Summary Of The Play 'The History Boys' By Alan Bennett

In the novel girls/women are looked upon as if they are in a lower class than boys/men and they can never be equal. At the age of 5, girls are taught how to carry buckets of water on their heads and how to hold the bucket with both hands. In the novel only girls had their ears pierced and had to sit down for hours getting their hair braided. Girls/women were expected to remain in the home and doing domesticated chores such as cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, and sew clothes. Girls were given tasks such as shaking and sunning bed mats and sprinkle the street in front of their cottages. In the novel boys/men are expected to do manual labor such as work in coffee patches or banana stands picking coffee beans or cutting down weeds in the fields. When boys are under the age of 6, they are given chores such as feeding the animals, letting the animals out, running errands, gather firewood, water the burros, halter the burros, and pick coffee beans. At the age of 6, boys became an apprentice under their father and learned the role of their respective job. At the age of 14, boys were considered men and got machetes to work in the coffee

In Alan Bennett’s, The History Boys, the Holocaust Scene is vital to the development of drama in the play. Bennett uses the conflict in this scene to develop the significance of inter-character relationships. It is a significant moment because it forms a climax to the antagonism between Hector and Irwin, influencing the boys to take sides, and it is dramatic because of the uncomfortable and impermissible topic chosen.

Discuss in detail Bennett’s dramatic techniques from page 70 “boys come in” to “the bell goes” on page 74 and consider how this passage might be viewed as a significant and dramatic moment in the History Boys.

In this play, the author Alan Bennett wants to convince the audience that education can be approached in many different ways. In fact, through the characters of Hector, Irwin, Dorothy Lintott and the headmaster, he shows us that there is no “right” or “wrong” way of teaching.

In Alan Bennett’s play, The History Boys, a unique approach to education is continuously made by Hector, an aged english teacher, and Irwin, a young and ambitious “Oxford” graduate. Rather than solely focusing on his students future college endeavors, Hector chooses to highlight what he deems as important in the “real world”, as more exists to him than an acceptance letter to Cambridge or Oxford. On the other hand, Irwin places college at the utmost importance, continuously reinforcing this idea in multiple fashions. Throughout the course of the play, characters such as Irwin and the Headmaster provide a stark contrast to Hector's views, well simultaneously highlighting the underlying reasonability in each others’ ways.

Torvald would never have thought she were capable of it, since during that era it was unrealistic of women to leave their houses but rather put up with the difficulties they faced. Ibsen highlights society's domineering outlooks of marriage and the interactions of two people naïvely pretending to be in love. Throughout the play Ibsen reveals the fragile attributes of his characters to help enhance the play-like nature of their relationship, the role of women, and Nora's course of self-discovery.

The theme of gender is presented to the audience as dramatic irony as well, since this play was written in 1912, the play shows how women were in that certain period of time, they didn’t have as many rights, they weren’t treated equally with men, in fact they were seen to be lower than men. However in the time that this play was written which is 1945 women had a lot more rights due to the fact that when men left the country for war, which according to Mr.Birling wasn’t supposed to happen, all the women were the people who looked after the country and kept it going, women became more interdependent and the society just grew and became a lot more open minded with their thoughts. JB Priestly has tried to show the importance of women in the play as well in the play as well at some places but very indirectly, like in that part where the inspector says, “There are a lot of young women living that sort of existence in every city and big towns in this

The most prominent woman figure in this play is Linda, but the male characters in this play also give us insight into women’s roles and help feed the feminist analyses

Throughout many pays and novels, women have had important roles of helping form the main characters, in the way they think, move or change the story. Women have always been subordinate to men all through history, but in plays, novels, short stories, etc, they have been given large enforcing roles, showing the power within women. William Shakespeare and Sophocles use guilt, pride, and influence to demonstrate the importance of the women’s role to support the main characters in both the plays of Macbeth and Antigone.

