It takes a great amount of bravery to criticize one’s country. It takes an even greater amount to suggest that this criticism stems from gender inequality that one’s society so willingly accepts. Renowned French novelist Françoise de Graffigny took the initiative to point out the caustic gender inequality that was so pervasive throughout French society by use of her novel Letters From a Peruvian Woman. In this novel, Graffigny criticizes various aspects of gender inequality in French society through the lens of Zilia, a Peruvian woman and Other who found herself captured and forced into French society. Through Zilia’s encounters, Graffigny molds the opinion that the ills in French society are caused by the harsh treatment of its female citizens. Françoise de Graffigny uses Zilia from Letters from a Peruvian Woman to critique the inferior role of women in French society and the destruction it entailed in regards to the lack of education among women, the damaging restraints that marriage created for women, and the unjust, presumed behavior for women.
What gives Zilia authority to critique French society? Zilia is characterized as an Other in the French society, lending her credibility to critique the role of women in it. She is an Other because she clearly stands out from the rest of the French. Her race, nationality, and language subsist as some of the characteristics that distinguish her from those around her. Zilia, too, is treated differently from the other French, probing
Throughout history, our society has created gender norms that are followed consistently by members of communities. Though they differ from place to place, we recognize trends that seem almost prescribed to certain genders. Specifically, in the 1600s, men and women had explicit roles that were designated by people of stature. These expectations were followed loyally and people who failed to follow suit were shunned or sometimes even suffered seriously punishment including crude public beatings that were mot only pain inflicting but also status damaging (Rocke, Gender and Sexual Culture, 159). Looking deeper into the novel The Return of Martin Guerre, we identify from the start the expectations that are in place and how they play a role in the story. In comparison of Characters, taking into consideration the standard that had been set for men of this era, we notice that Pansette (Arnaud du Tilh) is an almost faultless example of what is expected for men and in contrast, Martin Guerre fails to meet these standards.
The Dominican realizes that Marie has buried a dead baby and reports her to the authority, warning “You kill the child and keep it in your room.” Marie is taken to he authorities with false allegations that she has killed the baby for her evil reasons. He accuses, “You eat little children who haven’t even had time to earn their souls” (99). Marie notes after the Dominican took her away, “We made a pretty picture standing there. Rose, me and him. Between the pool and the gardenias, waiting for the law” (100). The new government showed less justice especially when it comes to women. Likewise, Josephine declares woman life in Haiti, “By the end of the 1915 occupation, the police in the city really knew how to hold human beings trapped in cages, even women like Manman who was accused of having wings on flame” (35). Women were not empowered as they were treated with
In her book she challenges the government of France and their ideas that women should not be exposed to the same education as men. She gives warning that women will not forever be satisfied with only domestic concerns, and she demands justice for the female race.
The issue of gender roles is one of the central themes of this novel. All the main characters of the novel spend their whole lives trying to conform to the standards of masculinity and femininity expected of them by the society. The inability of the main character of the book to meet the expected stereotypical roles not only causes them personal turmoil but also makes their social life miserable. They try to fit in the ascribed gender roles of their Dominican culture, but are simply incapable of doing that. However, the society does not understand their incapability and makes them pay for their nonconformity.
In “Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Transvestite in the New World” by Catalina de Erauso, a female-born transvestite conquers the Spanish World on her journey to disguise herself as a man and inflicts violence both on and off the battlefield. Catalina discovers her hidden role in society as she compares herself to her brothers advantage in life, as they are granted money and freedom in living their own lives. Erauso decides to take action of this act of inequality by forming a rebellion, as she pledges to threaten the social order.The gender roles allotted to both men and women in the Spanish world represent the significance of societal expectations in order to identify the importance of gender in determining one’s position in the social order in the Spanish World.
Enlightenment in France in the 18th century took on many different meanings, and Francoise De Graffigny’s view–told to us through her novel Letters from a Peruvian Woman– portrays the Enlightenment as an expression of skepticism of religion, individualism, and virtue. In this novel, Zilia is a Virgin of the Sun from the Incan culture in the 1700s. She is torn from her home by the Spanish, and finds herself in France (De Graffigny 92). While living with a French pirate, Déterville, his mother, and his sister Céline, Zilia is intrigued to learn about the foreign European culture to hopefully one day share with the Peruvian Empire she calls home. Throughout her journey on the ocean and in France, she faithfully documents everything she experiences in letters to her dearest love–and fiancé–Aza. De Graffigny captures this fictional story in a series of letters to critique France without naming names, and with the use of analogies to disguise the story as real. Passed off as translation of a series of letters, De Graffigny uses this story to pioneer the novel form. Impressively fluent in irony, (GIVE EX). She is also able to write this story while giving more insight to the readers than the characters do. By doing this, the reader is able to read in between the lines and appreciate the irony behind the words. Her direct criticism of France was a dangerous act in an authoritarian society such as France at the time.
