Essay on Sharon Olds' The Possessive

The literary pieces, Bad Boy and “I Was A Skinny Tomboy Kid”, are similar and different in many ways. Both present common themes that girls and boys are expected to have certain roles. Girls are expected to play with dolls, wear dresses, and care about makeup. Boys play sports, hate books and schooling. As a child, it’s hard to be yourself and show your true colors. Being different is quite difficult. Everyone is expected to be this way or that way, we are all special and unique.

In Patricia Seed’s Ceremonies of Possession in the Europe’s Conquest of the New World: 1492-1640, several different “possession methods” were displayed from the different groups that conquered the new world. Ranging from artwork, to astrological maps, to a reading of submission, each group devised their own technique when claiming a new land.

In Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl,” the narration of a mother lecturing her daughter with sharp, commanding diction and unusual syntax, both affect the evolution of a scornful tone, that her daughter’s behavior will eventually lead her to a life of promiscuity that will affect the way people perceive her and respect her within her social circle. As well as the fact that it emphasizes expectations for young women to conform to a certain feminine ideal of domesticity as a social norm during this time and the danger of female sexuality.

In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls,” our narrator is a young farm girl on the verge of puberty who is learning what it means to be a “girl.” The story shows the differing gender roles of boys and girls – specifically that women are the weaker, more emotional sex – by showing how the adults of the story expect the children to grow into their respective roles as a girl and a boy, and how the children grow up and ultimately begin to fulfill these roles, making the transition from being “children” to being “young adults.”

In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls,” there is a time line in a young girl’s life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind to become a woman. The story depicts hardships in which the protagonist and her younger brother, Laird, experience in order to find their own rite of passage. The main character, who is nameless, faces difficulties and implications on her way to womanhood because of gender stereotyping. Initially, she tries to prevent her initiation into womanhood by resisting her parent’s efforts to make her more “lady-like”. The story ends with the girl socially positioned and accepted as a girl, which she accepts with some unease.

In both the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and the poem “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, young girls are lectured on who they should be in life and how they should act.

This story speaks of a young teenage woman who, amid the civil rights’ movement and sexual revolution of the 1960s, is rebelling against the conservative morals and values of the 1950s and exploring her individuality and sexuality with a sense of egotism and inexperience that eventually gets her into harm’s way. Looking back, the Civil Rights movement may have been the most emotionally charged movement of the 1960s (Anderson). No other movement in United States history defines a change in culture better than the movement of the 1960s. Issues such as women’s rights, war, civil rights and the sexual revolution greatly influenced the American youth. Conservative family morals and values that predominated the 1950s were beginning to be questioned. Oates

Eileraas, Karina. “The Brandon Teena Story: Rethinking the Body, Gender Identity and Violence Against Women.” Quod.lib.umich.edu, University

Being on the verge of adulthood and having just left the simplicity of childhood, teenagers have always been particularly complex and enigmatic individuals. While most people struggle to see things from an adolescent perspective, Canadian playwright Joan MacLeod is well-known for her accurate portrayal of teenagers. In 2002, she published The Shape of a Girl, a play related to the dramatic story of a young girl named Reena Virk who was tragically affected by bullying, a characteristic behavior of adolescent development. Throughout The Shape of a Girl, MacLeod effectively exploits the Aristotelian dramatic elements and she uses Reena Virk’s story as well as the thoughts that it produces in the antagonist’s mind to portray both adolescent character traits and behavioral patterns.

In order to properly view a story from a feminist perspective, it is important that the reader fully understands what the feminist perspective entails. “There are many feminist perspectives, and each perspective uses different approaches to analyze and interpret texts. One is that gender is “socially constructed” and another is that power is distributed unequally on the basis of sex, race, and ethnicity, religion, national origin, age, ability, sexuality, and economic class status” (South University Online, 2011, para. 1). The story “Girl” is an outline of the things young girls

Adolescence is the beginning of development into womanhood and the stage of preparation for societies expectations of femininity. This transition is a process that Stafford’s Molly resents. Molly is an intelligent character and she knows that she does not fit the mold physically, or psychologically. Molly is unashamed of

Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl explores these controversies and writes a long form poem that includes a list of rules for young girls to follow as advice that will help them be more likeable and become a reputable “woman”. These rules are delivered in a direct emphasis with strict undertone. The guidelines given to the young girl can be inferred as a mother teaching her daughter who is at the age of adolescence. Jamaica Kincaid’s long form poem Girl highlights the stereotypical social responsibilities of young girls which is heavily defined by language, culture, and mothers. In the poem the mother figure covers everything from how to

Bullen, Toffoletti, and Parsons’ article explores the ideas of postfeminism as represented within popular young adult literature. Especially because these young adult novels have similar themes to adult romance novels, postfeminist ideas are expressed for a younger audience. This is significant because young adult books also influence their readers at a critical point in their identity development, which can be impacted by their depictions in media. These novels are part of a media that “…inducts girls into larger cultural narratives about what and how

Hell hath no fury like a woman being asked if she is on her period. The culture surrounding emotions have come to shame those who show their emotions, women being told they’re hormonal and men being said to be too feminine. Louisa May Alcott was asked to write Little Women as a “conduct novel”, the genre was created to teach women how to be good little ladies (Klein). Although, the novel began as just that but she soon took many liberties with the genre creating strong and independent female characters. Her book set a new attitude for girls growing up in a society that taught them to be meek little wives and mothers. Alcott taught women that they were qualified to be anything and were allowed to express their emotions shamelessly. Society has placed blame for women’s emotions on their gender; this blame has become a commonplace joke but in Little Women not once is one’s emotions summed up by their gender. Through a feminist critique one can see how women and men have grand and small reactions to situations, no matter their sex.

Picture a world where a higher power restricts, defines, and degrades the individual from the moment they are born. Everyone has been assigned one title -- woman or man -- that serves as a warning label for his or her capabilities. Whether or not the individual follows these societal constraints, discrimination will always accompany the titles given. Even in America’s gender-focused society, labels and expectations are imposed upon people that can determine the direction--and limits-- of their lives. Such social injustice could spark rebellions and result in shattered laws of civilization and the end of equality for everyone, no matter their gender. As teenage research writers, personally, our lives have been sheltered and confined,