Character Analysis Of Jay Williams's Petronella

A difficult choice such as life and death is not an easy decision to make. In “Woman’s Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros, there is an important passage that through its language and structure provides the protagonist with a strong internal conflict. The passage comes with strange words and sentence structures which lead the reader to question why Sandra Cisneros would do that. The short sentences and the strange fitting words provide a reason why Cleofilas is different from the legend of “La Llorona”. “La Llorona” represents the women who committed suicide while suffering as victims of abuse. Through the lens of Gender Trouble by Judith Butler, about categorizing women into a general scope based on their common experiences is not correct

Thesis: In the short story “Woman Hollering Creek,” Sandra Cisneros emphasizes the importance of having a female figure to look up to in order to overcome the oppression women are subjected to in a patriarchal society.

Eavan Boland’s poem “It’s a Woman’s World” illuminates the fact that history has shaped an unfair role for women in today’s society. Boland criticizes the gender bias with regards to the limitations placed on women and their job choices despite their ability to be just as successful in the workplace as men. Regardless of the fact that the bias against women in the workplace is often overlooked, Boland aims to show the shared reaction of women to the gender bias prevalent in our society by using short sentence fragments, repetition, and a fire motif throughout the poem.

Women have long been fighting for their right to be seen as equal to men. Even to this day, women continue to fight for their rights, things such as the right to non-gender discriminatory wages. While there may be some arguments over the state of gender equality in the modern world, it is undeniable that there have been great strides made toward recognizing the female 's worth in the workforce and as a human being. Despite these strides, however, things are still not yet ideal for women and many of the issues females face today are the very same issues that have been plaguing them for decades. While it is unfortunate the oppression of women has been so long-lived, the length of that exposure has thankfully enabled many talented writers to both lament over the fact and emphasize the need for gender equality.

During the nineteenth and twentieth century there was a number of changes made in America. Woman were looked at as less than back then and to a certain degree they still are today. There was a number of women that died or went insane because of the standards that they had to meet in order to be considered good women. In this research paper I will talk about the experience of the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper and Blanche DuBois from the story A Streetcar Named Desire. It will be shown within these pages how the moral and societal standards for women were far different than they were for men, and how the standards changed over the years. Furthermore it will be shown how this effected the women of those two stories.

Virginia Woolf, an avid woman novelist of the early twentieth century, faced many difficulties on her journey to becoming a successful writer. In her speech, which she delivers to the National Society for Women’s Service, she recounts her experiences as both a newly acquainted journalist and already established professional, all while giving detailed accounts of her struggles with the ghosts of oppression. These personal experiences not only help to establish and defend her credibility, they also serve as a means of developing her perspective on women’s functionality in successful careers. In addition, Woolf utilizes various rhetorical devices, such as the extended metaphor and parallelism, to portray the constant struggles of women in the workforce. She attempts to shed light on what obstructs all social advancement for women – the Victorian ideal of femininity – while encouraging her audience to confront this internal obstacle. Though she intended for her speech to be advice for women in any and all professions who are facing their own internal battles against oppression, Woolf insists her story is only one of many that have yet to be told.

The repetition of the narrator's rhetorical questioning ‘what is one to do?’ in response to the male character's dominance over the female psyche, exemplify her state of helplessness and isolation prompting a sympathetic response from the reader. Significantly, the microcosm created by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in regards to the narrator's domestic sphere largely reflected the public realm within 1890’s America; a period plagued by the prevailing value system ‘The Cult of Womanhood’. The Cult of True Womanhood identified several key characteristics cardinal to a woman's identity, notably submissiveness, which ensured their stature remained secondary to their husbands. The aftermath of this, crucially the status of women as secondary citizens, remains evident in Maya Angelou’s poem ‘Woman Work’. As in 'The Yellow Wallpaper', ‘Woman Work’ provides an impassioned, dramatic monologue reflecting the frustrations that the ‘true woman’ tenet

Women cannot have rights, women are objects. In the midst of the Trujillo Era, women in the States were fighting to be more than a man’s play thing. More than a man’s sex doll. In the recently published novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, author Junot Diaz over objectifies women in an era where women are fighting for equal rights just across the ocean. The novel is later set in a more modern time period where stereotypes can be broken. The relationship between mother and daughter serves as an example for the differing mindset two generations can have on a specific topic but also how similar they can be. Diaz’s novel breaks the mold for many of the typical stereotypes; the guapo Dominican male, the sexual women, the nerd. Through techniques like tone and diction, Diaz

In “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, both authors introduce female protagonists that are confined by men’s authority. By displaying the protagonist's transformation, Glaspell and Faulkner highlight the repercussions of gender roles, to show that when women are trapped, they will go to great lengths to retaliate against their oppressors.

