In Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s “In a Bamboo Grove”, the characters’ interviews are inconsistent to even tell who kill the man in the blue kimono. Not only that, the woman’s character seems the strangest out of all of them. From the accounts of the robber, wife, the old woman, and the murdered man, the narratives reinforce traditional gender roles, but at the same time, show deviations from the wife’s role during the characters’ time period. From the wife’s side of the story, her description of herself agrees with how the thief, the murdered man (her husband), and the people of her time saw women: weak and dependent or simply “the damsel in distress”. The old woman, her mother, describes the woman face as “small” with the fact that the woman is already a small nineteen year old (Akutagawa). This paints a picture of a small, innocent-looking girl. So besides being a woman, she is too young, in the people’s eyes, to really defend herself. Even Tajomaru, the robber, “strikes down her small sword” while she is trying to protect her and her husband (Akutagawa). Tajomaru shares his view of women by stating that “The most spirited woman is defenseless without a weapon” (Akutagawa). He automatically knows that he can take her down without much effort. Trying to reach her husband, she runs “stumbingly” to help him while also having “difficulty” getting up after seeing how the husband looked at her (Akutagawa). Understandingly, she may have trouble getting up after being knocked down,
Before reading the third chapter of “The Forest and the Trees”, I remember learning in the second chapter about symbolism, ideology and the construction of life in different cultures and societies around the world. For example, something interesting I remember learning was how every social system has a culture, consisting primarily of symbols (including words), ideas and practices. I believe this also connects and refers to how we tend to build our own sense of reality through the words and ideas that we use to mean something and people may use to name interpret what they experience and how cultures consist of symbols of ideas or words being portrayed. Based on what I read in the second chapter and the title of the third chapter, “The Structures
It is human nature to have issues of balance within any relationship. For example, the knight, desperate in need, found an old woman who knew the answer to save his life. In order for him to receive vindication, he had to pledge his life to her. The old woman at last revealed the answer, that all women want sovereignty over their husbands and lovers (“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” 170-71). In contrast, Walter forces Griselda to be submissive at all times as he tests her loyalty and obedience by pretending to kill both of her children and asking for a phony divorce. One tale appears to suggest that the male should be inferior to his wife as the other tale promotes that the woman should be at least steadfast in adversity and obedient to her significant other. The issue of an unbalance relationship is still a part of modern society because the majority of people are familiar with the saying, “Who wears the pants in the relationship?” That joke derives from the struggle of dominance in a relationship. Yet the characters’ opinions of where they believe a woman belongs in a relationship are slightly polar; both stories are constructed around the theme of struggle in a relationship (“The Clerk’s Tale” 217-24).
Up to this point, the reader might think the young wife was an innocent youth, singing and dancing her way through life, wearing white dresses and driving her older husband crazy. But there is a dark side to her personality too.
In Trifles, Susan Glaspell debates the roles between men and women during a period where a debate was not widely conducted. Glaspell wrote Trifles in the early 1900s—a time when feminism was just getting started. In this play, Glaspell shows us her perspective on the roles of men and women and how she believes the situation would play out. Trifles seems like another murder mystery on the surface, but the play has a much more profound meaning behind it. Glaspell presents the idea that men and women analyze situations differently, and how these situations are resolved based on how we interpret them. Research shows that women’s brains “may be optimized for combining analytical and intuitive thinking.” On the other hand, male brains are predominately “optimized for motor skills and actions” (Lewis). In the play, this research shows true when the women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, analyze details rather than looking at the apparent, physical evidence, and they find out the motive of the murder. The men, on the other hand, look at broader evidence that does not lead to any substantial conclusion. When Glaspell was writing this play, she wanted the women to be the real instigators, the ones that would end up solving the mystery. While the men in the story laugh at the ‘trifles’ that women worry about, these details mean a great deal in Glaspell’s eyes. Glaspell presents the idea what men and women are different in the way they live their lives through detail.
In Allen Johnson’s “The Forest, The Trees, and The One Thing”, he expresses that in order to understand sociology we need to be able to understand the relationship between biography and history. To explain this, Johnson uses five rules to sociology called the sociological imagination. These rules explain how an individual relates to social systems.
