Art And Education In Mona Lisa Smile

For years the expected roles of women have been confined to such things as, housekeeping, cooking, and child care, in the majority of the cultures around the world. The expected roles of the women in, Mona Lisa Smile, are also confined to limits such as those. In this movie the women are expected to attend college and make excellent grades, all while trying to find a husband. They are to graduate from Wellesley College, but going on to further attend a graduate school is unthinkable. These women all possess the same goal, which is, to get married and then they think no further than having children. They are expected to stay at home and take care of the house and the children, while their husband is out working to provide for the family. They are above all else supposed to respect their

Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes reveals the struggles women had in the 17th-18th centuries when it came to equal education opportunities. Women were expected to become people of domestication while men had many opportunities to expand their minds and be ambitious, and be leaders. Women were expected to focus on taking care of their family, not to have minds of their own. They wanted change.

It brings up the question: what would a woman that only has a future to be a housewife or housekeeper do with an education? By not taking a woman seriously when she wants to attend school shows that it will be highly likely that an education would be of irrelevant use.

In early America, women were expected to take care of the household and of the children. However, writers such as Anne Bradstreet and Judith Sargent Murray wanted to emphasize the importance of education for women. The two texts by these authors that will be discussed are the poem, “The Prologue” by Anne Bradstreet and the essay, “Desultory Thoughts upon the Utility of Encouraging a Degree of Self-Contemplacency, especially in Female Bosoms,” By Judith Sargent Murray. A theme seen prominently throughout both texts is fairer treatment of women through education. Although both women do believe in opportunity for women in education, Bradstreet focuses more on the idea that women should have more acceptance in the intellectual world by men while Murray however, emphasizes the importance of women to be raised properly which resulted in them understanding their self-worth.

In her essays, Murray proves how to reach equality by identifying the importance of education among women. To Murray, women have an intellect and "the needle and the kitchen" does not provide enough stimulation to occupy a woman's intelligence. Women's apparent

If Elizabeth Cady Stanton was alive today, she would be definitely pleased to see the advancements of women’s rights, however, she would not be completely satisfied and probably disappointed to see that many of the issues she brought up during her time are still being dealt with today. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was highly critical of the sexual double standard and the lack of equal education for women. She believed that men should be placed at the same moral standard as women and that women should be given the same opportunity in education as men. Remarkably, women today have advanced far more in education than with the sexual double standard, however, the sexual double standard has come to collide with women’s education.

In her next chapter, Kerber examines the newfound need for the educating of women. Women were not allowed freedom or a political opinion, but they could not be completely pushed aside. For years women had been taught that education made them undesirable to men and educated women were scorned. Kerber argues that a new need for

As a woman myself, it is hard to imagine a time when I would not have been allowed to attend college, let alone be writing this paper. As children most of us heard stories from our grandparent’s about what life was like they were young. I can remember laughing at the thought of “walking up hill both ways” to get to school. With the liberties American Women have today, it is easy to take for granted everything the women before us fought so hard for. It is easy to forget the treatment they suffered in their struggle to bring us to today. In this paper we will examine the lives, struggles, and small victories of women that have led us to

“The subject of the Education of Women of the higher classes is one which has undergone singular fluctuations in public opinions” (Cobbe 79). Women have overcome tremendous obstacles throughout their lifetime, why should higher education stand in their way? In Frances Power Cobbe’s essay “The Education of Women,” she describes how poor women, single women, and childless wives, deserve to share a part of the human happiness. Women are in grave need of further improvements in their given condition. Cobbe suggests that a way to progress these improvements manifests in higher education, and that this will help further steps in advance. Cobbe goes on to say that the happiest home, most grateful husband, and the most devoted children came from a woman, Mary Sommerville, who surpassed men in science, and is still studying the wonders of God’s creations. Cobbe has many examples within her paper that shows the progression of women as a good thing, and how women still fulfill their duties despite the fact that they are educated. The acceptance of women will be allowed at the University of New England because women should be able to embrace their abilities and further their education for the benefit of their household, their lives, and their country.

The foundation of colleges for women as well as events at women’s rights conventions intellectually challenged society’s views on women’s traditional roles. As education became more of a public governmental service, the educational

Moreover, this unexplained misery the women in the 1900s felt, all had one thing in common, they were all housewives. Similarly, in The Americans textbook (2006), it is shown that a significant portion of the women in college share the same idea, in the end. In an interview with women from Stanford University, it is shown that, “Of graduates in 1965, 70 percent planned not to work at all when their children were of preschool

There is a double standard of academics that take place at St. Paul’s. While the school promotes the idea of economic success through personal achievements and merit for all their students, the girls at the institution work hard and tend to do better than the boys. This is done without ease. For example, Mary is a student who continually works hard to achieve academic success but does so in a frantic and uncomfortable manner. An essential part at the elite school is being able to exhibit a certain mark of belonging (Khan 115). Khan states, “Lots of students spend as much time as Mary working in the library and their rooms. This is particularly true of girls” (121). The elite institutions strive for equality between the genders, but tend to have stronger female candidates. The girls inevitably have to work harder than the boys in order to achieve higher grades and perform better in school. The girls at St. Paul’s must work harder than boys in order

The late 18th century can be known as the historical period of the Enlightenment. During this time, society was undergoing drastic changes that would impact people even today. These changes were known as “reforms,” and played a big role in politics and ruling during this time period. One of the bigger reforms of this time was that which would grant women a higher education and place them in a position closer to their male counterparts. The enlightenment authors, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft, took part in a debate in which they argued about the purpose and education of women. In an article recently written in The New York Times by Nicholas

“If one compares a woman in 1900 with her counterpart in 2000, the gains have been significant. There were the obvious changes, such as the right to vote and other governmental policies supporting women in the 1960s and 1970s. The results were women successfully engaging in certain jobs for the first time. Where women were once a minority, or excluded entirely, by 1980, they accounted for more than half of all undergraduate students”,

The film, Mona Lisa Smiles, is actually in the 1950s era its displays story associated with art form mentor that teach preservation college students to question their traditional and social roles. Her aim is to change the old fashioned and traditional ideas influencing the mind of young females. The film displays cultural and social ideologies influencing young female's intelligence. It indicated exactly how societal pressures along with acceptability is able to have an effect on young female's actions and thinking process as well. Their mind has been embedded their cultures and values. Katherine Watson (Julia Robert) has an extremely eccentric identity She excitedly acknowledge the offer to teach art history at one of the most renowned college for women.