In the piece of literature named “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros, one of the major types of literary conflicts is person vs. society regarding the main protagonist and society’s expectations of her. To elaborate, the protagonist Cleofilas Hernandez, does not have a strong female role model in her life and is living in a patriarchal society that leaves her and other woman like her unaware of their potential. An example of this unawareness caused by society is when Cleofilas is saved from her abusive relationship by a strong, independent woman named Felice who gave Cleofilas a glimpse of the life that she may achieve one day. A quotation by the narrator states, “Everything about this woman, this Felice, amazed Cleofilas. The fact that she drove a pickup. A pick up, mind you, but when Cleofilas asked if it was her husbands, she said she didn't have a husband” (220 Cisneros). An analysis this quote clearly illustrates to the reader that Cleofilas obviously did not have any knowledge of a woman being able to have her own car, inevitably leading the reader into wondering what else society does not want her to know. Furthermore, this quotation suggests that this society does not have independent women due to Cleofilas surprising reaction to just the simple thought of a woman having a car. This proves that the literary conflict of person vs society is evidently present in this short story because Cleofilas is unmistakably placed in a society who did not support or have empowering women figures like Felice. Ultimately, with Cleofilas not knowing her self worth or having a female role model in her life, it leads to her forgiving her husband for his abusive nature. With this visible fact, a major theme within the boundaries of societal expectation and discrimination of women in “Woman Hollering Creek” is domestic abuse. In the short story, Cleofilas is involved in an abusive marriage in which her husband emotionally and physically attacks her daily because she has no means to protect

Women and men have had certain roles in society that were understood amongst them to be specified for their particular gender. Males were known to have the leading role as head of the house hold and the bread winner while the woman’s duty was to stay at home and take care of the house and children. While many people years ago deemed this way of life and practice to be the right and ethical thing to do, times have changed and so this kind of treatment towards a woman’s equality must be questioned. Even though times have changed, this mindset of a woman’s ability to be as good as a man has not completely gone away. In today’s society a woman contributes to the economy and her family as equally as that of a man. Therefore, women should share equal rights and opportunities as their gender counterparts.

During the 1930’s, Virginia Woolf wrote rallying essays regarding the growing feminist movement. This tone is exemplified in her speech “Professions for Women”, which Woolf gave to the Women’s Service League in 1931. She effectively championed women rights and promoted the need for women to have more independence professionally. Virginia Woolf provided a thoughtful and reflective argument about the problem of gender inequality. Woolf argues that women are oppressed by male domination and are struggling to gain recognition professionally.

There was a stalled revolution. The revolution being the “gender revolution”. The movement has begun again. In the 1920’s we stood idle after gaining rights for women, it took a couple generations to perspire a change. In today’s news mediums, we see that women are tackling obstacles that prevent equality in the especially in the workforce. Through this, women are reshaping the role of the modern woman. In The Richer Sex by Liza Mundy, the author takes us through a time machine to examine the evolving phenomenon called “woman, how she became, or is becoming, the “Alpha Female”. Although in her book she thoroughly analyzes the changes that have occurred because of the advances for the modern woman, her forecast of modern society, in America specifically, does not encompass all factors to produce an accurate prediction.

All characters in the novel are living in a man’s world; nevertheless, the author has tried to change this world by the help of her characters. She shows a myriad of opportunities and different paths of life that woman can take, and more importantly she does not show a perfect world, where women get everything they want, she shows a world where woman do make mistakes, but at the same time they are the ones that pay for these mistakes and correct them.

Throughout history, women have been seen in many different lights. From a woman’s perspective she is strong, smart, helpful and equal to men. In the eyes of men, she is seen as the weaker being, the housewife, and the caretaker. By looking at the following pieces of writing, one can see that through the centuries, women have struggled to break out of the mold that man had put her in and make themselves known in society as important.