Women In Death And The King's Horseman

“Beauty is power, and makeup is something that really enhances that; it’s a woman’s secret” - Charlotte Tilbury. Many women of the Elizabethan era had their own thought on makeup and beauty. Women with long hair and tan skin is the ideal beauty for women today, but this was not the case in this era. In the Elizabethan era, having pale skin was a sign of nobility, wealth, and (for women) delicacy, and was sought after by many. The Elizabethan view of pure beauty, and nobility was a woman with light hair and a snow white complexion complemented with red cheeks and red lips. The way people judge each other tend to make them into something they’re not.

The Graveyard book, written by Neil Gaiman is a stupendously well-crafted book detailing the life of Nobody Owens, or Bod, a boy whose family has been ruthlessly slaughtered. Bod crawls to the graveyard next to his house, where the inhabitant ghosts take him in and adopt him, where he lives until Bod decides that he wants to live with his own kind: the living. While it is true that all books open up worlds of literature, no book does it better than the Graveyard book of leaving you with an utterly unforgettable experience you will never find in any other book. The Graveyard book accomplishes this task thorough it’s exhilarating, hard-to-put-down nature, it’s age appropriate writing style, it’s inspirational plotline, and lastly, it’s extremely creative ideas and various concepts found throughout the book.

Poverty and hardship are shown to create vulnerability in female characters, particularly the female servants, allowing powerful men to manipulate and sexually abuse them. Kent illustrates how poverty perpetuates maltreatment and abuse in a society like Burial Rites using the characters of Agnes’ mother Ingveldur and Agnes. Agnes’ mother is forced to make invidious choices as her children are “lugged along” from farm to farm, where she is sexually exploited by her employers. In spite of these circumstances, Agnes’ mother is commonly referred to as a whore in their society which abhors female promiscuity yet disregards male promiscuity as a harmless character trait; as in the case of Natan, who is merely “indiscreet” despite all his philandering. Born into poverty, Agnes experiences similar sexual coercion and manipulation from her “masters” and yet is labelled “a woman who is loose with her emotions and looser with her morals”. The severe poverty of Agnes is explicitly demonstrated to the reader by Kent through the intertextual reference of her entire belongings - a very dismal, piteous list to be “sold if a decent offer is presented”. Furthermore, Kent contrasts the situation of Agnes, a “landless workmaid raised on a porridge of moss and poverty”, to the comparative security Steina has experienced using a rhetorical question from

Up to this point, the reader might think the young wife was an innocent youth, singing and dancing her way through life, wearing white dresses and driving her older husband crazy. But there is a dark side to her personality too.

The family is faced with conflicts, particularly amongst the siblings as they seek to establish whose dream is superior. It becomes more difficult for Lena to make the right decision in the midst of the conflict because her wish is to please everyone. The play is about the black family that struggles with racial prejudice and economic hardship. The underlying importance of the play is in the way it shows the value of dreams, importance of family, and racial discrimination.

WILLIAM and Mary sat in the front row. The chairs were arranged in long, straight rows under a tent set up in the field next to the farmhouse. The farmhands and family stood as a fiddler played Here Comes the Bride. Annaliese’s father led Annaliese down an aisle between the rows of chairs. James and Reverend Flowers stood at the end of the aisle, waiting for the bride and her father to arrive. Annaliese was dressed in a long, white gown sewn by Mary and Annaliese’s mother in the weeks before the wedding. William looked up and smiled at Susan, Catherine, and two other bridesmaids standing off to the side. Mary sniffled and dotted her eyes with a handkerchief as Annaliese’s father gave his daughter a kiss on the cheek and shook James’s hand. A soft, late-afternoon breeze swept through the tent, offering slight relief from the blistering heat and oppressive

Almost everybody who falls in love may think that they will be the same person as they were before meeting someone and putting then into your life. That as a matter of fact is very different. You may not know your real you when loving and caring so much about someone. There are many things to think about whenever you find your loved one. For example, their past friends, their past life , and actions. The author of this story “The Dead” makes us reveal various aspects of Gabriel’s character by using imagery, point of view, and diction.

While Europeans in the Elizabethan Era were over the top and elaborate in many ways, marriage was not one of them. Regarded as a rite of passage, marriage lacked the festivities and passion to make it any more than what it was: a social requirement. From the extensive marriage contract process to the obvious pressure from their parents, youth hardly considered marriage lightly. After all, choosing the wrong spouse, or even choosing to not marry at all, could negatively impact one’s future severely. For the majority of the population, marriage was an expectation for means of improvement, not for love. Forget finding oneself infatuated with someone then marrying them or feeling like a goddess on your wedding day, because marriage was common, anticipated and carried out by reasons of sensibility. Even a bride’s wedding dress was chosen for practicality and eventually turned into part of her everyday wardrobe.

