Mcculler's Freaks

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

Jamie Ford, the author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, wrote a story about a Chinese boy named Henry and how he fell in love with a Japanese-American girl named Keiko Okabe. Their adorable and heart wrenching love story took place at Seattle, Washington during World War II when tensions rose between Americans, Chinese, and Japanese. In the novel, Henry’s father was a traditional Chinese man who was extremely loyal to his country. Due to his strong devotion to his homeland and resentment toward Japanese people, he disapproved of his son’s friendship with Keiko. As Henry’s affection and admiration grew for Keiko, his relationship with his father suffered. Misunderstandings and built up frustrations emerged from their lack of communication. Henry struggled with communication, the key to forming a strong relationship and a UULO that is significant throughout this novel. Because of this, he had a difficult time maintaining many of his relationships, including the one with his father, Keiko and his son, Marty.

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,

Throughout the story, Oates suggests that a woman’s worth to society is based solely on her physical attractiveness. Oates does this by characterizing Connie, a manifestation of the typical teenage girl, through objectification, revealing the social norms which negatively impact women throughout society. For example, when Connie’s mother scolds her for gawking at herself, Oates writes, “Connie… knew she was pretty and that was everything” (Oates 1). Connie’s self objectification demonstrates that she has been taught to be beautiful before all else. She is concerned

With a lifespan of over forty years, Rolling Stone magazine has been one of the most influential music and popular culture magazines published within the United States.

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

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.

The freak at the fair is a symbol of acceptance. It states that God made it that way and if anyone laughs, God will strike them. Flannery could have done this because she has lupus and it crippled her, she might consider herself a freak. It represents not only acceptance in general but the acceptance of God because God made the freak that way. The child learns of the hermaphrodite from the two girls after they return from the fair. The girls are hesitant to tell of the freak but end up doing

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

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, he frequently shows that the characters are suffering from pride, isolation, and guilt. The character that feels the most pride in the book is Chillingworth. He is the legal husband of Hester, but won’t come out publicly.

Miss Brill is a single woman, probably in her mid to late fifties. She lives alone in a very small space without even a cat or bird. She has a collection of vintage clothing. Her physical appearance is only alluded to in the 18-paragraph short story by Mansfield, but in reading about a day in her life, one has the impression of an intelligent, sensitive

Katherine Mansfield’s short story, Miss Brill, is a well-written story of an elderly, unmarried woman in Europe. In Miss Brill, Katherine Mansfield uses stream-of-consciousness point of view to show alienation and loneliness, appearances and reality, and Miss Brill’s perceptions as she attempts to make herself fit in with the park goers. Miss Brill is an older lady who makes a living teaching English to school children and reading newspapers to an “old invalid gentleman” (Wilson 2: 139). Her joy in life comes in her visits to the park on Sunday where she is notorious for “sitting in on other people’s lives” (Wilson 2: 140). It is there that her ritualistic, monotonous journey that Miss Brill refers to as a “play” takes place.

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 title of the play “Trifles” is a major symbol of how men viewed women in the early nineteen hundreds, something small, and of little value or importance. One of the examples of trifles within the play is the bird in the cage which symbolized Mrs. Wright and the life not only she had to live, but other women faced during this time as well. Women, as well as Mrs. Wright, felt caged in her own homes, and some were not able to associate with their friends. Women had no right to vote, or have a say so as to anything except what went on inside the home as far as cleaning, cooking, sewing, and tending to their children.

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