Sarah Lund Character Analysis

A major criticism is that most female criminals are working class and they have not been hit by women’s liberation. This can be explained in detail by Carlen.

In Trifles, Susan Glaspell debates the roles between men and women during a period where a debate was not widely conducted. Glaspell wrote Trifles in the early 1900s—a time when feminism was just getting started. In this play, Glaspell shows us her perspective on the roles of men and women and how she believes the situation would play out. Trifles seems like another murder mystery on the surface, but the play has a much more profound meaning behind it. Glaspell presents the idea that men and women analyze situations differently, and how these situations are resolved based on how we interpret them. Research shows that women’s brains “may be optimized for combining analytical and intuitive thinking.” On the other hand, male brains are predominately “optimized for motor skills and actions” (Lewis). In the play, this research shows true when the women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, analyze details rather than looking at the apparent, physical evidence, and they find out the motive of the murder. The men, on the other hand, look at broader evidence that does not lead to any substantial conclusion. When Glaspell was writing this play, she wanted the women to be the real instigators, the ones that would end up solving the mystery. While the men in the story laugh at the ‘trifles’ that women worry about, these details mean a great deal in Glaspell’s eyes. Glaspell presents the idea what men and women are different in the way they live their lives through detail.

The purpose of this critique is to analyse the influence that gender has on the characters and the storyline of James Bond’s Skyfall (SOURCE). To understand the influence, a constructivist perspective on gender will be incorporated. The constructivist theory explains gender to be learnt patterns of behaviour which are influenced by cultural norms (SOURCE). As a result, the critique will examine how the depictions of gender and crime in Skyfall incorporates the western attitude towards gender roles and violence, as well as making reference to the relationship between gender and power.

The media plays a massive role in the construction of crime, this includes the reporting of crime, the sensationalisation of stories, over-representation of different social groups and age of offenders. Construction of crime is also through stereotyping both ethnicity and gender. It is sometimes argued that the media is an ideological tool that is used to distort reality from its viewers. Female killers are often considered as ‘oxymoronic’, as they are seen as contradictory. Females are generally seen as caring beings but once they commit violent crimes, they are judged based individual circumstances and it is not taken into consideration that they could just as violent as male offenders in their own right. In this essay, I will be focusing on the gender stereotypes in media, specifically focusing on female killers.

Lastly, feminism is viewed in The Body in the Library. The detective, Jane Marple is the one who figures out the answer the question of who is the murderer. Agatha Christie creates this book to be more women friendly with more feministic views than some of Christie’s other books. One

Following this anecdote, she refocuses the piece, stating that such an individual shows up often in movies but never in real life. Kaling also plays to the common prejudice that females are meant to fit to male ideals. Roles like that of the “Ethereal Weirdo” actually perpetuate sexism and degrade the role of women in acting.

“A Jury of Her Peers” is a short story written by Susan Glaspell in 1917 illustrates early feminist literature. The two female characters, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, is able to solve the mystery of who the murderer of John Wright while their male counterparts could not. This short story had been adapted from Glaspell’s one-act play Trifles written the previous year. The play consists of the same characters and plotline as the story. In both works, Glaspell depicts how the men, Sheriff Peters and Mr. Hale, disregard the most important area in the house, the kitchen, when it comes to their investigation. In the end, the women are the ones who find clues that lead to the conclusion of Minnie Wright, John Wright’s wife, is the one who murdered him. Both of Glaspell’s female characters illustrate the ability to step into a male dominated profession by taking on the role of detective. According to Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, written by Lois Tyson, a reader-response critique “focuses on readers’ response to literary texts” and it’s a diverse area (169). Through a reader-response criticism from a feminist lens, we are able to analyze how “A Jury of Her Peers” and Trifles depict how a patriarchal society oppresses women in the early twentieth century, gender stereotypes confined both men and women and the emergence of the New Woman is illustrated.

