Angela's Disgraced

A woman's purity was something that held much honor and respect for her future husband. This was why women in the 50s were known to live at home with their fathers until a marriage was arranged or until she was proposed to. After Angela was raped she was proposed to by Bayardo. She was forced to marry him to help her family since they were terribly poor. After their wedding she told Bayardo that she wasn't pure and after this he returned her. This brought much shame to her name and her family’s name. This is why the Vacario brother had to kill Santiago and This is why the townspeople didn't stop them, they felt it was right they Santiago be punished for his wrong doings.

Each of the women face hardships with family, life in general, and men. Antonia a young, Bohemian girl is faced with many challenges and hardships throughout her life. After the death of her father, Antonia is obliged to start living by working in the fields alongside the men. Every member in her family depends on her both physically and emotionally. “With the death of her father, Antonia is forced to work on the family farm for her family to survive, and this shift in her role sparks a change in her identity. Antonia now wears some of her father’s belongings to suggest that she has indeed moved into a role that her father was supposed to play” (Everton). Antonia’s brother, Ambroch, makes use of her abilities as much as he can. When she works out on the fields he profits from the cash that she earns because he is the man of the household. “Antonia worked as a hired girl at the Cutters, and she was worried about Cutter’s intentions towards her. The moneylender, Wick Cuter, was known in Black Hawk as stingy towards his customers and over friendly to young girls . . . . Wick’s wife needed to go to Omaha for the weekend, and as a result of Wick’s infidelity she forced him to go with her. Although it seemed that Wick had left with his wife, Antonia still feared his intentions and pleaded with Jim to stay the night at the Cutters in her place . . . during the

Angela is a piano player in Warehouse Bar and Grill. She is in her fifties. She was just Angie O’ Meara, the piano player and she had been playing at Warehouse for many years. Angie was a familiar figure to those who lived in town.

The first, and most important antagonist in Angela’s Ashes is Malachy McCourt. Frank McCourt described his father, Malachy, as “the Holy Trinity with three people in him, the one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and the prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey” (210). While Malachy was an important and influential antagonist in the story, he was not always the best role model for his children. Mr. McCourt was said to be known for abandoning his family for multiple days at a time without warning or any way for the to provide for themselves. Often times Malachy would spend the majority of his paychecks on feeding his addiction, rather than feeding his children. Due to his father’s constant absence, Frank had to step up and take on more responsibilities in his 1household. Frank was working a full-time job to provide for his family by the time he was fourteen. Malachy was a very proud man and a very loving father, when he wasn’t drinking. He was generous and would eat just a small amount so that his family would have more to eat when food was scarce. “Food is a shock to the system”, (24)

In this paper, I will analyze the Marxist connections between Angela’s Ashes and a quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The memoir written by Frank McCourt, focuses on social class and economic issues endured by his family in America and Ireland. While analyzing McCourt’s memoir, I will pay attention to Marxist concepts including: alienation, religion, and revolution.

The characterization of Angela Vicario is a reflection of the expectations of a woman in this Columbian town, as Angela’s upbringing consisted of domestic chores. Angela’s mother, Purisma “reared” her girls “to get married”(31) by teaching them how to sew, washes, and iron. Purisma describes her daughters as “perfect”, proving that the highly regarded traits in a woman are those that involve housework. The value of a woman from this sea-port town also includes beauty as well as her ability “to suffer” (31), demonstrating the insignificant role that women play. Bayardo takes notice of Angela’s appealing qualities and begins his courtship through extravagant gifts. Despite Bayardo’s wealthy status and good reputation, Angela is distinctively unimpressed with him, as he “hadn’t even tried to court her, but had bewitched the family with his charm” (34). Angela’s indifferent feelings towards Bayardo reveal her rare individuality as it would be customary to seize the opportunity of gaining such a prospect as well respected and prosperous as Bayardo. Angela’s rare uniqueness was further juxtaposed with Bayardo’s impassive obligation to continue to court Angela through gifts revealing his wealth and status- such as the music

