Essay about A Work of Artifice - A Profound Poem for Many Cultures

Summary- In “Homeward Bound,” Janet Wu introduces her traditional Chinese grandma who she rarely knows and her bounded feet. The feet are the concrete example Wu uses to illustrate the incredible distance between she and her grandma, between the modern American culture and the old age in China. Wu feels cheated for the years she lost to spend with her grandma. However, she is looking forward to have more touch with her grandma who she has everything but nothing to say.

Family and culture is shown negatively in this story when the narrator learns about her grandmother’s bound feet and has to change her life to benefit her family. An example is, “Disappointment made me protest. ‘But you said I had to give up the lessons so we could bring her from Hong Kong,’ I said. ‘Well, she’s here.’ Dad hesitated and then set the boxes down. ‘Try to understand, hon. We’ve got to set your grandmother up in her own apartment. That’s going to take even more money.’” (Yep 32 and 33). This shows how the narrator had to stop taking dance lessons because they had to use the money from the dance lessons to help a certain family member. It impacted the narrator’s life negatively because she could no longer dance even though it was probably one of her favorite activities to do. In addition, “However, she wasn’t quick enough, because I saw her bare feet for the first time. Her feet were like taffy that someone had stretched out and twisted. [...] “There was a time back in China when people thought women’s feet had to be shaped a certain way to look beautiful. When a girl was about five, her mother would gradually bend her toes under the sole of her foot” (Yep 69 and 76). This demonstrates how the narrator learned about the Chinese tradition of foot binding when her mother had to explain to her why her grandmother’s feet were abnormal after she

Details from Ning Lao’s life are often laid out in this way throughout the first few sections of the book. During Ning Lao’s childhood she is explained to be a very active child which causes her parents to wait until she is seven years old to start binding her feet. Ning Lao explained her experience:

Furthermore, Lee uses Atticus as her main ingredient for change. This is echoed in the novel, When A Girl Is Born when Han-lao and the reformers challenge the Chinese traditions as a result, this allows the Chinese women to be free from the cruelty of these traditions. This is shown when Ko- chin decides to unbinds her feet. "You Chinese girls cannot go on being deliberately crippled to make you into playthings for men and fit for nothing else... Child, forget the story that we women desire small feet in emulation of a girl some long- dead emperor loved. Remember only, as your husband does, that they are cruel device to keep women imprisoned in their homes." This quote shows the cruelty of binding your feet and that by unbinding her feet she escapes the cruelty of the traditions and represent her advancement to freedom. In a way, the bandages that bound her feet symbolized their traditions that crippled their freedom and limited their life, and when she decides to unbound them, she has finally accepted that the traditions were not right. When the bandages were removed, she lets go of the past and make way for her

Reflections Within is a non-traditional stanzaic poem made up of five stanzas containing thirty-four lines that do not form a specific metrical pattern. Rather it is supported by its thematic structure. Each of the five stanzas vary in the amount of lines that each contain. The first stanza is a sestet containing six lines. The same can be observed of the second stanza. The third stanza contains eight lines or an octave. Stanzas four and five are oddly in that their number of lines which are five and nine.

Foot binding was viewed as a sign of beauty, virtue, femininity, wealth, identity, and eroticism. When a girl became of marriageable age, soon-to-be mother in laws would pick a wife for their son by whichever girl had the smallest feet. The act of foot binding was to

A central idea of Lensey Namioka’s novel, Ties That Bind, Ties That Break, is that we don’t have to diminish ourselves to societies standards. With the setting being in the early 1900’s of China, we meet the main character, Ailin Tao, who shows us that traditions and standards are meant to be broken. Ailin is a five-year-old girl who refuses to have her feet bound, which causes her engagement to be broken and later become the symbol of shame for her family. Eventually, after ending up in America, Ailin proves that she didn’t need her feet bound in order to make a living. Whilst talking with a fellow passenger on her voyage to America, it is brought to her attention that “[she is] a revolutionary, and [is admired] for fighting a war, a war against

