Analyzing Danticat's Night Women

While visiting Alto do Cruzeiro in 1965, Hughes noticed women were indifferent concerning the death of their children. Infants born dead or “waiting to die” is a common occurrence in Alto do Cruzeiro. The women of the community became use to experiencing these tragedies and decided it would be easier to cooperate with Gods plan. If an infant is born “waiting to die”, the mother will usually leave the child to die. Having this kind of attitude towards dying infants has a powerful impact on maternal thinking and practice. Already knowing that an infant will not survive makes the women less loving and nurturing. When an infant actually survives, the mother has a difficult time raising the child. Children born in this area “lack traditional breast feeding, subsistence gardens, stable marriages, and multiple adult care-takers that exists in the interior.” Since single parenting is the norm, woman are forced to leave the infant at home, many times by itself. The women cannot carry their child with them at work or by the river. They can not leave their child with the older children because if they are not in school they are working as well. Also, since women earn a dollor and day, they can not afford to hire a baby

That job has very little honor in this community. “Three years, Three births and that’s all. After that they are Laborers for the rest of their adult lives, until the day that they enter the House of the Old… The Birthmothers never even get to see new children” (p. 22). Today, some women decide to become surrogate mothers of other women’s babies because of several reasons, such as sympathy for the couples who cannot have children of their own or financial reason. However, to carry other women’s children gives surrogate moms great senses of responsibility. They writhe in not only soreness of body, but also agony of mentality. The psychological pain by giving their babies to other women is greater than that of body. Thus, some surrogate mothers refuse to give up their babies sometimes.

Poverty and hardship are shown to create vulnerability in female characters, particularly the female servants, allowing powerful men to manipulate and sexually abuse them. Kent illustrates how poverty perpetuates maltreatment and abuse in a society like Burial Rites using the characters of Agnes’ mother Ingveldur and Agnes. Agnes’ mother is forced to make invidious choices as her children are “lugged along” from farm to farm, where she is sexually exploited by her employers. In spite of these circumstances, Agnes’ mother is commonly referred to as a whore in their society which abhors female promiscuity yet disregards male promiscuity as a harmless character trait; as in the case of Natan, who is merely “indiscreet” despite all his philandering. Born into poverty, Agnes experiences similar sexual coercion and manipulation from her “masters” and yet is labelled “a woman who is loose with her emotions and looser with her morals”. The severe poverty of Agnes is explicitly demonstrated to the reader by Kent through the intertextual reference of her entire belongings - a very dismal, piteous list to be “sold if a decent offer is presented”. Furthermore, Kent contrasts the situation of Agnes, a “landless workmaid raised on a porridge of moss and poverty”, to the comparative security Steina has experienced using a rhetorical question from

From a plethora of many authors and compilations over many centuries comes the fourteenth century The Thousand and One Nights, a Middle Eastern frame story during which there are as many as four implanted stories. In the outermost frame of this tale, a king who is betray by his wife vows to take a new wife each night and kill her the next morning in order to prevent further unfaithfulness. The main inner frame are stories from one of his wives which she continues each night to keep the king interested and thus postpone her death. Through these stories, the reader can examine the role of men and women in this time, specifically how women function in conjunction to men in the text. The reader may assume the men are superior while the woman are inferior, but through close reading of the text, the reader will discover that women in the text are only treated subordinately by men in the story but are revealed to the reader as the more powerful of the sexes. Authors reveal the power of women by their prowess at trickery or “women’s cunning” (The Thousand 1181), and their ability to force the actions of male counterparts. The reader can examine men’s attempt to stifle this power, which further acknowledges the women’s merit, through the excessively frequent occurring instances of men treating the women as insignificant, as well as instances when women are turned to ungulate animals, such

In Arlie Russell Hochschild’s, “Love and Gold,” she depicts the economic influences that turn choices of mothers in Third World countries into a precondition. Similarly, in Toni Morrison’s, Sula, a recurring theme of the struggle between independence, the ability to choose, and doing what’s best for others, or coerced decisions, is imminent throughout the entire novel and revolved around the main character, Sula. Often times the factor that weighs down choice is responsibility. Choices are seemingly infinite until you factor in what choices will affect which people and why. Both mothers and caregivers have to put their dependent before themselves, therefore limiting their

Because immigrant parents could not afford to keep their babies, they were abandoned to the street where there was “not one instance of even a well-dressed infant having been picked up…” (Riis, 68). With majority of the abandoned infants coming from such poor conditions and left in even worse, those in the upper and middle class became horrified with the circumstances immigrants were living in when they came to America. Because very few men could not find jobs and women were culturally forbidden (with their native culture) to work, many women worked as “nurses” for abandoned babies, possibly even ones they may have left themselves (Riis,

In the book “Monique and the Mango Rains,” by Kris Holloway, a woman from United States, was influenced by a young woman named Monique Dembele during her time serving as a volunteer Peace Corps in Mali, West Africa in 1989-1991. Monique, a young Malian woman, became a midwife in a country where healthcare was almost non-existence. In this autobiographical account tells the story of Monique from the view of the Author as she gets to know her and the city. They became friends and mention how she was able to witness and assist Monique delivered numerous births throughout the village. The author mentions that during her time in Mali her biggest concern was healthcare and fighting for women’s rights. This is also an example of how males using their gender role to control the woman in their lives.

