Instead of trying to validate herself as a scholar or someone who constantly studies how gender roles effect young girls, Peggy Orenstein simply uses her personal experience as a feminist who has a princess loving three-year-old. This firsthand experience validates her argument. There can be thousands of studies and observations done on young girls, but no one will understand them as well as a mother. These young girls however don’t always understand their mothers’ intentions the same way. As Orenstein states, “What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women, another example of corporate mind control and power-to-the-people! My 3-year-old was thinking, Mommy doesn’t want me to be a girl?”…
“Effective nonsense keeps one foot on the ground; fantasy needs a realistic background, a frame of familiar reference. A tour of Wonderland without the practical, very English little Alice to serve as norm would be tedious indeed. But the presence of Alice as norm, as the embodiment of Victorian practicality and industry, suggests that the Alice books may have satiric implications. (Matthews 109).…
Lewis Carroll wrote a story about a young girl ‘Alice’ who fell through a rabbit whole into a fantasy world inhabited by strange, humanlike creatures. Alice encounters lots of different humanlike creatures throughout her journey through the world of nonsense, poetry and mind-boggling logic, like, the talking flowers, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Queen of Hearts, Jabberwocky and the White Queen. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland included shrinking, growing to the size of a giant, attending the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, playing Croquet and attending the Queen of Hearts court.…
A modern day audience would be very shocked by the characters behaviour and actions within the play. A modern day audience would be surprised by the strong views men held regarding women and their rights. In the Victorian times, there were various rules about jewellery, who to talk to – when and where, who to dance with, and how and when to speak. Women were expected to be submissive to men and not to speak with their own voice. Women upheld the highest morals in the Victorian times.…
Fay Weldon’s ‘Letters to Alice on First reading Jane Austen’, through the didactic literary form of an epistolic novel, serves to encourage a heightened understanding of the role of women in Jane Austen’s social, cultural and historical context, and also aims to present the parallels of women in both texts. In doing so, it inspires the modern responder to adopt a more sincere appreciation for the perspectives of Austen and Weldon of women inherent in both ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Letters to Alice’. Through the inclusion of relevant contextual information from Austen’s time and didactic assertions of the fictional character Aunt Fay, Weldon implores the responder to accept her opinions on the role of women in both her and Austen’s context. Her discussion of this, which delves into marriage, feminism and the patriarchal influence, transforms a modern responder’s understanding of the themes and context explored in both texts, and moreover, alters the way in which the responder perceives the events and decisions of the women within the novels.…
We as Americans reminisce on history to see and understand the advancements we have accomplished and the same can be said of not only the advancement of women but also the image of how women are portrayed. Although in today’s day and age, their figures and beauty are scrutinized but also exploited. For instance in both Tennessee Williams motion picture, “A Street Car Named Desire” and Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun you are able to see the evolution of the not only the portal of women but also the advancements they accomplish.…
Many of the women within the story are at the mercy of the men in their lives. One of many examples would have to be the way Catherine is perceived by others when she is young. She is considered to be a “wild” girl, simply because she is allotted a bit more freedom than other women. She does not immediately conform to the social rules set to her gender, and therefore is seen as being wild and unruly. However, even after she changes into a more socially acceptable woman after spending time with the Linton family at Thrushcross Grange, she still must endure many hardships. She is not the only woman in the novel to do so, as Isabelle and Cathy must also have to face the many struggles that accompany their roles as women during their…
The ideas conveyed by Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice and Fay Weldon in Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen conflict with and challenge the values of their contemporary society and serve to offer moral perspectives opposing to those of their respective societies. Connections can be made between the role of the writer and their purpose in both texts and, particularly through consideration of Weldon’s contextualisation and form, the reader’s perspective of both texts is reshaped and enhanced. Furthermore, Weldon perceives and forges a connection with Austen to illustrate both authors’ didactic purposes and allows the reader to re-evaluate the form and purpose of Pride and Prejudice against Weldon’s feminist and postmodern context.…
