolutionary of the time. Most of her stories are based on themes drawn from middle class households and ‘The Quilt’ is no exception apart from the fact that it is a story of a lesbian relationship between the wife of a wealthy landlord and her maid servant, a huge social taboo in the time that it was written.