Analysis of Michel De Certeau's 'Walking in the City' and 'The Roaring Girl'

The city, Toronto in this case, presents a web of streets and geographical space that threatens to lock its citizens in a certain demarcated way of life and conduct. The four key characters in this narrative - Tuyen, Carla, Jackie, and Oku - each feel blocked in by the constrained locality that they have been born into and each attempts to escape it in his own way.: Tuyen by being an artist, Carla by being a courier; Oku by being a student and Jackie by working in a store. The first two not only attempt to escape by means of their profession using their profession to either flee the spaces and squares (by bike) or transcend it via imagination (by art) but they also adopt profession that go against societal expectations. These societal expectations were created by, and exist within the geographical space they live in. Toronto of the late 20th century had an internalized set of expectations for immigrants and its citizens. The parents of the characters succumbed to it. The protagonists, however, resolved to step out of their boundaries and most of them succeeded.

Throughout history, women have constantly been objectified and forced into submission by the male dominated society. Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical work, The Second Sex, echoes the intense oppression of women and reflects the first wave feminist movement. Her existentialist decoding of genders resulted in the idea of the Other, which explores the phenomenon of women forced into the role of an object, while men are the subject. In the second chapter, “The Girl”, Beauvoir further studies the idea of this oppression during one’s transition from a girl into a woman. Beauvoir states that no matter how much freedom and sense of self a girl holds, she is always forced into the role of the Other in society. Beauvoir 's idea of the Other held

Society is often seen to have different biases or perspectives on topics such as the role and perception of women. The short story, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, consists primarily of a catalog of commands and instructions, the purpose of which is to make sure that the mother’s daughter is constantly in check and not getting into any trouble. Jamaica Kincaid utilizes a wide range of techniques such as symbolism and diction in order to showcase the theme of how the depiction of women rely mainly on how they present themselves in the public and how they are so easily described as impure or filthy.

Middleton and Dekker collaborate to write The Roaring Girl, which concentrates on a real-life London woman named Moll Cutpurse. Moll was reputed to be a prostitute, bawd, and thief, but the playwrights present her as a lady of great spirit and virtue whose reputation is misrepresented by a small, convention-bound civilization. In the play, as in reality, Moll dresses in men’s attire, smokes a pipe and bears a sword representing a colorful and in the underworld life of Moll Cutpurse. She stood London on its head with her cross-dressing and gender-bending behavior, and illegal pursuits. Her defiance of women in this play is exceptional. Also, she is perhaps one of the only players to be scrupulously true to herself; some of the other characters display very hypocritical aspects. Such unorthodox and unconventional role, Middleton and Dekker implies, leads to her spotted standing. She is a roaring girl; An audacious and bold woman-about-town. But beneath this absence of femininity, is a courageous, high-principled woman. Moll interposes in the central plots and is associated in skirmishes with many of the characters, consistently showcasing her ability to stand up for the downtrodden and wronged. Therefore, Moll creates a 'third space ' that identifies her as importantly freed in her navigation of space and social relations.

In Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl,” the narration of a mother lecturing her daughter with sharp, commanding diction and unusual syntax, both affect the evolution of a scornful tone, that her daughter’s behavior will eventually lead her to a life of promiscuity that will affect the way people perceive her and respect her within her social circle. As well as the fact that it emphasizes expectations for young women to conform to a certain feminine ideal of domesticity as a social norm during this time and the danger of female sexuality.

“Girl” is a short story in which the author, Jamaica Kincaid, unofficially presents the stereotypes of girls in the mid 1900s. Kincaid includes two major characters in the story “Girl”, they are the mother and the girl. Although the daughter only asks two questions in this story, she is the major character. The mother feels like her daughter is going in the wrong direction and not making the best decisions in her life. The whole story is basically the mother telling her daughter what affects her decisions will have in the future. The mother believes that because her daughter isn’t sitting, talking, cleaning, walking or singing correctly it will lead her to a path of destruction. “Girl” is a reflection of female sexuality, the power of family, and how family can help overcome future dangers.

In the opening of the novel The Street, author Ann Petry carefully establishes the bitterness and stressfulness between Lutie Johnson’s, and her relationship with her environments’ urban setting. Petry develops this relationship through the use of imagery, personification, selection of detail, and figurative language. With the use of imagery Petry establishes the stressfulness in which the wind causes between her, and the pedestrians around her. In the beginning of the opening Petry commences her first paragraph with a lengthy sentence which causes a stressfulness in a reader's breathing; similar to the way in which the wind causes in a person’s breathing.

