Clarissa's Breaking Her Doors

Nowadays, freedom is a fundamental right for each man and woman, but it is not a perfect concept. When one’s freedom is endangered, he can do unimaginable things, especially when love is at stake or can react weirdly when he acquires it. It’s exactly what Kate Chopin, a female American author during the 19th century, did when she treated about women’s conditions in the short-story Story of an Hour in 1894, where a woman falsely learns about his husband’s death. Almost 60 years later, Roald Dahl wrote Lamb To The Slaughter, set in Great Britain, where a woman kills her husband and hide the evidences cleverly. These two short stories are not only comparative on the two female protagonists and the imagery used, but also on the main themes

Another small but important window scene takes place after Clarissa returns home to discover that her husband has been invited to Millicent Bruton’s lunch party but she has not. After reading the message about the party on a notepad, she begins to retreat upstairs to her private room, “a single figure against the appalling night.” As she lingers before the “open staircase window,” she feels her own aging, “suddenly shriveled, aged, breastless… out of doors, out of the window, out of her body and brain which now failed…” Again, there is a hint of danger as death is portrayed as a somewhat alluring transcendental experience,

In Mary Oliver’s poem “The Black Snake,” the narrator contemplates the cycle of life with the unpredictability of death. Mary Oliver’s work is “known for its natural themes and a continual affirmation of nature as a place of mystery and spirituality that holds the power to teach humans how to value one’s life and one’s place” (Riley). In the poem, The Black Snake, the narrator witnesses a black snake hit by a truck and killed on a road one morning. Feeling sympathy for the snake, the narrator stops, and removes the dead snake from the road. Noting the snake’s beauty, the narrator carries it from the road to some nearby bushes. Continuing to drive, the narrator reflects on how the abruptness of death ultimately revealed how the

The bedroom can be substituted for the female body, and thereby represents "the enigma and threat generated by the concept of female sexuality in patriarchal culture" ("Pandora" 63). Concealing sexuality but also reifying the female body as and in the forbidden space of the bedroom, John invokes spatial and bodily associations of enclosure and mystery.

Edna Pontellier's suicide is the unfortunate pit falling of this otherwise feminist piece of literature. Her action, in fact, completely discredits the classification of feminism. Regardless of her ability to withdraw from her husband, venture out on her own, and buy her own home, Edna lacks a very

Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.

However, Susan Glaspell uses the kitchen in the plot as another theatrical metaphor for a domain of gender identification because it is a women’s domestic territory where women’s life is revealed through common kitchen items. Throughout the play, we can distinguish the roles given to women in that era. In this era, women’s roles were generally reproductive, so they have been relegated to the home with less interaction with the outside world. Because kitchens have often served as work spaces, women have found a sense of empowerment through domestic tasks such as cooking, food knowledge, and efficiency of the kitchen. These conditions reveal the state of mind of women in the play. Minnie Wright’s “gloomy kitchen” (Glaspell 443) is “left without having been put in order—unwashed pans under the sink, a loaf of bread outside the breadbox, a dish towel on the table—other signs of incompleted work” (Glaspell 443). She lost her motivation to do housework chores, which represents that her mind is battered and leads to Mr. Wright’s murder—he has distorted her life.

Glaspell develops the theme of gender roles by what Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters fret about at the crime scene. For instance, the first concern that Mrs. Peters voices revolves around Mrs. Wright’s fruit preserves and implies that the women are housekeepers. Both the Sheriff and Mr. Hale remark about how the women are “worryin’ about her preserves” and “worrying over trifles” (Glaspell 3). Later, when the men go upstairs to look for evidence, the women decide to bring Mrs. Wright’s apron, fruit, shawl, and quilt for her in prison. To further establish Mrs. Wright as a domesticated housewife, Mrs. Peters suggests that Mrs. Wright wants her apron “to make her feel more natural” (Glaspell 5). Because of what Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discuss at the crime scene, Glaspell verifies that the women play the role of housekeeper and cook.

