Arden Of Faversham

In Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare examines the fragility of the male ego and its domination over women in an effort to critique the patriarchy during the Elizabethan Era. In the play, chaos is created and authority in exercised by the male characters with no regard for reason or evidence. This highlights their baseless need to protect themselves at all costs, no matter the effect it may have on the opposite sex.

Some skeptics such as Audre Lorde: may, argue that the focus of Larsen’s novella focused primarily on the juxtaposition of race and sexual identity of Black feminism in the early twentieth century. However, Larsen makes use of unstable identities that can been seen through the passage via Brian Redfield and John Bellew. The husbands’ envelope the extent of male privilege and contrarily shows their means of working against it. By exploring these men, it offers a more critical view to understanding Clare and Irene

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

This is demonstrated after Gaveston reads the letter brought to him from the king, as he states, “What greater blisse can hap to Gaveston,/ Then live and be the favorit of a king?” (Edward I.I 4-5). This letter is calling Gaveston back to Edward’s court, Gaveston’s exile and return is a reoccurring theme throughout the play. Marlowe constructs this play through the characterization of his characters, as the king searches for his identity in his relationship with Gaveston. The play itself opens with a soliloquy by Gaveston, “ 'My father is deceast ; come, Gaveston,/ And share the kingdom with thy deerest friend’” (Edward I.I. 1-2), yet these first two lines are actually the words of the king, interplaying the relationship with the king, and the role of the courtly world. However, while Arden and its characters stray from the courtly world created in Edward II and The Spanish Tragedy, the author of Arden does not keep this consistent throughout. For example, although Arden is unconventionally not of noble birth, he does marry Alice who was “descended of a noble house” (Arden I.202). Although the play is not directly representing a concern with state issues and territories,

The theme of matrimony in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue as well as in the Miller’s Tale does not fit in with traditional fourteenth-century culture. The characters in these two texts turn what is suppose to be a sacred unity into a promiscuous and taboo fantasy for pilgrims. The characters narrating these two tales promote the idea of what fourteenth-century canon law would define as adultery—to have had a third lover while married is the new societal trend for the characters in these tales. And so, marriage becomes a component to the larger fantasy of having a relationship with a character who is already in a marital bond, i.e., cuckolding is a fetish for Alisoun in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue as well as for Nicholas and Absolom in the Miller’s Tale. That is, Alisoun’s pursuit of her lover Jankin while being married, promotes the idea that having a third partner amplifies one’s sexual life, meanwhile, Nicholas’s and Absalom’s quarrel over (a different) Alison encourages the idea that engaging with a married someone enhances the gratification of adultery. In other words, marriage is not portrayed as a scared bond, but as a device to fulfill a pilgrim’s sexual fantasy; and, this new fantasy is what the pilgrims try to make a trend throughout England. Note that I will be using the name, “Alisoun,” to represent the wife from Bath, and I will be using the name, “Alison,” to portray the wife in the Miller’s Tale.

The value given to marriage in the 18th century is examined by Jane Austen in pride and prejudice. These values are further explored and evaluated by Letters to Alice. Pride and Prejudice shows the urgency and importance placed on marriage as a vehicle for getting wealth, social status, and a home for women of the 18th century. Letters to Alice brings new insight into the context surrounding the motives of marriage in Pride and Prejudice, whilst also providing insight into the marriages of Weldon’s own era. Charlotte Lucas is characterised as a woman not ‘thinking higher either of men or matrimony,’ but she still marries Mr Collins

Annabella, the female protagonist in John Ford’s play, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, ultimately dies after trying to meet the conflicting demands that her brother and father place on her. While her brother, Giovanni, commands her to be his clandestine lover, her father, Florio, expects her to marry a socially appropriate man and bear a child. These demands closely resemble the real-life demands that Queen Elizabeth I’s subjects placed on her because they simultaneously wanted her to fulfill their erotic desires, marry a politically appropriate man, and produce an heir to the throne. Ford’s play “was first published in 1633,” thirty years after the death of Queen

In John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Abra Bacon portrays a young, modern woman in postwar America who proves to the readers that people have a choice in who they become. Abra embodies the important term of timshel in this novel, as she folds away from people’s expectancies of her, and creates her own life to live how she wants. While she proves this, she also shows that femininity is not the only part of a woman’s personality that matters, and that women can be different than the things other people idolize them to be. Aron, Abra’s conquestor, insists that she be a model for femininity, purity, and innocence, like some kind of inviolate object unavailable for living a life of her own－ but that is not the route she wants to take, so she molds her own path with the resources she has.