The women described in the Lais of Marie de France often commit traditionally sinful deeds, such as adultery, murder, and betrayal. However, with a few exceptions, the protagonists often end up living happily with their beloved for the rest of their lives. The Lais advocate for situational judgement rather than general condemnation of specific acts, which can be seen through Marie de France’s treatment of sinful heroines.
When society like Haiti interprets years of social oppression it becomes normal for some to believe that the hierarchical system should remain to systematically opposed the weak. That what happen when Duvalier regime took into power and reinforce the explortation of their own people. Marie Chauvet,” Love, Anger, Madness”, illustrates such a literary piece of work that not only capture the eyes of people but it also put her life in danger because she wrote about the tyranny racial social system and lack of freedom of expression and speech that women faced. There were several female writers at that time, but Chauvet work not only criticize the government, but it questions the elitist that said they fought for the middle and lower class people.
The relationship between the gender roles reflected in telenovelas and the the role of women in Latin American countries is a matter of parallelism. This is because as Judith Butler, the author of the book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, emphasized that it is “impossible to separate out ‘gender’ from the political and cultural intersections in which it is invariably produced and maintained”. Gender is undeniably socially constructed, and is a product of the values deemed important by that society being constantly reenacted and reinforced. In that sense, telenovelas are also another medium through which beliefs in gender can be relayed to the audience, forming what is called the “imaginable domain of gender” as they either perpetuate or go against ideal hegemony (Beard 2003).
As the world has grown throughout the centuries, females have generally been under the domination of males. This remained culturally entrenched until the late nineteenth century, when women began to appear in public more often and also began to join alongside men in the work force. In the network of employees and employers in the emerging institution of the Parisian department store, men and women depended on each other for survival in the workplace. Such interdependence is a microcosm of the bourgeois French society during that time, which Emile Zola wrote of in The Ladies’ Paradise, the eleventh book of the Rougon-Macquart series detailing middle-class life. According to Professor Brian
Once her mother passed, she was “passed about like a bad penny.” Her father treated her like he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Her father told her that she’d be hung for sure, since she was filled with passion and imagination. She felt as though once her daddy remarried the bond that they had been broken. Zora and her step mother Mattie Moge never got along with each other. They always exchange words and sometimes it would get intense to the point of them fighting. A few years later poor Zora would get tired of what she was going through. Zora worked her way up to the top, and later enrolled in school with a false birth date. Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist
How has gender inequality affected women in Latin American countries? Gender inequality has affected the women of Latin America in a multitude of ways, but it can be argued that the division of gender equality is extremely prominent when analyzing reproductive rights and health care access. Compared to countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, Latin America is far behind in terms of civil rights and reproductive rights. The lack of rights is not in question; women’s barrier to reproductive health can be seen through anecdotes and statistics. The question thus becomes, is there a definite answer to why these rights are absent? Factors concerning the absence of reproductive rights include cultural norms and religion, but the one that plays the biggest role remains the lack of female political leaders in Latin American countries. What exactly is it that is keeping Latin America behind other countries in terms of being progressive regarding reproductive rights? Women’s political absence in Latin America has shaped reproductive rights and health care services immensely.
Freedom and equality are ideas this country has had for centuries that have evolved over time. In 1776, what Thomas Jefferson meant by “all men are created equal”, is that white males are dominant in society. Women are treated worse than men and slaves treated worse than women. People that weren’t of the “superior” race/gender of a white male were typically treated as if they were less. Women and African-Americans aren’t being treated as bad today, but they’re still being treated worse than the white males of society. Even today, when white males are typically the leaders of society, it’s not always race and gender that creates inequality; sometimes it’s money that creates the issue. Not just from past evidence, but from present
With each letter in Les Liaisons dangereuses, Choderlos de Laclos advances a great many games of chess being played simultaneously. In each, the pieces—women of the eighteenth-century Parisian aristocracy—are tossed about mercilessly but with great precision on the part of the author. One is a pawn: a convent girl pulled out of a world of simplicity and offered as an entree to a public impossible to sate; another is a queen: a calculating monument to debauchery with fissures from a struggle with true love. By examining their similarities and differences, Laclos explores women’s constitutions in a world that promises ruin for even the most formidable among them. Presenting the reader glimpses of femininity from a young innocent’s daunting debut to a faithful woman’s conflicted quest for heavenly virtue to another’s ruthless pursuit of vengeance and earthly pleasures, he insinuates the harrowing journey undertaken by every girl as she is forced to make a name for herself as a woman amongst the tumult of a community that machinates at every turn her downfall at the hands of the opposite sex. In his careful presentation of the novel’s female characters, Laclos condemns this unrelenting subjugation of women by making clear that every woman’s fate in such a society is a definitive and resounding checkmate.
All characters in the novel are living in a man’s world; nevertheless, the author has tried to change this world by the help of her characters. She shows a myriad of opportunities and different paths of life that woman can take, and more importantly she does not show a perfect world, where women get everything they want, she shows a world where woman do make mistakes, but at the same time they are the ones that pay for these mistakes and correct them.