Sexuality has an inherent connection to human nature. Yet, even in regards to something so natural, societies throughout times have imposed expectations and gender roles upon it. Ultimately, these come to oppress women, and confine them within the limits that the world has set for them. However, society is constantly evolving, and within the past 200 years, the role of women has changed. These changes in society can be seen within the intricacies of literature in each era. Specifically, through analyzing The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, one can observe the dynamics of society in regards to the role of women through the lens of the theme of sexuality. In both novels, the confinement and oppression of women can be visibly seen as a result of these gender roles. Yet, from the time The Scarlet Letter was published to the time The Bell Jar was written, the place of women in society ultimately changed as well. Hence when evaluating the gender roles that are derived from sexuality, the difference between the portrayals of women’s oppression in each novel becomes apparent, and shows how the subjugation of women has evolved. The guiding question of this investigation is to what extent does the theme of sexuality reflect the expectations for women in society at the time each novel was written. The essay will explore how the literary elements that form each novel demonstrate each author’s independent vision which questions the

In a world where showing a bit too much shoulder was forbidden, came Susan Glaspell. Glaspell was an American playwright, born in the cruel times of oppression. This influenced women’s opinions on certain subjects which caused them to be silenced by fear of rejection from society. “A Jury of Her Peers” was based on an era where women felt as though it was unreasonable to speak up if they felt it was not absolutely dire. Harboring these pent up feelings could cause a person to act antagonistic. Minnie Wright was an example of this. She killed her husband and was subjected to the judgement of her peers. As the group investigated Mr. Wright’s death, there were two stories unraveling. The in depth explanation that the women figured out and the simplistic version the men had seemed to pick up (Glaspell). People would benefit from reading this story to begin to understand the struggle of what this and other women had gone through. Penn Manor American Literature students would benefit from having Susan Glaspell’s story “A Jury of Her Peers” in their curriculum because of how she expressed feminism through her writing at a time when it was new and discouraged; her ability to emphasize the themes with her settings and characters; and her literature that follows a protagonist that navigates through a sexist world.

Women yearn for their voices to speak loud enough for the entire world to hear. Women crave for their voices to travel the nations in a society where they are expected to turn the volume all the way down. The world expects females to stay quiet and ignore the pain brought onto them from sexual crime. They do not dare stand up for what they believe in or discuss their experiences that bring them pain. Poets such as Ana Castillo and Lawrence Ferlinghetti describe parts of life that society often ignores. E. E. Cummings supports the ideas of Castillo and Ferlinghetti by appropriating a more disturbing mindset. These poets demonstrate the way in which women obtained a supposable to behave and react to situations that have caused them harm or have the potential to.

At first, it looks as if Clarissa is outraged at the idea that someone would do such a thing to ruin her party, but then something happens. Clarissa embraces the concept of death in a Poe-esk manner, “Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death” (Woolf 180). That seems strange, that someone how has been so far from death—in the scope of the book—would suddenly find such an embrace in it.

Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Ruined takes place at Mama Nadi’s brothel in the Congo where a civil war is being waged and coltan is the new gold being mined from the earth. Mama Nadi reluctantly takes Sophie and Salima into her establishment to work alongside Josephine as entertainment for miners and soldiers. Before coming to Mama Nadi’s, Sophie, Josephine, Salima all experienced rape. The word rape is so common in our society that it has lost its intensity and heinousness to a person who has not experienced it. Rape is a general term to describe what the women experienced but it does not give any hint to the struggle that comes after the event. For example, what it does to a person’s mind, the lasting scars on someone’s body, and how it can change a person’s personality. Many critics assume that rape is the tragedy in the play, but Nottage’s use of the word “ruined” emphasizes that the real tragedy is the consequences of those soldier’s actions on these women 's lives and how it affected their interactions with society.

Louise whispers, “Free! Body and soul free!”. Keeping the feminist critical perspective in mind, the idea is given that her “body” is the physical property and the “soul” is her emotional and mental freedom. Provided that Louise suffered from a heart condition, her sister begged her to open the door and relax because for fear that she would make herself ill. No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window. Through this open window, Louise cumulatively realized all the new opportunities, chances, and possibilities swarming in her mind. Applying the feminist critical perspective states that with a husband standing in the way of her freedom, these possibilities were just fantasies deemed as impossible. Men stood in the way of allowing women to live their own lives.

From the beginning of Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf establishes that Clarissa’s bright and hopeful spirit has become dulled and burdened when subjected to the oppressive nature of marriage. During a glimpse into her younger years, the reader is able to see Clarissa. With each flashback into Clarissa’s youth, the reader is provided another image of Clarissa before marriage, one that highlights her passion and curiosity for life. While Clarissa felt a passion and connection with Peter, she could not bear to live in a marriage where her freedom was something she had to sacrifice. The decision she makes is logical in some ways, but her choice also brings into question the fault of her marriage in the first place. In Clarissa’s world, the option for passion and the security of her freedom was not available nor would it ever be; therefore, she was forced to choose between the two. Men, however, were not forced to make such decisions and were given the liberty to wait well into their later years to find a spouse suitable to their liking. By choosing to marry Richard over Peter, Clarissa forsook the option of passion in