Angela’s Ashes serves as a memoir and an autobiography of Frank McCourt and his harsh upbringing of poverty, starvation, embarrassment and death. The Great Depression affected everyone around the world, but in a failed attempt to outpace it, the McCourts experience it in both Brooklyn, New York and in Ireland. While in America, Angela Sheehan meets Malachy McCourt and is pressured into marriage by her cousins after having a baby out of wedlock. After Frank’s birth in 1930, his brother, Malachy Jr. is born, then Oliver and Eugene, then Margaret. After Margaret dies a few weeks after her birth and the Great Depression becomes too great, the family decides to move back to Ireland. After learning that Malachy’s family is unable to help them financially,

Angela Vicario, seen as the main character of the story, never reveals whether or not Santiago took her virginity. She is the only one who knows the truth, and she becomes difficult to interpret at the end of the story, never revealing whether or not Santiago was guilty. Angela losing her virginity before marriage deems her “[impure and] sexually promiscuous” according to the article “The Cultural Significance of an Intact Hymen” (University of California). This article also explains

As the author reveals more information about Angela's life throughout the novel, the reader learns how Angela often receives the short end of the stick from her parents. She is a beautiful, young girl who has the ability to bring her family great honor through marrying someone of relative importance, something a poor family could only dream of. However, this is the only use her parents see of her. They do not trust her and would take a man's side over hers any day. Not only do they allow Bayardo to marry Angela purely because he wants to, but they also are suspicious of Angela herself when Bayardo begins to show interest in her, "It was hard for her to convince her parents that she hadn't given Bayardo San Roman any reason to send her a gift

The society is profoundly catholic which has pre assigned gender roles for men and women even though they are not strictly stated in the novella but the entire town is supposed to abide by these rules. Women basically are brought up to serve their husbands or other men. The assigned roles for women primarily in the society are bodies for masculine pleasure and bodies for maternity. Angela falls into the latter where she is to preserve her virginity till marriage. So by losing her virginity she is sacrificing her family’s honor. She herself is derogating away from her own

Disgrace, a novel by J.M. Coetzee, portrays how disgrace is always there, yet evolves over time. The disgraces portrayed in the book range from personal shame, as is the case with Lucy and Melanie, to public regret, as shown through the board members, robbers, Petrus, and animals. Despite the many disgraces mentioned in the novel, Coetzee’s overall underlying focus for the story is to show how David comes to terms with his disgrace. From the first page it is clear David is our protagonist as the story begins with him. Then, we follow through his problems and his internal struggle and finally we end with his resolution. One of the other critical characters, Melanie, has an ambiguous and unresolved ending, her plot is set in such a way

First off, since the narrator is a female she is looked upon as someone who does jobs inside of the house just like her mother. Instead she is often outside doing jobs with her father. This quotation shows how she describes her mother; “She looked out of place, with her bare lumpy legs, not touched by the sun, her apron still on and damp across

Disgrace, according to the Collins dictionary (1994:321) denotes the “loss of reputation or respect as a result of a dishonourable action”. Disgrace, is not only the title of J.M. Coetzee’s novel, but also a direct depiction of one of the main themes in the novel. This essay will analyse the representation of disgrace, justice, guilt, responsibility, vengeance, retribution, redemption and grace in the novel.

When looking into Jim’s life as a middle-aged adult the masked tensions reveal fully, depicting the grave circumstances surrounding reputation through society’s eyes. After Ántonia gives birth to her first child Ambrosch replies, ” You better put that thing in the rain barrel,”(150) alluding to Ántonia’s disgrace. He would go as far as killing his own niece if it meant saving his family’s reputation. However, even though the child is a reminder of Ántonia’s degradation, she still decides to keep her baby, signifying her inability to fully integrate with America’s subtle caste system. Since the white town boys see the country girls as being good for sex without marriage, Ántonia’s manipulation is no surprise. Even though Larry Donovan, “Didn’t have any job… [and] lived with [Ántonia] until the money gave out,”(148) he still left her due to her second class citizenry as a country girl. Even before Larry and Ántonia became close she knew her standing in the class complex, “‘I’m a country girl… and I doubt if I'll be able to manage so well for him in the city.’”(146) Here, Ántonia is blatantly describing her social standing as an immigrant compared to those of the native Caucasian population. While the West had a greater population of foreigners, desensitizing Jim to their cultures, nativistic contempt for the immigrants floods the urban

The novel Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee presents two rapes– the rape of Lucy by three unidentified men and David’s rape of Melanie, his college student. These rapes are both unresolved. Coetzee writes about these two rapes to demonstrate the ways in which men dominate and control women in the South African society.