Role of Women in Maupassant's Works

“I was their plaything and their idol, and something better- their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or  misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life.”

It is obvious that while the older carpenter has married a young lusty woman who is full of life, it could be a difficult situation for him depending upon how other men are viewing his new wife. On the one hand, people will see her as a lovely innocent woman, while on the other hand, because she is too picture perfect and overly concerned about her appearance, she may (with her wanton eye) be giving people the idea that is interested in more than the

This view of men is a sharp contrast to the view held by Desdemona. Desdemona sees men as ‘good’ for the entirety of the play. Even when she is killed for false reason, she defends them; declaring her husband innocent in her dying breath.

that it was on death that the soul either went to Heaven or Hell, thus

For example, David constantly tried to suppress his desires for Giovanni because he believed that they threatened his manhood. David’s believed that the epitome of masculinity was “to have children...to have my manhood unquestioned, [and] my woman to put my children to bed” (Baldwin 120). Having same-sex desires clashed with his goals and, more importantly, clashed with his masculinity. Furthermore, having same-sex desires puts David in a feminine position. For instance, when David started his “relationship” with Giovanni, he “invented in [himself] a kind of pleasure in playing the housewife after Giovanni had gone to work” (Baldwin, 102). David could not understand how two men can be together and thus tried to use heteronormative household gender roles to decipher what his own role was. In David’s mind, Giovanni was taking on the masculine role by going to work so David had to take on the feminine role of cleaning their home. Furthermore, because of this heteronormative lens, David did not see a future with Giovanni. This was shown by his perception of Giovanni’s room as “dirty” against his view of the house he and Hella shared as “great”. David felt that the space he and Hella shared was “great” because he was being the “ideal” man and succeeding in his definition of being masculine. Although the house was not perfectly organized,

In this quote, the old man explains that the extensive cemetery and various tombstones are false. Firstly, he points out that many of the tombstones that read “Here lies the body of..” have no actual body underneath because the individuals died at sea or in another country. In addition, every tombstone is engraved with the cheesy sentimental sayings that are common on gravestones which portray the people below as angelic, sacred beings. However, as the old man describes, many were far from sacred which increases the tombstone heresy. For instance, one gravestone claims that below lay the beloved son of his widowed mother when in reality, the mother and son hated each other. The old man goes on with his sermon to preach that many of these people were even fake Christians and not actual

. . . Often, awaking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith, and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled, and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying

Others have asserted that the roles of women in his plays were prominent for the time and culture that he lived in,his intent in creating characters to inspire much controversy. Two works, Taming of the Shrew, and Twelfth Night, stand out particularly well in regards to Shakespeare's use of female characters. If you could examine these two plays, you would see that Shakespeare, though conforming to contemporary attitudes of women, circumvented them by creating resolute female characters with a strong sense of self.

changing attitudes toward life and the other characters in the play, particularly the women; and his reflection on the

   Throughout the length of Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello there is a steady undercurrent of sexism. It is originating from not one, but rather various male characters in the play, who manifest prejudicial, discriminatory attitudes toward women.

Othello, the general and protagonist, seems initially to be totally lacking in sexism. He loves Desdemona

In the short story, The Old Chevalier by Isak Dinsen, the male protagonist, Baron von Brackel reflects on his past sexual encounters with two women whose personalities are extremely different from one another. In many novels, short stories and comics authors would create two women as “polar opposites” for a man’s sexual and/or possessive gaze, which is evident in the text. In order to understand, why a man may be attracted to different character traits in women, I will examine The Baron’s attraction to Nathalie and The Mistress by looking at how literary works men portray women, what they find attractive and the fulfilment that men seek from a woman.

The famous playwright not only introduces characters who promote feminism, but he also punishes those who believe women are inferior. Creon believes that women should obey men’s orders and is eventually punished for misogyny. “[Creon] wish(es) [that he] weren’t alive” (65) as a result of having a misogynistic attitude. He is soon punished as he realizes that the death of his son Haemon and his wife Eurydice were all caused due to his misogynistic attitude and stubbornness towards the decisions he later regrets. Furthermore, Creon is punished due to the fact that his set laws prohibited women to freely express their opinion and such resulted in him being the main victim of several deaths. Creon “invite(s) death” (65) and causes the citizens of Thebes to revolt against his foolish decisions resulting in his reputation as a king to diminish. Likewise,

The characters Hermia,Helena and Titania were effected most by the superiority role of the men in the play. This is because the men in the play, reach high circumstances to get what they what and to tell the woman what to do. Therefore, women's’ inferiority in the play makes it impossible for them to achieve true happiness attributable to the superiority the men in the play believe they

    When one considers Shakespeare’s female characters, one has to remember that the plays were written in a time when women were considered weak-minded creatures who were apt to make bad choices if given the freedom.  Shakespeare, for the most