Feminine Absorption As the quintessential English public school identity formation experience novel, Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays highlights the masculine identity with the Rugby School experiences of bullying, sport, and compassion. As the roadmap for the English adolescent’s journey toward manhood, Hughes creates the formula to transcend from the adolescence into the true manliness form. Hughes’s character, Tom Brown, can only complete this ideal masculine model by absorbing the compassionate, motherly female qualities instead of rejecting them. Tom’s journey toward his manhood starts by his departure from not only his home to private boarding school, but also from the matriarch. Hughes describes their mother-son relationship saying, “Their love was as fair and whole as human love can be, perfect self-sacrifice on the side meeting a young and true heart on the other (57). His connection to his mother did not sever when he does go away to school. Even though it may seem that the relationship must sever, it truly cannot. It must however transfer from the mother to her son. Tom “manages to fill two sides of a sheet of letter-paper with assurances of his love for dear momma” (58). Tom’s motherly love must continue for this feminine quality of love to transfer. When his letter is duly delayed due to a letter sealing technicality, two boys tease him by calling him “Young mammy-sick!” (58). It is here that Tom experiences his first bout of bullying and the loss of
Tom was bequeathed the position of head of the house after his father, a former telephone man, “fell in love with long distances.” Nonetheless, Tom still craves “long distance.” He spends his daily life stuck in a shoe warehouse only to “[retire] to a cabinet of the washroom to work on poems.” Tom realizes that his family
Parenting played a big role in shaping the two boys lives. Having a parental mentor is important because they assist and guide children to take the right decisions about their lives. The author had his two parents at the beginning of his life. Also, the author’s parents, especially his mother, tried to raise him in an effective way wanting him to know the right from wrong at an early age. “No mommy loves you, like I love you, she just wants you to do the right thing” (Moore 11). This quote was a live example of the author’s life with his parents. It reflected the different ways his parents used to teach him “the right thing.” Though his mother was upset from his action toward his sister, his father
Tom’s infidelity in his marriage clearly expresses his views about his wife, Daisy. In seeking an affair, he conveys that Daisy is deficient and not worthy of devotion. Daisy knows of his affairs, but because of the time period and their social class, she is helpless to do anything. As a woman in the 20th century, it would destroy Daisy to divorce Tom, even though the entirety of New York knows about Tom’s affair.
In this essay I will be comparing “She,” by Matthew Brooks Treacy and the relationship with his mother to my relationship with my father, and the lessons taught through experiences that occurred. My father taught the concept of moral obligation, in a similar fashion to Traecy’s mother teaching him to use his hands, through errands, that influenced my decision to make ethical decisions throughout my life.
Tom’s neglecting manner of Daisy brings out his supercilious manner of feeling superior to others. In another instance, Tom’s supercilious manner is shown once again. In fact, we find out a little secret about Tom’s life. Tom describes a man, named Wilson as, “Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York.
The narrator and his father have the kind of relationship where on the surface it might come off as cold because they’re reserved and don’t openly share thoughts and emotions but, underneath it all, the narrator must feel some respect for his father because he still contemplates over the advice his father gave him.
The story of Inside the World of Boys by William Pollack brings the attention to us that the boys often suffer from low-self esteem, in large part due to “the boy code”, the unspoken rules that compel them to feel they need to hide their emotions and keep them from exposure. In effect, “the boy code” causes the problem of gender gap between boys and girls in academic performances. I choose this essay because I am concerned with how “the boy code” raises the gender gap between boys and girls in their academic performances and how our societies often underestimate all emotional needs of boys. This story is not only a story but also is a research paper of Pollack which is supported by his research
This respect is carried into the first chapter as it is laid out with tragedy. It quickly draws in the reader into the traumatic home lives of the Wes Moores as young boys. The author describes their childhoods with sentences that vary in
The social class rift between Tom and Roxy displays realism. Twain illustrates, “Tom’s mother entered now, closing the door behind her, and approached her son with all the wheedling and supplicating servilities that fear and interest can impart to the words and attitudes of the born slave. She stopped a yard from her boy and made two or three admiring exclamations over his manly stature and general handsomeness, and Tom put an arm over his head and hoisted a leg over the sofa-back in order to look indifferent” (Twain 36-37). This scene depicts Roxy trying to reconnect with her son. Arrogant. Repulsed. Egotistical. These are all qualities
Tom’s major concern lies with the way Gatsby obtained his money. With this concern comes Tom’s criticism of Gatsby as a “Bootlegger,” because of his information on Gatsby (76). Tom immediately separates Gatsby from himself, by placing Gatsby into the category of new money. With this sly criticism Tom insults Gatsby’s achievement and connects him to an infamous world of crime, ultimately trying to prove that Gatsby isn’t the man everyone believes him to be. He later says “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife….” (77). In his rage, Tom’s attitude toward Gatsby’s class and morals is displayed through his supercilious critique of Gatsby’s apparel, Tom contest Gatsby’s learning at Oxford by saying “An Oxford man! ... Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit.” (65) Within this criticism Tom’s incredulous attitude, brings out his superior social status through his narrow minded view of proper
Tom is on the verge of gaining everything he wants such as the inheritance from Judge Driscoll. Just as being able to gain everything he wants Tom is still also vulnerable to losing everything him has. He is a literate man who lives free his whole life and owns slaves instead of being a slave. Tom’s mother is willing to sell herself to slavery in order to help her son but by sacrificing her freedom through love she finds out that she is betrayed by her son. Her only requests were to be sold up the river and to be bought back in order to allow Tom to pay his debts back.
A teen at boarding school grapples with life, love, and rugby in a heartbreakingly funny novel.
The way Tom acts on the difficulties and challenges that he faces at home not only affect him but his family as well. He escapes his troubles from home, due to the pressure, by going to the movies. Finally, his mother realizes and
The difference in attitude and treatment towards men and women from society is shown in “Young Goodman Brown”,in this case, I am going to analyze the anti-feminist side. There are multiple points in this short story that aid my point. The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne may have written this based on his time when differences towards genders occurred. Women are portrayed as powerless but rather innocent victims while men are seen as the more powerful individuals, making all the decisions for them and their families. If people do not follow the roles their gender associate with, the conflicts between them and society may uprise with it.
It is here that Doctor Arnold realizes the wrong path they are traveling and decides to introduce and include the motherly quality. If not, “In another year they may do great harm to all the younger boys” (142). Doctor Arnold says, “I think if either of them had some little boy to take care of, it would steady them. Brown is the most reckless of the two, I should say; East wouldn’t get into so many scrapes without him” (142). It is here that the main turning point of Tom Brown’s masculine identity occurs.