Descriptive Language In The Munich Manequins

As we look deeper into this poem, the metaphors portrayed throughout the poem stress just how improbable these dreams are in the chance of becoming a reality. Santos describes her imagined runway model as “leggy, outworldly as a mantis” (9). While once again hitting on the imagery, also compares this woman to that of the graceful creature that walks around on seemingly the thinnest legs on earth. Picturing this woman is exactly how every Victoria’s Secret model looks, as she glides up and down the runway, inspiring jealousy in every elegant step she takes. This is the type of image we are portraying to the young women of our generation. No wonder our dreams are being overshadowed by the reality we live in. She goes on to portray “a head/ like a Faberge egg on the longest, most elegant neck” (9-10). She compares the face of perfection to Peter Carl Faberge’s most renowned work, his golden jeweled eggs. How much more outlandish can we get? And yet we imagine this to be how we should look, and spend the rest of our lives trying to

The women who mirrors a mare is pictured as a delicate, long-haired beauty. They are unfit for manual hard work and never touch the mill, lift the strainer, or clean the house out. Bathing twice or three times a day, she combs her hair long and curly with colorful flowers. To one’s guest, she is a rare sight to see and a curse to her husband, unless he becomes a powerful oppressor who enjoys expensive luxuries. Any man who gets the women who resembles a bee is considered lucky, for she cannot be criticized.

Women who had no claim to wealth or beauty received the harshest of realities in America’s Victorian era. Author Charlotte Bronte – from America’s Victorian era – examines and follows the life of a girl born into these conditions in her gothic novel Jane Eyre (of which the main character’s name

Beauty is portrayed as this innocent, helpless, young girl – the optimal example of good. This in hand leads to her ever so numerous rewards. Throughout the story, she is shown to be under the control of her evil stepmother as a means to gain a sense of sympathy. Lin Lan uses wording like “poor girl” (171) and “poor Beauty” (173) to have the reader be inclined to feel remorseful for her. In contrast, Lin Lan presents the stepsister in a foul manner, starting with her name itself: Pock Face, due to the pock marks all over her face. She is described as a “very unpleasant girl” and the “ugly daughter” (171). Everything about her contributes to the reader’s antipathy towards her and the same goes for the stepmother. They are both shown doing all these outlandish, horrible actions to Beauty, making them out to be seen as the villains – punishable by death. With that being said, it presumes the lesson that a moral standpoint is the appropriate route to take, as opposed to a malicious one.

One of the most important symbols found in the story is the pattern of the wallpaper. “But no one can get through the pattern -- it strangles so; I think that's why it has so many heads” (Gilman). The wallpaper pattern symbolizes the oppression woman went through because of how society used to see gender roles in the 19th century. “Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled head and bulbous eyes shriek with derision”(Gilman ). The tearing of the wallpaper is symbolic of the narrator going crazy trying to free herself and the women from the roles they are forced to fill. “It must be very humiliating to be caught up creeping in the daylight” (Gilman).The narrator uses the moonlight to creep, symbolizing that no one is who they appear to be on the outside. During night time, people tend to do things they would be embarrassed about in day time, and during that period of time, people were embarrassed and felt it was seen wrong to defend women’s rights. Moonlight has also many connections with women, those include the moon cycle relation to a woman’s menstrual cycle and the greek goddess Artemis, who was the goddess of chastity, virginity, the hunt, the moon, and the natural environment. “ By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still” (Gilman). The Daylight, however,

The imagery in the poem, specifically natural imagery, helps use the reader’s senses to develop a vivid depiction of the speaker’s connection to nature and dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality. The speaker’s continued use of the “moon” reflects her attribution of feminine identity and idolistic character to the moon. As opposed to referencing herself and her personal insomnia, she uses the imagery of the moon “beyond sleep” to convey her internal struggles with insomnia and her reality. Throughout the poem, the speaker also refers to shining, reflective surfaces, such as “a body of water or a mirror”, to describe the inverted reality in which the speaker experiences reciprocated love. Reflective surfaces often invert the image that is projected into them, seemingly distorting the true nature and reality of the projected image. The speaker’s reference to this reflective imagery highlights her desire to escape the burden of a patriarchal society and assume an independent and free feminine identity. Specifically, the use of natural imagery from the references to the “moon” and “a body of water” convey the speaker’s desire to take refuge within the Earth or in the feminine identity of the Earth, Mother Earth. Feminine identities are often related and associated with aspects of nature due to the natural cycle of the menstrual period and the natural process of procreation. The speaker takes advantage of these connotations to suggest Earth and natural imagery as an escape from the man-made terrors of male dominated society. In the second stanza, the speaker uses extensive imagery to develop metaphors conveying the speaker’s experience of jealousy of the moon

The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and

The use of symbolism and imagery is beautifully orchestrated in a magnificent dance of emotion that is resonated throughout the poem. The two main ideas that are keen to resurface are that of personal growth and freedom. Furthermore, at first glimpse this can be seen as a simple poem about a women’s struggle with her counterpart. However, this meaning can be interpreted more profoundly than just the causality of a bad relationship.