In the author's article he presents the idea that girls should follow a more independent manner rather than the stereotype of princess who needs saving in modern films. With evidence from movies like Ella Enchanted where the princess is escaping the binds of having to marry her prince, rather than wait to be saved by her prince it is clear the author supports more feminist themes for modern fairytales.…
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll was first imagined in 1862 and is considered to be a literary classic. Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) was a mathematician and Reverend of the Christ Church University. During a 5 mile boat ride with three young girls he made up the story to keep them entertained. One of the girls, named Alice, asked him to write the story down for her. He made her a book, complete with illustrations and from that Alice in Wonderland was born. Despite its simple beginnings and seemingly innocent meanings, four decades later the book began being challenged for multiple reasons, and joined the banned books list. When the first of these absurd interpretations surfaced, the world was a much different place with different “issues” of the day. It seems that with each interpretation the “issues” of the current time may have been reflected in the analysis' of this enchanting story.…
An examination of Jane Austen’s 1813 social satire Pride and Prejudice, and the reading of Fay Weldon’s 1984 epistolary text Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen, allows understanding of Austen’s novel to be moulded and then shifted. Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners, focusing on marriage, Pride, Prejudice and Social Class which are projected through the characters, gentry-class setting and Austen’s authorial comment. Austen’s purpose was to portray the world of the gentry class, and satirise some aspects of her society and praise others. Weldon’s purpose is to encourage an understanding of the value of literature for individuals and society. She models Austen’s writing to demonstrate her argument and in so doing she gives a heightened understanding of values in Austen’s context. She reviews Austen’s society, providing an explanation of social conventions such as marriage, social stratification and women. Aunt Fay’s opinions allow readers to reshape their understanding of events and characters in Pride and Prejudice. Her conclusions allow the reader to draw connections between our contemporary society and Austen’s context, which then enables us to reshape our original understanding of Pride and Prejudice and our own context.…
As you sit down on your couch with your feet up either watching or reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest you can get a few different messages. Some people take away that society demands conformity while others have gone on a rampage about how the book is feminist. Marisa Faulk argues very passionately about being feminist and is very extreme about her beliefs. To really understand anyone’s point of view you are going to have to know what a feminist is. Feminism is organized activities on behalf of women’s rights and interests according to Merriem-Websters dictionary. Feminism is a positive thing for women but when taken to certain extremes can also be a negative thing. Feminism is what changed the voting rights for women and advanced people’s views on woman. It can also be negative because when taken too far instead of being empowering and inspirational it can be too much and not taken seriously. But like in most works of art there will always be something for people to critique.…
• Explores the changing role of women in society– through her investigation of the portrayal of female characters in literature, and the changes they have undergone over time…
Alice in wonderland is an adventurous book full of mystery, conflicts, and surprisingly allegory. Alice goes through trails, revelations, and at one point even gets accused of “being the wrong Alice.” In this story, Alice believes that she is dreaming and having a weird one at that, but in reality she is not really dreaming. Alice is really trying to find herself and with that she is portraying the conflicts in her life through the world of wonderland. To me wonderland is just a dimension of realization and a way for Alice to find the answers to the questions that she needs. But will Alice realize this in time or will she go on through her “dream” without any realization at all? In Alice in wonderland there are many cases of allegory. The cases the i will be pointing out and defining in my own words are “The Rabbit Hole”, “Size and Growth”, and “The Looking - Glass.” In this essay i will explain my theories and definitions of the allegory in Alice in Wonderland.…
Gender is on the agenda” wrote Francis Heidensohn (1989) Feminist definition of crime is that “crime is politically informed and linked to particular interests”– of men. Before feminism, women were invisible in sociological research, this meant that explanations for female recidivism saw, female crime as a ’special case’ resulting from sexual promiscuity and biological deviance. Biological explanations for male criminality have lost credibility yet feminist research argued that biological explanations were used to understand female crimes for example the persecution of Maxine Carr. Some feminist criminologists accept that women commit less crime than men. Diana Leonard believes that the major explanation for this fact is that women are more likely to conform to rules and social controls as opposed to men. However, there are signs that this commitment to the rules may be undermined by social class and age. There are six main feminist explanations of the relationship between gender and crime.…