Many westerners critique the African way of life. Polygamous marriages in particular are a no-no, although these marriages actually have several advantages. Westerners also commonly blame the African countries’ governments for gender inequality, but Nnaemeka argues that patriarchy is to blame for gender inequality. The social customs that women adopt in order to please men and fit into society may also be to blame for the stress that many women feel. Women characters in O Herói, The Night of Truth, and Flame all try to keep up their physical appearances, nurture children, and follow men to an extent. Nonetheless, some of the same women characters that adhere to some social rules also break some of the social rules. Each director is trying to show African women in a new light. Despite the fact that one’s job should not be assigned based on gender, women are more likely to care for soldiers hiding out than actually fighting in wars. They still are in danger during war, however, and they account for many of the (civilian) deaths caused by war. Even those that are not killed put their lives in jeopardy when they allow soldiers to hide out. Women are probably the most important gender/sex of human beings. They can do many things that men do as well as things that men cannot do. If anything, the social structure should be

At the ripe young age of sixteen, Janie is forced, by her grandma, into a marriage she did not want. She is raised “From the traditional views of the grandmother” (Maupin) so Janie must comply to Nanny’s wishes. Janie is considered a woman at her age. When Nanny sees Janie kissing a boy, old memories re-emerge that remind Nanny of how herself and her daughter were raped. She wants a better life for Janie than her own, so she immediately arranges for Janie to marry off. This is not an uncommon practice in this society to marry off at this age.

In his narratives, Tim intentionally fictionalizes the war experience to illustrate the personal effect the war had, not only on the soldiers but also, the outsiders. He makes sure to mention every detail, even the insignificant little ones, like the things they carried into battle, consisting of their mundane necessities like extra rations or tranquilizers, to U.S. stationeries like Sterno and tanning lotions, to infections and diseases, such as malaria and dysentery. Through story truth, Tim also reveals the psychological burdens they carried; they carried the land of Vietnam, the orange-red dusty soil, the sky, the gravity; they carried the whole atmosphere. They also hauled in the weight of memory, the small hope of getting out alive,

For a long time in many societies especially in Africa and the middle east where the common stereotype for women, which is also a life fulfilling dream for some is that their only purpose in life is to find a man, get married, have children, to support and care for their families and live happy for the rest of their lives, but this is not the case for Godwin’s protagonist. In this short story she is unhappy with her roles as a housewife and seeks to explore different roles. She slowly deteriorates when tasked with making engaging decisions. Little by little she steps out of her role in the family, she withdraws from the environment that puts her in the role of a mother and wife and her commitment to marriage. Her unhappiness and sickness is shown throughout the story, her roles as a wife and mother clearly the cause of her sickness and sadness and is visible when she tells her husband she does not want to see him and their son, she eventually

Furthermore, women are often seen as a symbol of cultural preservation and a measure of family honor. In conditions of war and colonial rule, which represents an attack on men’s honor and dignity, attention to women’s roles as prescribed by cultural tradition is often intensified. However, the unusual conditions of war and resistance to colonial rule also may provide openings for women to reconfigure their roles and rights, based on new needs of society.

Society throughout time has held particular values close to their hearts, which people are expected to respect at all times, though many do not necessarily agree with them. Death on the Nile, written by Agatha Christie in 1937, is about many upper-middle and upper class families enjoying a cruise until a murder occurred, and the story revolves around the murder case being solved alongside the different family values and perspectives around the case. Pride and Prejudice, written by Jane Austen in 1813, tells the story of Elizabeth Bennet, and her relationships between her family and families beyond her class and the issues that arise between the different class statuses. Agatha Christie and Jane Austen have similar perspectives on the values that the upper class hold dear, such as gender roles, importance of social status and reasons for marriage.

In his play, Death and the King's Horseman, Wole Soyinka would have us examine every clash and conflict, save for the one involving culture. Certainly this may seem the most obvious part of the play, but we would do the general understanding of Death a disservice if we ignored one of the central conflicts in the play. Every element of the play is placed in terms of two extremes, and the cultures must be considered one of those pairs. Suicide is no exception to this examination; it must be seen in the conflicting lights that Soyinka gives us: British vs. Yoruban, physical vs. metaphysical, personal vs. social; and an expression of failure vs. a form of redemption. In examining how the play