Education was not equal between the sexes and neither between the classes. Gentlemen were educated at home until they were old enough to attend well-known or lesser schools. A lady’s schooling was

During the time in which the play took place society frowned upon women asserting themselves.  Women were supposed to play a role in which they supported their husbands, took care of their children,

In “A Doll’s House”, Torvald and Nora each have a unique role in their marriage. Torvald treats Nora as his little doll, or plaything, while Nora treats him as the man of the house who has the authority to do anything he wants. These ideas form because the society within the play does not allow much freedom for women. According to this society and culture, a women’s role is depicted by the man she is with, the female character’s all exemplify Nora’s assertion that women have to sacrifice a lot more than men. In this play, Nora, Mrs. Linde, and the maid all hold sacrificial roles depicted by the society they

Throughout the course of time, women have been discriminated against and have been viewed more as objects than humans. Both authors, William Shakespeare and Henrik Ibsen, express the inequality of women throughout the two plays. In A Doll’s House, Ibsen expresses how women are degraded by society. Henrick characterized Nora Helmer as an average, “stay at home mom” who takes care of the children, and has no job to provide for her family. Throughout the story the reader sees how Nora fuels the play and also helps develop the plot. Although in Othello, Shakespeare presents women using the same approach, on the contrary, Shakespeare gave women more freedom, as we see in A Doll’s House, Nora is isolated from the outside world, while in Othello, Desdemona and Emilia are free to wander without supervision. Through the duration of both plays, the reader becomes aware of the characters flaws, Nora and Desdemona both demonstrate flaws as they become naive and allow their trusting and reassuring nature to deceive them. Also, both Torvald and Iago speak and view women in a prejudice manner, additionally; both male characters view women as possessions. Finally, the female characters disregard males dominance in the current society as the reader sees Nora and Emilia have a different approach on men, rather than being obedient as other women do in that current society.

In each play we have two main characters; in ‘A Doll’s House’ Torvald and Nora who are married and it’s been many years that they are living with each other, on the other side we have Henry and Eliza in ‘Pygmalion’ who have a teacher-student relationship, but it is clear that the attitude of Torvald and Henry is very similar most of the time. Henry as a teacher, encourages Eliza with chocolates to accommodate her with himself, while Torvald, with a father-like behavior, ignores Nora’s rights and demands such as forbidding her to bring her favorite sweets into the house. Moreover, both men name Eliza and Nora not only with their own names but whatever make them satisfied; Torvald calls Nora as his "little songbird" or his "squirrel", but Henry calls Eliza anything that occurs to him like a "squashed cabbage leaf." besides, by considering the conversations between Torvald with Nora, and Henry with Eliza it becomes clear that none of the men ever consider their partners as an adult by entering a serious conversation to them, as if they have lesser intelligence and understanding. Second, the judgement of men toward women is somehow shown in the plays. Torvald and Henry both misjudge Nora and Eliza, and it can show the fact that even the society of that era misjudged women in general. Consequently, both Pygmalion and A Doll's House are about women trying to find their position in the minds of Torvald and Henry that resist it as unfair; so it can be relevant to the begging of the time when women demand their rights in the society. Talking about the attitudes of the male character in ‘A Doll’s House’, declares that Torvald thinks of Nora only as a wife and a mother, not as a woman. She is only a doll for her husband. The setting in the whole play is a room which is a cage for Nora and she’s been keyed in. This condition is because Torvald thinks he has the right to possess his wife. It was a good condition to

There are two other major themes in this play, femininity and masculinity. Nora has often been given the title of one of modern drama’s first feminist heroines. She breaks away from a dominating and opressive marriage. Ibsen, denied that he had intentionally written a feminist play and preferred to think of it as humanist. This said though, the traditional roles of women and the price of them breaking tradition is a constant thread throughout the play. The men of this play, in many ways, are just as trapped by gender roles as the women. An example of this is the job that Torvald Helmer holds at the bank, chief. The men must be providers and alone must support the entire household. At the end of this play these traditional ideas are put to the test, when Nora leaves and Torvald must care for the children and be their provider.