Distinctive Voices

The play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, journey’s through a longstanding sixteen-year seasonal love life of two Queensland cane cutters with two Melbourne barmaids during their five-month summer layoff seasons. Through the character of Olive, one of the barmaids, Lawler

While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.

Australia is filled with many different aspects in which makes it the country it is today. I believe it is important to study texts that explore aspects of Australia by studying texts such as ‘The Club’, by David Williamson, a play written in 1977 about an Australian football club and movies such as “The Castle”, directed by Rob Stitch in 1997, about the daily life of an Australian family when their happiness is threatened when developers attempt to buy their house to expand the neighboring airport. Both these texts show us what Australian life was like in the past. By us looking at themes such as language, tradition and the mateship shown we are able to explore different aspects of Australia that make it what it is today.

Through the use of poetic devices, the author has successfully encouraged the audience to explore their thoughts on Australian identity and to reflect on our nation’s history.

The first essay, “The Roles of Women in British Drama,” represents my first exposure to a new genre of literature. The essay was also one of my first formal and interpretative essays at the college level. As a woman and a student of literature, I feel a special connection to this essay’s topic of women’s roles in literature. In addition, this essay shows my “knowledge of the social, political, philosophical, and religious forces that influence authors and the people they write about” (Oral/Portfolio). After reading some of the most prominent British plays of the twentieth century, I observed a discontinuity in the roles of women in this genre. Sadly, women’s roles in literature were very similar to their role in society. During the twentieth century, women were still trying and failing to emerge out of the roles they had been cast in by a male dominated society. Even though women were almost always portrayed as inferior to men, I found a strong exception to this stereotype through the role of Thomasina. I admire Thomasina’s intelligence and wit, but I truly admire Tom Stoppard for creating this character.

The characters in these three literary text, The Getting of Wisdom, Coonardoo and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, all demonstrate the traditions of gender roles in the early twentieth century. The first text by Henry Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom in 1910, a Bildungsroman story of a protagonist, Laura, as she develops to gain wisdom through her boarding school life. Richardson’s work undercovers what it is to be a “proper” woman in the early twentieth century through Laura. The traditions of women sexualities in the early 1900s were set quite strictly as genders were set to play a certain role in order to become a ‘fully-grown’ adult. The Getting of Wisdom describes the progression or the failure of Laura to become a “proper” woman throughout the narrative. The next literary text, Coonardoo, is a literary novel written by Katharine Susannah Prichard in the 1920s about the romantic life between an Aboriginal woman and a white man. Although her work struck many issues about interracial relationships as Corbould mentioned that Coonardoo uses ‘bold and unconventional elements’ in the narrative, (415) it reveals many sexual identity of the Aboriginals and the Australian whites, through the narrative voice of a minority. Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler is an Australian play and was originally set in the mid twentieth century. This last literary text uses its characters to demonstrate their struggle with their identity and Olive’s failure to conform to the

Gwen Harwood’s poetry is very powerful for its ability to question the social conventions of its time, positioning the reader to see things in new ways. During the 1960’s, a wave of feminism swept across Australian society, challenging the dominant patriarchal ideologies of the time. Gwen Harwood’s poems ‘Burning Sappho’ and ‘Suburban Sonnet’ are two texts that challenge the dominant image of the happy, gentle, but ultimately subservient housewife. Instead, ‘Burning Sappho’ is powerful in constructing the mother as violent to reject the restraints placed on her by society, whilst Suburban Sonnet addresses the mental impact of the female gender’s confinement to the maternal and domestic sphere. Harwood employs a range of language and

The play presents complex notions about family bonds, based upon their shared cultural experiences and the way in which they reinforce their cultural Australian identity and help members of the family endure the physical hardship and social isolation. Jack Davis’ social realist drama, ‘No Sugar’ explores how the varying levels of family unity, rebellion and cultural identity depicted in different characters influences their survival. In this play, the term ‘survival’ operates on two continuums. It is conveyed as the physical sense of life and death through the play’s protagonist, Jimmy Munday, as well as the pursuit of happiness. This pursuit is predominantly reflected in the parallel yet contrasted lives of Mary and Billy Kimberley as well as Gran’s deteriorating health after losing family members. Although Davis articulates the endurance of the Indigenous Australians, he incorporates figures of white authority who seek to demolish the Indigenous race and culture. Set in the time frame of 1929 to 1934, ‘No Sugar’ presents a critique of the conventional colonial British views of that era; and their effect on the preservation of Indigenous spirit and culture.

As well as emphasise on the faults within the stereotype, the use of recognisable characters in a production of The Removalists allows for an effective comment on the faults within Australian society. Through the use of stereotyped characters, the play provides a deeper insight into the serious personal and societal issues within the Australian community, without the distraction of character complexity. These themes, which are explored through stereotypes, are violence, abuse of authority, and sexism and sexuality.

In the late ninetieth and early twentieth centuries women were thought of as dolls, puppets, or property. In many cases, they weren’t allowed to make decisions for themselves. Women were only good at worrying about frivolous housework and lighthearted pleasantries. In the two plays “A Doll House” by Heinrich Ibsen, and “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell, there are several exploitations of this way of thinking.

The plot of both Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” and Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll House” provides scope for a few scenes that lack the presence of all or any men. These scenes, consisting of communication between the female characters, assist in developing the theme of women openly defying the fact that the society they live in is primarily run by men. All the power and authority in their society, no matter the situation, belongs to the men while the women are simply excluded. The women in these plays defy the norms set by society and manage to evade the expectations of their patriarchal societies.

The most prominent woman figure in this play is Linda, but the male characters in this play also give us insight into women’s roles and help feed the feminist analyses

Throughout history women have been handed a subservient role to her male counterpoint. Females in the late 19th and early 20th century were treated like a second-class citizen, and were thought of as being the weaker sex. It was the women’s job to stay home to cook and raise the children. While these are still prevalent issues, it is also true that things has gotten better for some women in recent years. Works like “The Doll House” by Henrik Ibsen and “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell have helped advance the idea of what roles women should play in society. In each play there are strong, female protagonists who, despite being oppressed by the societal rules against women, learn to rebel and fight for what they believe is right. While there are

For hundreds of years people have been trying to achieve equal society. The 20th century has become the breakthrough era in advocating the rights of people from different social categories. Although a great variety of civil rights movements emerged during the second half of the 20th century, feminism became one of the most important ideologies of that time, which have drastically changed the lives of modern people. Developed as political and social movement that had an aim to unite women and achieve gender equality, feminism appeared to be an ideology that divides women rather than helps all women benefit from the expected unity. Facing numerous challenges of the feminist movement, modern women are less likely to call themselves the advocators of feminism than their mothers or grandmothers. The evolution of feminism resulted in a wide range of problems, which even worsened the problems of females from lower classes. Several plays of the 20th century describe the lives of women and the challenges they must overcome to achieve happiness and satisfaction. The plays Top Girls (1982) by Caryl Churchill and A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney have an aim to reveal the core problems of this ideology. For this reason, it can be useful to understand the essence of feminism on the example Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958), identify the appropriateness of this plays for current realities, and discuss the theme A Past Concealed, A Present

This paper will discuss the female roles in Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen and The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. The females in Ibsen and Chekhov’s plays depict societies view of females during the late 1800s and early 1900s, a time when women’s fight for equality and social reform began to emerge. The prejudice against women is demonstrated through the way in which they are portrayed and how they are at the mercy of their male counterparts.