Film noir employs several character archetypes to tell a story. Cultural changes and shifts in gender roles of post WWII America unsettled men when many women refused to regress back into traditional housewife tasks. This fear was manifested in cinema’s femme fatale. Deceptive and manipulative, femme fatales were there to seduce, betray, and destroy the film noir hero. Norma, along with being deranged, is all of these things. She is at home in her eerie film noir setting. Her movements showing her as a self absorbed echo of her career in silent era films and her voice and facial expressions set the listener on edge. Joe Gillis

The media today, is highly selective in their constructions of offences, offenders and victims. Media representations of crime are moulded and women are portrayed in a way that is entertainment driven and is appealing to the audience. Despite the fact that women seldom stalk, murder outsiders or commit sequential murders- in fact they are rarely vehement, “accounting for only ten percent of convicted violent offenders- those who do so are highly newsworthy because of their novelty” (Jewkes 2011, p. 123) Present day media admits that because fierce women are comparatively uncommon, they are all the more appealing and diabolical to the audience as a result. The essay shall discuss the reason and presentation in the media of female offenders, female victims and women specific crimes.

A social criticism in these detective fiction stories from the 19th century is feminists fighting for equality. These stories had men that had expectations of women already, and even when the women would try to help the men, they would assume that the women had no idea about anything involving the crime. They believed women were just wasting time on silly things. Just like in “A Jury of Her Peers” written by Susan Glaspell, Wright is accused of murdering her husband. While five people come to her house, the sheriff, his wife, one of the Mrs.Wright neighbors, his wife, and a county prosecutor. The men are looking for evidence to use against her. The women are collecting personal effects to bring to Mrs.Wright. But they find details that the men couldn’t have found or even noticed. For example, Mrs. Hale was fixing up a sewing that Mrs.Wright did not do well, Mrs. Hale said she did not stitch one or two well. She believed that Mrs.Wright was nervous about something because of the pattern of the sewing, she started off very good and then you can almost see a string being sewed in with frightness. Mrs. Hale explained “the sewing… All the rest of them have been so nice and even but this one. Why it looks as if she did not know what she was about!” (Glaspell 154) Mrs.Hale is probably asking herself why was Mrs.Wright nervous? What could have she heard that made her frightened, or what had happened for her to be frightened enough to mess up her great sewing pattern.

Film Noir is a French term that added style to black and white American films that first evolved in the early 1940’s, which became noticeable in post war era because of the dramatic revelation of moral and emotional truths (Mayer 3). Traditional women are those with attributes of; caring women, loving mother, devoted wife, and faithful women. Those attributes are disapproved and disliked by the femme fatale character. A femme fatale women, Phyllis Dietrichson is nicely represented in James Cain crime novel(1943) and later adapted to the screen by Raymond Chandler in Double Indemnity (1944), this female is dissatisfied with life, and that is why she uses manipulation and self-awareness as a powerful tool for her own desires. The atrocity this alluring woman exposes is cold-hearted, but ultimately creates a portraying delusion to vulnerable men. While pretending to be innocent is all just an illusion of a demented personality. This deception can bring anyone into his or her own destruction, if fallen into the delusion. The character wants to be in overall control and be capable of defeating a man by bending them to their will. However men will still have overall control and will not be over powered by

In traditional hard-boiled American detective fiction there are many themes that seem to transcend all novels. One of those themes is the concept of power and the role in which it plays in the interaction and development of characters. More specifically, the role of women within the novels can be scrutinized to better understand the power they hold over the other characters, their own lives and the direction of the story. Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon exemplifies the varying ways in which female characters attempt to obtain and utilize power in hopes of influencing, manipulating and succeeding.

While most of the violent crimes that happens most are them are belongs to men, women have not been the wilting flowers promoted so heartily by Victorian adorers and (right or wrong) often evident in today's society. Before we get into detail about the fascinating phenomenon of the Black Widow, it is worth a brief overview of women's escalating role in the world of violent crime, particularly in the United States.

This study will compare and contrast the elements of the crime genre in Winter’s Bone (2010) by Debra Granik and The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Winter’s Bone is a story tells the story of Ree Dolly’s (Jennifer Lawrence) struggle to find her missing father through various methods of detective work in her local community. In a similar manner, Raymond Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep defines the criminal investigation of various murders by the detective, Phillip Marlowe. These two plots define the similar use of a protagonist that acts as an investigator seeking to discover the truth of a particular

Feminist criminology emerged out of the realisation that criminology has from its inception centred on men and the crimes they commit. Although it can be argued female criminality was researched by Lombroso, as far back as 1800’s, female crime, it’s causes and the impact in which it had on society was largely ignored by the criminological futurity. Those Criminologist who did attempt to research female crime such as Thomas and Pollak were not only very damning of women but were also very condescending, choosing to stereotype them as either Madonna or whore (Feinman).