    As part of a practice, Chinese girls have their feet put in bindings. These bindings are part of a process known as foot binding. The foot binding reconstructs their feet physically and marks their worthiness in the eyes of their civilization. Lily has her feet put in bindings for these reasons. However, not only does it change her feet and worth, but the foot binding also alters her “whole character,” causing her to “follow” demands “without question” (4). It is from her lack of rebellion that Lily hides her emotional suffering. Her hurt stems from not telling anyone of the “torturous pain” buried deep in her “heart, mind, and soul” (4). Moreover, from this agony, a battle rages with “the person [she] should

In the article, Ko highlights the many misconceptions modern people have on footbinding such as keeping a woman’s foot bound, kept them in a hobbled and subservient domestic state or as sex objects . Afterwards, she states that our “certainties may turn out to be dead wrong” suggesting to readers that she is going to shine a positive light on footbinding. Ko goes more in depth about the three things men believed footbinding was, and why the tradition of binding ones foot was important at that time. The Chinese believed that wearing shoes differentiated and distinguished them from beasts as well as savages

Having small feet resembled beauty, worth, high status, respect, and had “advantages” towards marriage. Many women came to the conclusion that if you didn’t have small feet, no one would want to marry you (“Beauty is Beast”). Since marriage is very important in the Chinese culture, almost every girl had bound feet in spite of the excruciating

China has many and varying customs. One of these could include the binding young girls feet.

As a rule, the vast majority of the analysts from various parts of the world have understood the cozy connections amongst footbinding and sexuality. Ladies' bound feet have assumed a very uncommon part in the sexual dimension of the Chinese life. In most scholastic writings, a general public-wide suggestive interest with bound feet is often considered as the assumed position. The prevalent creative energy holds that footbinding was basically roused by sensuality. At the end of the day, the motivation behind why footbinding was kept up for such quite a while is its sexual fascination for Chinese male population. As far back as the Song Dynasty, too much pointed and little feet have framed a vital trait of a lovely lady, and there slowly created

As you would expect it also made walking almost impossible it would result in awkward walking while swaying to side to side. A small foot in China, no different from a tiny waist in Victorian England, represented the height of female refinement and status. For families with marriageable daughters, foot size was a big deal since it represented a high amount of nobility and a means to marry off their daughters. The most desirable bride possessed a three-inch foot, known as a “golden lotus.” As for feet that where four inches it was known as the “ Silver Lotus.”

Co-option is I argue most clearly defined by Veronica Forrest-Thomson’s Poetic Artifice. A text, that pushed back against critics of the previous generation and endeavoured early on to integrate structuralist thought with post structuralist. This integration between structuralism and post-structuralism can be seen as an attempt to get at the importance of poetry. In an attempt to stress and illuminate poetry’s unique ability to be “transformative of both language and the world.” Forrest-Thomson in Poetic Artifice demands an intense focus on “all the rhythmic, phonetic, verbal and logical devices which makes poetry different from prose” to best consider this ‘transformative’ nature. It is in this distinguishing of poetry from prose, and the highly formalist manner and “structuralist distrust of language’s transparency” in which she follows that one can also see a similar differencing between the broader spectrum of literature with the sciences. There is no need in Forrest-Thomson's work for differing areas to be inclusive of one another, to the point of loss of individuality, because of a homogenizing of methodology and epistemic reasoning. Throughout both Poetic Artifice and her thesis Poetry as Knowledge: The Use of Science by Twentieth Century Poets, Forest-Thomson can be seen to put forward a new structure, in which separation is crucial for any kind of interrelation between the two fields of knowledge. She follows a similar stance as that of Kelly

In the article “Footbinding: From Status Symbol to Subjugation” Lousia Lima wrote about how Chinese women at young age had to footbinding. Footbinding at the young age is actually bad for their feet because their toes would bend from those shoes which it looks like they have small feet. Lima explained how it was started in china, “But historical records from the Song dynasty (960-1279 A.D.) date footbinding as beginning during the reign of Li Yu, who ruled over one region of China between 961-975” but it outlawed in 1912. The young girls may be forced but other young girls may want do it for “binding their feet could be their passport to social mobility and increased wealth” but either way, it is