A Compare/Contrast Essay On Abused Women

The story follows Delia, who symbolizes Southern African American woman in the early 20th century, a wife in a loveless marriage subjected to abuse from her husband Sykes. Delia Jones’ life is full of cruelty, where she is faced with cleaning, physical exhaustion, abuse, unfaithfulness, and sweat. Church was the only place where she could take a break from her suffering. In Sykes attempt to get rid of Delia he leaves a snake in the house. Later, the snake escapes and roams through the house, Delia left the house. Sykes was roaming the house when suddenly was bitten by the snake causing him to die.

Throughout the novel Fitzgerald shows that Daisy is self-centered and careless at heart; she is a dreamer who fails to face reality. Continuing an affair with Gatsby with no real intentions of leaving her husband eventually leads to the death of Gatsby. In return she shows little to no concerns over the death of her “love” Gatsby and returns into the arms of her corrupt husband. Tom, who is also unfaithful in their relationship has a mistress of his own who is killed in a car accident while Daisy was driving. Tom as well shows no remorse in her death and moves on like nothing ever happened. Daisy and Tom are the prime example of corruption in both material success and with what wealth can bring; “They instinctively seek out each other because each recognizes the other’s strength in the corrupt

Delia represents the good in the story. She remains calm, level-headed, and spiritually in tune despite her husband‘s determination to make her miserable. Once a "right pretty li'l trick," Delia is now worn and dried out like sugar cane that's been chewed to no end (“Sweat” 43). However her soul remains strong as she turns to her spirituality for comfort and hope. She has smarts although uneducated and the fact that she built her own house and now supports her and her husband by washing white

He is very abusive towards his wife and takes advantage of Delia’s hard work by spending her money on Bertha, his lover. He doesn’t go to church with Delia, and makes fun of her attending church and washing clothes and continuously makes verbal threats towards her throughout the story.

The Great Gatsby is considered to be a great American novel full of hope, deceit, wealth, and love. Daisy Buchanan is a beautiful and charming young woman who can steal a man’s attention through a mere glance. Throughout the novel, she is placed on a pedestal, as if her every wish were Gatsby’s command. Her inner beauty and grace are short-lived, however, as Scott Fitzgerald reveals her materialistic character. Her reprehensible activities lead to devastating consequences that affect the lives of every character. I intend to show that Daisy, careless and self-absorbed, was never worthy of Jay Gatsby’s love, for she was the very cause of his death.

Throughout the novel The Great Gatsby the author F. Scott Fitzgerald has created dysfunctional relationships between characters to provoke the audience to react is a specific way. Today we will be taking a detailed look at the relationship between the characters Daisy and Tom and demonstrate how the author has created a dysfunctional relationship between the pair as they fail to meet basic requirements of a healthy marriage of love and loyalty.

I want to focus on the story ‘Sweat’ because it happened to be my favorite from the selected female authors we read this semester. I was very struck by the story because Hurston wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, and represents women even in a male-dominated culture. The story ‘Sweat’ takes place in a rural setting. Hurston tends to focus on relationships and conflicts in her writing. In this story, Delia is a hardworking woman. She is also strong, despite being in an abusive relationship. Her husband is portrayed as rude, and clearly doesn’t appreciate anything she does. The narrator also tells the reader how young and beautiful Delia used to look before her abusive marriage. The husband in the story is upset and mad at white people. However, Delia has to work so she defends herself and her job. The story ends with a snake bite that kills her husband. However, he was the one who brought it in the house to scare and more than likely kill Delia. I believe that Hurston’s intentions were to represent a strong female woman who held no regards for a man who mistreated her. I also believe that her intended audience was for females in general. By making Delia hardworking and strong, she is a woman who represents female empowerment. By doing so, Hurston makes women more aware that they don’t have to be consumed in a male-dominated culture, but that a woman can do as she pleases, and not have to

In chapter one of the novel The Great Gatsby, the central couple presented are Tom and Daisy Buchanan. These two partners, although different, have similar personalities but also have contrasting differences. Throughout chapter 1, these two portray that wealth is better than everything else, and they both revolve and base their lives on it. Also in this chapter it shows the hardships and difficulties they have in their marriage. They are both never satisfied with what they have, and are always longing for more. During chapter 1 it was apparent that Tom and Daisy had an unstable relationship.

Delia was physically abused many times by her husband, Sykes. He was also mentally and verbally abusive to her by calling her names and constantly teasing her. This can be seen when he pretends to scare Delia with a snake, and then calls her names for being scared. In Zora’s life, this is seen where she also grew up as an abused child from her father. Her father did not like her very much because her sassy attitude. He said that she “was too spirited and too mouthy for her own good” which hurt her feelings and made her very aware that she was not his favorite child in the family (Boyd 27). Her father would also physically abuse her by threatening and spanking her as a child. In the story, Sykes represents Zora’s father because they were both abusive towards women. Zora included this detail in her story to explain her life as a child. The story is put in the perspective of a grown woman who had been abused, but how she would feel the same pain a child would feel who had been abused. No matter the person’s age, anyone

In both Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” and novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the focus is on women who want better lives but face difficult struggles before gaining them. The difficulties involving men which Janie and Delia incur result from or are exacerbated by the intersection of their class, race, and gender, which restrict each woman for a large part of her life from gaining her independence.

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, characters are depicted as corrupt human beings influenced by their own personal agendas. With an indistinguishable line between right and wrong, they remain unaware of the consequences that follow their actions. Daisy Buchanan is portrayed as the “golden girl” of her time. She is the woman every man wants to call their own, although they only focus on her superficial features rather than personal qualities. Throughout the novel, her true self begins to unfold, displaying how she misleads others to protect her social stature and reputation. Daisy’s submissive nature continuously hurts the people she cares about by allowing her to engage in dishonest activities.

In “Sweat” adoration and hatred continuously go back and forth and Delia even “attempted friendliness, but she was repulsed each time” (1092). The despair and isolation Delia felt in the end of the story, perhaps even more than the straightforward and steadily building anger, is what caused her to allow him to die in the end.

One theme in the story is physical and emotional abuse. Delia is quite often trying to work or simply minding her own business, when her husband, Sykes decides to pick a verbal fight with

Fitzgerald presents his audience with Daisy, a married “girl” who eventually reunited with the lost love of her life, Jay Gatsby. While breaking rules and being adventurous, Daisy ultimately brings Gatsby to his death. Although she explores her sexuality and runs off behind her husband Tom’s back, Daisy continues to be oppressed. Tom’s aggressiveness and wealth force Daisy to depend on him, making her a slave of her husband. Because of this, she can not leave him to be with Gatsby, the one she loves. Doing so would mean losing economic support and losing a stable life. In this way, her husband defines her life. There is an evident contrast however with Tom’s role. Tom keeps an apartment away from home for his mistress and gets away with it. Because he is the man, society would not dare punish him for exploring his liberties. Daisy on the other hand is inferior to Tom and, as a social norm, is not allowed to indulge in such freedoms because doing so would bring shame to her honor.

The CDC reports that nearly half of all men and women in the United States have been psychologically abused by a romantic partner, while around a quarter of women and 1 in 7 men have been physically abused [2]. This is a dramatic difference from areas like the United Kingdom, where 8.2% of women and 4% of men have been abused [3] One in three people experience abuse by a romantic partner by the age of eighteen [4]. In 2015, 87% of hospitalized abuse victims in New York state were women, and were admitted more often than male victims [5]. This can likely be partially attributed to traditional gender roles, which assume that men are “stronger” than women and are “weak” if they are hurt by a woman.