I think at the time the author may of tried to target an audience of young girls. Instead of writing a story the author cuts right to the case and explains and goes into detail about how a woman should act. The writer of this piece most likely wants you to take something from this and either learn from it or apply it to your life. An audience that lived in that time period may read this with a different mindset than someone of this era.

Throughout the text “Solitary Stroller and the City,” author Rebecca Solnit explores the complex relationships between the walking individual and living in the city. The title brings together three central ideas; walking, the city, and solitariness as an individual.. These three central ideas are tied together and used to reveal deeper meanings and relationships within the text. When analyzing Solnit’s work, the reader is left to identify a complex relationship between the central ideas and how the geography of a city influences all the three of the central ideas. Solnit makes claims throughout the text that are strongly suggestive of a relationship between the ability to walk and its derivability based on the “when” and “where” concepts. The geography and or location can be explored through the comparison of rural walking versus urban walking, the comparison between the cities of London and New York, and the solitariness associated with the geography and structure in one city versus another. Spanning the entire text is the idea that the city influences the walker and their individualism among the crowd, or their perception of solitude. Solnit compares London walkers and New York walkers, exploring how their different geographical locations define their city as a whole as well as the individual. Geography plays a crucial role in one 's idea of solitude and individualism.

The short story “Girl” takes place on a island in the Caribbean. The female role was very important to the culture they were raised in. Each female had to prove to the people that they well worthy on becoming a women. The female are easily judge for their boys, the why they dressed, people were aware of all certain behaviors the women will show. The short story clearly warns on how a women should be, warns her how to behave, and dress like a women because its the role they were meant to carry.

Presenting literature to the public that is meant to be a commentary on social or political issues, masked under the guise of entertaining and fictional, is a tool implemented by authors and activists for centuries. While not all satire is as overt as Jonathan Swift’s suggestion that we eat the babies, it does not diminish the eyebrow raising suggestions that are conveyed once the meaning has been discovered. In Aphra Behn’s The History of the Nun and Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina, the established expectations of the female role within society are brought into question then directly rejected. These expectations establish that women should be deferential to men, morally unblemished, and virtuous at all times. Men, however, are not held to these expectations in the same way. The masculine roles assumed by Isabella and Fantomina demonstrate a private rebellion against the established patriarchal society as it warns against the under-estimation of women and proves that women exist independently.

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, a novella written in 1893 by Stephen Crane, focuses on a poverty stricken family living in the Bowery district of New York City. This novella is regarded as one of the first works of naturalism in American literature and it helped shape the naturalistic principle that a character is set into a world where there is no escape from one’s biological heredity and the circumstances that the characters find themselves in will dominate their behavior and deprive them of individual responsibility. Throughout the story, the primary goal of the main characters is to escape the lives they lead and to find more comfortable lives away from their current problems, which differs from the romantic ideal that the main characters usually turn inwards to solve their problems.

The environment in which people live in demonstrates the societal norms and values of said culture. In Émile Zola’s The Belly of Paris, Florent, a political outcast, returns to Paris only to find that the regime has drastically changed. Napoleon III, a self-elected emperor, has torn down many of the streets of Old Paris to make room for the angular and orderly streets of New Paris as well as the new markets of Les Halles. Throughout the novel, the character’s lives revolve around the various markets in Les Halles and the streets of Paris. Zola uses descriptions of architecture and city planning as well as how people use space within Paris to demonstrate the city’s corruption, signifying that the architecture of a city is a reflection of

Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl explores these controversies and writes a long form poem that includes a list of rules for young girls to follow as advice that will help them be more likeable and become a reputable “woman”. These rules are delivered in a direct emphasis with strict undertone. The guidelines given to the young girl can be inferred as a mother teaching her daughter who is at the age of adolescence. Jamaica Kincaid’s long form poem Girl highlights the stereotypical social responsibilities of young girls which is heavily defined by language, culture, and mothers. In the poem the mother figure covers everything from how to

The Book of the City of Ladies, published by the author, Christine De Pizan in the early 1400s, is known to be one of the earliest works of feminism. In her work Pizan constructs an allegorical city called “The City of Ladies,” a city where only women livelived, to defend the “chosen,” virtuous women from the misogyny of the male authors. Although the text may have sounded dreamy and fantastical for female readers at the time, listing their capabilities, intelligence and strengths, de Pizan cleverly includes a stratagem for females to follow in order to obtain rights. The article “Christine De Pizan’s City of Ladies: A Monumental (Re)construction of, by, and for Women of All Time” written by Jill E. Wagner analyzes the allegorical meaning