Frailty, The Name Is Women, By Roald Dahl

Murder, one of the worst crimes a human could commit, is not taken lightly and most times the primary suspect is a male. In the 2 stories, “Lamb of the Slaughter”, and “The Landlady”, the reader learns just how murderous man’s counterpart can be. Roald Dahl, the author of these 2 stories, wrote “Lamb of the Slaughter” from the perspective of Mary Malony a loving housewife who gets terrible news, and wrote“The Landlady” from the perspective of Billy Weaver, a 17 year old businessman who stumbles across a Bed and Breakfast run by our next “Mistress of Death”. The reader will learn that even though these 2 stories are different in many ways, they still have plenty of similarities.

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

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, men and women hold very different roles. Not only are women the weaker sex, but their worth is dependant on how powerful and high up their husband is. Because of this, women are forced to be silent and are not allowed an opinion. If a woman shows traits that are considered manly, such as intelligence, determination, or control, she is considered masculine, and therefore unattractive. From a very young age, the main character, Janie, is taught that in order to find a suitable husband, she needs to suppress her independent personality. As a result of this belief being engraved into her, Janie does not realize her worth, therefore she is involved three abusive relationships. For years, girls were taught to make themselves smaller so they do not threaten the male’s reputation. The reader sees that Janie is an example the mistreatment of females through Janie’s three marriages.

Without a doubt one of the most intriguing characters within the story Of Mice and Men is Curley’s wife. In this novella women are perceived as items rather than equal human beings. Curley’s wife represents the false hope that comes with ideas of The American Dream. According to Dictionary.com the definition of The American Dream is “the ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity traditionally held to be available to every American”. If this is true then as an American she should have the ability to pursue her dreams and acquire them through hard work and determination. However, as a woman her aspirations are nearly impossible to attain.

In The novel The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, Men are portrayed to be good loving beings who only want to be loved in turn and that women use men for their own gain, enjoyment, and pleasure, but in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Women are portrayed to be good beings who want to love and be loved, and men are the horrid ones who use women for their own pleasure and gain. Hemingway shows in his novel, men are true in their love by example of Jake’s love for Brett, and that women are horrid through Brett who only has flings with men and then leaves. While Austen shows women truly love through Jane and Elizabeth, and that men are horrid through Darcy and Bingley. Each author has a completely different view as to what love is, and

In the 1950s women were expected to be calm and obedient. No one ever believed a “weak” woman could cause any harm. Roald Dahl changes this stereotype in two of his stories. Women are visualized as kind and caring but end up the exact opposite. This is to take notice that the way a person looks should not be the way a person is perceived. In “Lamb to the Slaughter” the wife shows love for her husband and a while later, murders him. She acts innocent in front of the police and they believe her due to her appearance. “The Landlady” is about a woman who invites a man into her home with kindness. Later, she kills and stuffs him. This comes to show that what a woman presents herself as might not be who she really is. Dahl develops the theme of

In the article “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin offers several examples of women overpowering men. The inequality between men and women has become a critical issue in today’s society. According to Rosin, women are slowly surging ahead in the workforce and family life while men are left behind struggling to meet expectations. Rosin argues that this role reversal is taking place because women are simply better suited for postindustrial society.

“The Ones Who Walk Away” is a short story by Ursula Le Guin. Le Guin bases this story off of an idea posed by philosopher William James, which is how hideous would it be if people were willing to accept the torment of one person for the sake of a perfect society. Le Guin paints this reality in a Utilitarian city named Omelas in order to show the flaws within the Utilitarian belief system. In Omelas people are able to indulge themselves in their wildest fantasies without any negative effects. The people are portrayed as being happy, passionate, mature, and intelligent.

Roald Dahl uses humour in children books he writes to manipulate the reader’s perception of events that occur in the books. The book, Boy is an autobiography written by Roald Dahl. It was his first book and it is a combination of real events in his life. Matilda is one of his fictional books that he wrote later on. Dahl uses events that are actually gruesome and quite horrifying and makes them humorous by using sarcasm, hyperboles, short sentences, imagery, similes and juxtapositions (rose96, 2011). Dahl uses a lot of adjectives to describe the characters in his books to portray them in a humorous way. He uses figures of speech to describe a character and to make this character unique.

“Spinster” by Sylvia Plath is a poem that consists of a persona, who in other words serves as a “second self” for the author and conveys her innermost feelings. The poem was written in 1956, the same year as Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes, who was also a poet. The title suggests that the persona is one who is not fond of marriage and the normal rituals of courtship as a spinster is an unmarried woman, typically an older woman who is beyond the usual age of marriage and may never marry. The persona of the poem is a woman who dislikes disorder and chaos and finds relationships to be as unpredictable as the season of spring, in which there is no sense of uniformity. In this poem, Plath not only uses a persona to disclose her feelings, but

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” is a poignant look into the horrid practice of child labor that took place in the mines and factories of 1840’s industrial England. Browning paints such a vivid, disturbing picture that she aroused the conscience of the entire nation. A new historicist perspective into this poem will help understand why Browning decided to take a stand and speak up for these children through her work.

Society tries to place many rules upon an individual as to what is acceptable and what is not . One must decide for themselves whether to give in to these pressures and conform to society’s projected image, or rather to resist and maintain their own desired self image. In the story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, Munro suggests that this conflict is internal and external and a persons experiences in life will determine which of these forces will conquer. In terms of the unnamed protagonist’s experiences in the story, it becomes clear just how strong the pressure of society to conform really is, as it overcomes and replaces the girl’s self image.

The novel Beloved by Toni Morrison is set in1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sethe, the protagonist and previous slave who was born in the South to an African mother she never met. When she was about thirteen-years-old, she was auctioned off to the Garners. They who own Sweet Home and exercise a good-natured kind of slavery. There were many other slaves, but mostly men, who end up running after Sethe, but never touched her. They were Paul F, Paul D, Sixo, Paul A, and Halle. Sethe ends up choosing Halle to marry and together they have two sons, Howard and Buglar, as well as a baby girl whose name we never encounter. When Sethe leaves Sweet Home, she is pregnant with her fourth child.

Susan Myer’s central argument is that the racial other and stereotypical white woman of the nineteenth century, have both been excluded from social structures and subjected to an oppressive disempowerment of the British empire. She argues that in Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë employs a metaphorical link, an intersection of gender and race, between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff in order to identify their shared limitations and oppression while exploring their potential powers of resistance to social structures of British imperialism. Catherine and Heathcliff are both victims of suppression and subordination, Heathcliff through the expressed superiority of the British empire toward alien or dark races and Catherine through a domestic and

Unlike most novels, Beloved is told from multiple perspectives and follows two storylines. This nonlinear structure not only serves as a way to peak the reader’s interest, but to draw attention to how severely ex-slaves were abused. The twisted, jarring storytelling can be seen as a parallel to the actual thought process of abuse survivors, specifically ex-slaves. These revelations about the book’s narrative structure are key, as the novel is often hailed for its unique manner of recountal.