Among violence against women and gender inequality, death is a constant factor that runs through the whole story this culture is surrounded by it every day and even when there is drought death is expected, but infant mortality is a constant battle. There are multiple occasions where infants die, mainly because of what they are being fed and how they are treated. It is understood that Monique’s baby’s health is declining throughout the story. The main cause of children

In this paper I will evaluate two artworks that share the same theme of “motherhood and breastfeeding.” In the last few years, the sexualization of breastfeeding has become a big issue. This is due to people see breast as sexual objects and think that women are being exhibitionist, and are doing it just to flaunt their breasts in public. Breastfeeding mothers are faced with the public criticism as they struggle to breastfeed their child, although it is the most natural and healthy method of feeding. The first artwork is by Mary Cassatt and is titled Mother Rose Nursing her Child. This painting was created in the 1900s and it depicts a woman breastfeeding her child. The second piece is a contemporary portrait created by Catherine Opie titled Self-Portrait Nursing. The portrait depicts a modern mother also nursing her child. When comparing both of these pieces of art I plan to focus on the beauty of motherhood and the bond between mother and child. In this paper I will discuss the social issue of mother’s being criticized for breastfeeding in public. Now more than ever women’s breasts are being overly sexualized when they are not a sexual organ, but in fact a part of their body used to feed another human being.

Although at face value the poem “dandelion” by Julie Lechevsky may appear to just be about dandelions, after taking a closer look at the metaphors, personifications, and other literary devices that are used, it is clear that the poem is about how attention isn’t always a good thing. Lechevsky does this by showing how dandelions are well known but not in a good way, and how her parents give her too much attention.

Within this passage, I found that Miss Stanley and other women were told that they were not to have an option on anything. Whether or not they would want to do something that they were told to do. For example, "Allen grinned at the women and Fowler say something flicker across Miss Stanley's face-something that might have been pity, or rage-or just plain fear. But it was gone again and she was smiling back at the youth who stood before the desk” (Simak 100). Tend to believe that Simak’s trying to depict that women during this time didn’t really have a voice. They just had to listen to the men that were in charge whether they like it or not. So, with the topic of gender role, men tend to be at the head of gender. They always have been before

She was raised in poverty by a single mother and eventually became pregnant out of wedlock. She pushed boundaries between the public and private spheres through publishing her fifteen years experience in prostitution and as a brothel owner. As long as the women involved in her business received regular medical exams and paid expected fines, the authorities tended to ignore it. She explained these women as “normal women caught in unfortunate circumstances” (Westward Bound, p.84) in her book titled “Madeleine: An Autobiography”. In comparison, Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Parent-Duchatelet had a much different view on the topic of prostitution.

In this paper, I will argue that Canadian author Margaret Atwood uses fiscal and socially conservative dystopias to show how sex work and prostitution are choices that women would never have to make in a world with true gender equality. In these radically different worlds, women have no agency beyond their sexuality and no ability to express themselves as equals within either society. And while the structures of both societies, the society of The Handmaid’s Tale. They both stem from modern conservative philosophies: for example, the country of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale holds Christian conservative beliefs on the role of religion in the state and the culturally designated roles of women. The topic I want to talk is human trafficking, and how women don’t have the freedom they deserve.

Mireille and Nnu Ego on the surface have nothing in common, one being an educated middle class woman, and the other an educated lower class woman who is deeply rooted in tradition and superstitions. Closer looks however, reveal that both are victims of perpetuated patriarchal oppression. Although sheltered as young women, nothing could save them from the pain that comes with marriage, and cultural conflicts. These two women suffered without a voice to the point of losing themselves. Nnu Ego’s problem is rooted in her inability to conceive after marriage, but Mireille’s stems from her mother-in-law, and community who sees her as an outsider that must not be allowed to stay. Ba and Emecheta challenge the assumptions that sexist oppression and

The film Philomena, directed by Stephen Frears, brings to light only a portion of the injustices faced by unwed mothers in Ireland during the mid-late 1900’s. Due to such heavy religious regard in the State, if any girl was to get pregnant outside of wedlock, she would be forced to leave her home and live in a convent, referred to as mother-and-baby homes, where she would endure many sufferings which were hidden from the public eye. Among these miseries, the most heartbreaking one would be the constant fear of the nuns selling your baby through an illegal adoption and never seeing your own child again. After leaving the convent, many of these women would hide their shame and keep this part of their life a secret.