The Opposites in a mirror Fun Home isn’t merely a story of Allison Bechdel and her father, but a story of the change in her thoughts about how the two of them were related. Over the course of the novel, Her thoughts of her father change, from thinking each other as total opposites, from their habits, personality, and sexuality, to accepting that these differences are really what make them the same. On page 15, Bechdel explicitly states the numerous ways in which her and her father are different. She does this by giving examples of classic opposites in society, like “Spartan to my Father’s Athenian.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman does a remarkable job letting us get inside the head of her unnamed main character in “The Yellow Wallpaper” giving us a taste of the female psyche, in particular showing how historically some women subject themselves to the control of men. Alternatively, Nick Hornby does something altogether similar with “High Fidelity”, introducing us to Rob Fleming, whose male psyche reveals, among other things, how men focus and base their success one expectations influenced by gender roles. In the paragraphs that follow, I will attempt to compare and contrast Gilman’s and Hornby’s findings regarding the male and female psyche. In particular, I hope to explore how gender divisions have vastly influenced society.

Alan presents his affections for his wife by calling her “his girl, his magical Anne,” and Anne willingly ascribes herself to the identity of Alan’s wife when she questions “how do other wives do it” (1)? Alan’s blending of possession and affection acts as a precursor to the later annihilation of the female species in the narrative; viewing his wife as a type of property lends itself to the concept of species superiority whereby males identify the female “pest” species as subject to extermination. Building off of this, Sheldon comments on the link between the female sex and emotional and physical submission when she build’s Ann’s character as being contingent on Alan. Her letter indicates something beyond merely missing Alan’s presence in her day-to-day

The play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ by Oscar Wilde is set in England during the late 19th century during the rule of Queen Victoria and features two bachelors, Algernon Moncrieff and John Worthing, and their struggle to impress the women they want to marry while remaining their true selves. Wilde presents the theme of superficiality through the approach to names in the play and the importance of appearances. (or looks? Gwen and Cecily fight plus dandy).

Milton was, by no means, a feminist, and was of quite a conventional outlook when it came to gender roles as is apparent in the fourth book of Paradise Lost, which has inevitably been scrutinized over and over again under the modern gendered eye. “Paradise Lost,” says Shannon Miller, “is Milton’s most sustained attempt to represent in poetry, gander roles, relations and hierarchy.”It is evident, she points out, in the course of his introduction of Adam and Eve in book IV, the stories of creation they relate there and in book VIII, and finally in the way Milton presents the consequences of the Fall. The reader observes the process by which gender is created as a cultural category.

The Elizabethan age regarded women’s sexuality as a form of currency. In England’s social structure currency was a means to power. A woman’s virginity was something to be bargained for, and when the time was right, sold to the highest bidder. In modern day, this slightly resembles prostitution, but during Elizabethan times selling a daughter’s virginity was the quickest way up the social ladder. During this time, the sacrifice of virginity implies marriage. Young women rarely married on the idea of love alone, due to the father’s interests in finding an ideal husband that will strengthen the family’s position within the community. Author of Shakespeare’s Women, Angela Pitt states “if for some reason it was impractical for a girl to marry she was encouraged to enter a nunnery,” (15). English women were predominantly ignored outside of the matrimonial and spiritual world.

The genre of comedy, throughout the history of dramatic art has always served to not only entertain audiences, but to make them aware of their own individual flaws, or flaws that exist in society. (Weitz, E.) Comedy has no precise definition, and its boundaries are broad. One function of comedy however has remained the same - to hold up a mirror to the society of the time but through pleasure, inviting audiences to reflect and also providing amusement. Set in the late nineteenth century, the play An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (1895) epitomises comedy, as both a literary and dramatic genre. Wilde was masterful in his ability to combine aspects of evolved comedic traditions and dramatic conventions to critique Victorian society. Drawing on characteristics of Greek and Roman tragicomedy, the choices in the play’s plot involves elements of tragedy as well as scenes that serve as comic relief and give the audience a sense of finality through a happy resolution. (Bureman, L) Focussing on the upper class stratum, Wilde employs a comedy of manners Molière style, of the Restoration Period in the seventeenth century in the play by combining forms of comedy with aspects of realist drama. The portrayal of archetypal figures such as Lady Chiltern and Lord Goring satirize rigid moral value of the time and expose their hypocrisies, through dialogue involving irony, wit and humour. Elements of farce and disguises characterized by ‘commedia dell’arte’, a form of comedy first developed in