Mcculler's Freaks

The Weight a Title Carries: Gender Roles in Alias Grace Through portraying the life of a girl in the Victorian era, Margaret Atwood creates a scathing critique of relationships between the sexes which transcends the setting of Alias Grace. By outlining the trials and tribulations of a branded murderess, Atwood displays the dynamics of power in relationships between the male and female sex, along with the prevalence of social class and societal order in all aspects of Marks’ life. The manner in which Grace is formed by her experiences and her actions in retaliation to society’s treatment of women, especially a proclaimed mentally unstable murderess, provide contrast to stereotypical expectations of a Victorian woman. Grace’s wit, intelligence,

Through Tea Cake’s character, Zora Neale Hurston shows that society is destructive. Whenever there is a group of people living together, “society” is inescapable. Tea Cake pretends to be a man who is not consumed with the evilness of society, however, Tea Cake’s influence on Janie forces her to become weak and dependent. Uncovering society’s faults force Janie to become aware of her situation, and become a realistic person, rather than the romantic she has always

“Trifles” and the American Experience Brian J. Moye English 202 Anne Marie Fowler April 15, 2013 “Trifles” and the American Experience Susan Glaspell’s one-act play “Trifles” was written in 1916. It was written based on real events. When Glaspell was a reporter, she covered a murder case in a small town in Iowa. Later,

Grace Metalious' Peyton Place Unlike many other romance novels, Grace Metalious’ Peyton Place has aroused a plethora of academic debates ranging from the aggressive promotion of the author’s image to the themes contained within the actual narrative. Arguably the most interesting, yet elusive, theories on Peyton Place are centered on how the novel fits into the social fabric of postwar America. Many average readers, as well as literary experts, are prone to identify elements in Metalious’ novel which suggest that this cross-dressing housewife was out to subvert dominant 1950s ideology, while others will argue that the book can do nothing else but support the dominant patriarchal structure under which it was created. A closer look,

Fanny Fern: The Not So Humorous History of Feminist Satire In the 21st century, many women, myself included, take for granted that we can wear whatever we desire and say what we want, in public, without the fear of being thrown in jail. However, that was not always the case. While the fight for the continued advance of women’s rights rages on, women of the 19th century lived a very different life than the one, us women, lead today. The feminist agenda was just emerging on the horizon. One particular woman was preparing to do her part to further the cause of women’s rights: Sarah Willis Parker. Parker was better known by her pen name, Fanny Fern. After facing and overcoming extreme adversity, she made the decision to start writing. To understand how truly ground breaking Fanny Fern was, we need to understand that in a 1997 edition of an anthology of American satire from colonial times to present, Fern was the only woman writer from the 19th century in that text. Her satiric style and controversial subject matter was just what the oppressed needed to gain some support and give them a voice.

When the two older girls come back from the fair and tell her about the freak they saw, the girl is once more impressed by the words the freak used, that remind of a (southern) preacher: “God made me thisaway and if you laugh, He might strike you the same way. This is the way He wanted me to be and I ain’t disputing it” (245). The impact this speech made on the girl becomes evident in the fact that while she is lying in bed later that night she “[tries] to picture the tent with the freak” and she imagines the people watching “more solemn than they were in church” and “standing as if they were waiting for the first note of the piano to begin the hymn” (246). Finally, she

It is evident that Mary and her family suffer social exclusion, which undermined their wellbeing. In the novel, Mike talks reflecting the true nature of the society in which they lived. He says, “But I’m a Hunky and they don’t give good jobs to Hunkies,” (Bell, 185). This particular statement demonstrates the limiting and oppressive nature of the American society. Putting this into context, Nancy Hewitt, in her book, A

Compare and Contrast - The Long Valley Two characters, Elisa Allen and Mary Teller, struggle with the idea of being accepted into the society of the 1930s. Women’s rights were not fully accepted in the 1930s, and these two characters were set in the common day view of men and women. In the 1930s, “[Society has] assigned to white women such roles as housewife, secretary, PTA chairman, and schoolteacher. Black women can now be schoolteachers, too, but they are most prominently assigned to such domestic roles as maid, cook, waitress, and babysitter” (Chisholm 123). These assigned roles have impacted women around the world, including the two characters in these short stories - “The Chrysanthemums” and “The White Quail”. Not being activists in women’s rights, these women conformed to society and lived their lives as any typical housewife in the 1930s. Their passions and choices during this time affected their way of living and relationships. The two stories reflect similarities of the women’s love for gardening and lonely marriages, but also reflect their different viewpoints on the world they live in.

The story of the “Mad Woman” archetype begins with Antoinette Mason when both her childhood and society negatively affect her. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Antoinette Mason’s descent into ‘madness’ is directly caused by her loss of identity through alcohol, Mr. Rochester, and marriage expectations. Antoinette Mason struggles with finding her identity as a Creole woman within a society that has two polar opposite groups she cannot entirely identify herself with while in Jamaica. Her battle with identity is perfectly stated

Chapter Two Deconstruction of Male and Female If we take a close look at the character depicted by Carson McCullers. We could find that most of them uncertain sexual orientation, such as: the tomboy Mick, the transvestite Biff, and the homosexual Singer. The reason why McCullers has a special affection for

One example of this is Scott’s detailing of the dynamic between Miss Louisa Mancel and Mr. Hintman. Mancel, who is repeatedly described as a “most beautiful child” (Scott 78), is coveted by the much older Hintman – who is also her guardian; Mr. Hintman’s “fondness” for Mancel increases as Mancel’s beauty does, Scott explains, “but the caresses which suited her earlier years were now become

McCullers’ books, Mick is defined by the extremity of her isolation and the fever of her fantasy

The place was not always a café. Miss Amelia inherited the building from her father, and it was a store that carried mostly feed, guano, and staples such as meal and snuff. Miss Amelia was rich. In addition to the store she operated a still three miles back in the swamp, and ran out the best liquor in the county. She was a dark, tall woman with bones and muscles like a man. Her hair was cut short and brushed back from the forehead, and there was about her sunburned face a tense, haggard quality. She might have been a handsome woman if, even then, she was not slightly cross-eyed. There were those who would have courted her, but Miss Amelia cared nothing for the love of men and was a solitary person. Her marriage had been unlike any other marriage ever contracted in this county -- it was a strange and dangerous marriage, lasting only for ten days, that left the whole town wondering and shocked. Except for this queer marriage, Miss

Even when individual parties are detailed, descriptions hold no more excitement or beauty. Whilst Anne Fleming admits ‘Evelyn sadly confided that he got no pleasure from natural beauty’, his description of the airship party focuses upon how new modern beauty defies natural beauty. ‘Acres of inflated silk blotted out

Sexual Politics in Meridian through Characterization and Modernism In Alice Walker’s Meridian, the portrayal of characters and their surroundings gives great insight to the world of moral and domestic standards for both women and men in the 1960s. Walker characterizes Meridian Hill and Anne-Marion Coles as two different women with strong personalities and ideals between them and implements a modernist approach in the novel by manipulating the sequence of time to create an understanding of the social and behavioral conventions specific to the female gender in that era. Meridian describes the transformation of these roles from rigidity to progressively indistinct boundaries. Nonconformity is becoming more common as time goes on, and in the age of the 1960s anything and everything can happen.