Having concluded that both females are in complete possession of their mental capacities at the beginning of the stories, a collation of The Awakening and “The Yellow Wall-Paper” uncovers a similarity in the oppressiveness of the ruling male figures. Both husbands in
The Wild Trees is a book by Richard Preston about a small group of botanists that are curious about what the canopy of the redwood holds. The redwood tree comes from the sequoia family and is the largest single organism in the world. A group of people that include Michael Taylor, Steve Sillett, and Marie Antoine. Michael Taylor came from a wealthy family. His father did not want Michael to grow up spoiled. He tried to raise him as a middle class child who did not get whatever he wanted. Eventually when Michael went to college he did not pass his classes and decided to change his major. Michaels father was not very happy about this and gave him one last chance. Eventually when the time came again, Michael did not complete his classes for the
Secrets fill the garden. In Gail Tsukiyama’s novel “The Samurai’s Garden”, she uses metaphors to show the audience the garden and its’ curator in a mysterious light. Tsukiyama’s character Stephen gazes upon Matsu’s garden with wonder and amazement. He compares it to another world, “The garden is a world filled with secrets… Matsu’s garden whispers at you, never shouts; it leads you down a path hoping for more, as if everything is seen, yet hidden” (Samurai 31). Tsukiyama creates another world within the fences of the garden. She integrates the secrets of its’ caretaker into the aura of the garden. The metaphor to another world impacts the reader by allowing the reader to see the mystery and beauty that shrouds it. The cloak of beauty shows
Susan Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles, weaves a tale of an intriguing murder investigation to determine who did it. Mrs. Wright is suspected of strangling her husband to death. During the investigation the sheriff and squad of detectives are clueless and unable to find any evidence or motive to directly tie Mrs. Wright to the murder. They are baffled as to how he was strangled by a rope while they were supposedly asleep side by side. Glaspell artfully explores gender differences between men and women and the roles they each fulfill in society by focusing on their physicality, their methods of communication and vital to the plot of the play, their powers of observation. In simple terms, the play suggests that men tend to be assertive,
Bamboo Among the Oaks is a great selecting book to read and this book will tell us about many interesting things, suprising, and emotional. This book is not just for those who interested in ethic or Asian American studies, but for anyone who wants to know the new immigrants, Americans are transforming not only themselves and their culture but America itself. This is a unique collection of poetry and prose invites us to share Hmong life in America- the sadness for what has been lost in the old culture back in China, Laos, Thailand and all over the world who struggle with what must be learned in the new culture, and the intense conflict between the two. Hmong people started arriving in the United State in the 1970s as a result of the Vietnam
Explore the presentation of femininity and identity in The Great Gatsby and The Color Purple, considering the contexts of their production, reception and the different ways in which these texts have been read.
Susan Glaspell’s one-act play covers issues regarding female oppression and patriarchal domination. The play still exists as a fascinating hybrid of murder mystery and social commentary on the oppression of women. When Margaret Hossack was charged with the murder of her sixty year old husband John, the man she had been married to for thirty three years. Killed by two blows to his head with an ax, John Hossack was thought to be a cold mannered and difficult man to be married to, but he didn’t deserve his
“Trifles” a play by Susan Glaspell, emphasizes the thought that women were kept in their homes and their contributions to the home and family went unappreciated and unnoticed. The play gives readers a view of how women were view and treated during the 1900’s. As a female analyzing the play, Mrs. Wright’s motive for killing Mr. Wright was quite clear. Susan Glaspell gives her readers a feminist approach, to demonstrate how Mrs. Wright’s murdering of her husband is justified.
Japanese writer Ryunoske Akutagawa makes it difficult to distinguish the differences between illusion and reality. “It suited his ironic taste to play the illusionist who leaves his audience staring blankly into a mirror”. We see this in Akutagawa story “In a Grove” because each of three main characters gives conflicting confession, and each have a motivation to possibly lie.
In Japanese society, at the time when these works were created, the feminine sexuality of a wife and of a courtesan were seen as two dichotomous roles that could not possibly be carried out by a single woman, at least in an ideal world. While it is true many