Under my feminist reading, I see the poem as an attempt by the poet to exist as an independent autonomist woman by rejecting the traditional patriarchal ideology that women were subjected to at the time. Plath begins the poem with the line ‘stasis in darkness’, symbolic of the fact that women at the time were trapped in the darkness of patriarchal society. She uses the term ‘God’s lioness’ as a reversal of gender expectations to show her support for the rise of feminism.

These three brides represent the femme fatale, the fatal woman. The over sexualised women whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. These women serve as monstrous reminders of what happens if the boundaries of proper behaviour and traditional gender roles are crossed. These women, although beautiful, possess the wrong type of beauty, one of which brands them as evil, openly sexual and seductive women. Who, in addition lack the chaste passivity and fragility of the ideal Victorian lady, thus making them deserving of some form of punishment in order for them to be returned to their pure, innocent, albeit dead, human form.

Often times in literature the body becomes a symbolic part of the story. The body may come to define the character, emphasize a certain motif of the story, or symbolize the author’s or society’s mindset. The representation of the body becomes significant for the story. In the representation of their body in the works of Marie de France’s lais “Lanval” and “Yonec,” the body is represented in opposing views. In “Lanval,” France clearly emphasizes the pure beauty of the body and the power the ideal beauty holds, which Lanval’s Fairy Queen portrays. In France’s “Yonec,” she diverts the reader’s attention from the image of the ideal body and emphasizes a body without a specific form and fluidity between the forms. “Yonec” focuses on a love not

In Life in the Iron Mills, Rebecca Harding Davis tells the story of Hugh Wolfe, a lower-class man whose love of beauty and desire to move up in the world ultimately leads to his mental decline and demise. Wolfe lives in a town of smothering grey smog and works in an iron mill reminiscent of Hell, places that induce hopelessness and despair by appearance. In contrast to his surroundings, Wolfe possesses a fierce love of beauty and a talent of sculpting with korl, both of which are frequently associated with higher socioeconomic classes. Initially, it appears that Davis means to reinforce the common associations of beauty with the upper class and unseemliness with the lower class. In the story, beauty can be associated with the upper class characters through their polished appearances and admiration of art, inciting a positive association in response to beautiful imagery; unseemliness, on the other hand, can be associated with the lower class and negative feelings because the mill is reminiscent of hell and the characters are generally unattractive. However, when looked at with a closer lens, it appears the story cannot be taken at face value and the typical feelings surrounding beauty and ugliness do not apply in the story. Appearances can be deceiving: within Life in the Iron Mills, ugliness represents opportunity whereas the beauty serves as a distraction. By juxtaposing unsightly and attractive, Davis shows that mobility is possible only through unattractive, hard work

The women are described as “gigantic”, which adds to their obscure mystery. The twelve characters hastily engage in their main task of weaving while singing the gruesome poetry.  Furthermore, the geological aspect of the setting intensifies the poem’s fantastic air as it describes the scene to be an inscrutable cave inside a hill in rural Ireland.

The themes of both poems show the complete mental consumption of the voice’s. Their pre-dominative behaviour appears to emerge from perverted good values. The paranoid voice of a woman, angered with her supposed cheating husband runs throughout the duration of ‘Medusa,’ seeming to grow in anger as it meets every line. In addition, Carol Ann Duffy creates an extended metaphor of this women’s transformation into the monstrous character ‘Medusa,’ using members present in Greek mythology, in order to paint a metaphorical juxtaposition of a once beautiful woman, now a hideous ‘gorgon’ due to the impact of detrimental human emotion. Detrimental emotion being, as shown by the phrase: ‘My brides breath soured, stank,’ with the use of sensory imagery demonstrating how a slight ‘suspicion’ has taken hold of the voice. Moreover, this build-up and outpour of the slight ‘suspicion’ and emotion over the poem suggests that the voice has succumbed to and has allowed herself

Characters Claudia and Frieda MacTeer show envious disapproval towards Maureen Peal, a wealthy and stylish lighter-skinned African American girl who the girls refer to as a “disrupter of seasons” (62). Maureen’s character introduces the disruptive and wealthy society within the novel making the division between classes in black culture more apparent. The girls—clearly representing separate societal classes—do not relate to one another despite their shared race. Verifying that Maureen defines perfection in a black society, Claudia and Frieda had to “[look] hard to find [Maureen’s] flaws to restore [their] equilibrium” (63). The self-conscious girls literally search for any apparent faults middle-class Maureen may have in order to make themselves feel better about their “less beautiful” appearance and lower rank in society.