The Beaux Stratagem

The first central idea in the relationship between woolf’s text and ophelia is gender roles . This central idea shows us how women cannot move up beyond men and how they are oppressed and shunned to the bottom and

The masking of an identity is a common solution that many people of today’s society turn towards. Whether it is to hide something from someone or to use it as a form of protection. William Shakespeare’s popular play Much Ado About Nothing is an excellent example of masking that is achieved by some of the characters. The story reflects events of people masking themselves intentionally, unintentionally or having the ability to see through other’s masks. It demonstrates that masking can end in deception, although not constantly.

The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and

The female protagonists in the plays “She stoops to Conquer” by Oliver Goldsmith and “Antigone” by Sophocles are successfully able to reach their goal by behaving according to their environment and behaving to the need of their situation. In the very well written play, “Antigone”, Antigone openly refuses to obey the king and buries the body of her brother, Polyneices. In the interesting play, “She Stoops to Conquer”, Kate Hardcastle makes it her goal to marry a man named Charles Marlow. It is her top priority since he feels relaxed in the company of lower class females. When Kate Hardcastle realized that Charles Marlow has a special preference for lower class females, Kate acts as if she is a lady belonging to a lower class and therefore

A recurring motif throughout the novel is that women are resented for being in positions of power, opposed to more traditional, subjugated roles. Any female character in a powerful, influential, or otherwise controlling position are demonized as a “ball-cutter... – people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to.” (Kesey

Manners were also very important in the Regency era. Woman were judged on how they behaved in public and one little mistake could cause extreme embarrassment. They were expected to “possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions”v.

With this in mind, Burney presents Evelina to theater life, where social status is key to understanding the play itself but namely presenting yourself. In Evelina, when one such as Evelina is to go to the theater one must dress for their class. Upon arrival, one must sit where the designated class is: the pit, reserved for the lower service and merchant classes, the side box for the upper class, and the stage box for the aristocratic class. Evelina, amongst the Captain and the Minirvan family, is presented to the reader as one of the upper class for she is sitting “…in the front row of a side box” when Lord Orville, looking down on the Minirvan’s, ventures from his seat “…in the stage-box” and “honoured us with his company all evening” (Burney 79). Burney’s usage of emotive language to depict the ceremonial journey of Lord Orville’s short journey imply a dramatic connotation of Lord Orville’s required effort to accompany Evelina and her present party.

At the beginning of the Victorian Period, both single and married women’s rights were limited. The changes during this era in the identity of genders are represented in the characters the author Wilkie Collins describes. For example, Marian Halcombe is characterized as strong and predominant. She is Laura’s voice when regarding to her husband and protects her throughout the story. Although Marian knows her role as a woman in society, she disapproves with the beliefs of the era. On the other hand, Laura personalizes the conventional quiet woman that obeys customs. To emphasize this, in Collin’s novel, he lets the reader know that Laura is marrying the man that her father approved even though he is now dead. When she marries, her rights legally belong to her husband and is treated with the laws and customs of the Victorian era. Throughout this period, the distinction between classes was also notable. Comparatively, The Woman in White presents how the middle class as Laura and her uncle refer to the working class, Fanny the maid. Even though Fanny has always been their maid and is the only person they trust, they only communicate with her at their convenience. Moreover, Mr. Fairlie does not even call the maid by her name, but refers to her as “Young Person”. Certainly, the Victorian Period was a significant impact in the novel where

Over the centuries, women’s duties or roles in the home and in the work force have arguably changed for the better. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen teaches the reader about reputation and loves in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries by showing how Elizabeth shows up in a muddy dress, declines a marriage proposal and how women have changed over time. Anything a woman does is reflected on her future and how other people look at her. When Elizabeth shows up to the Bingley’s in a muddy dress they categorize her as being low class and unfashionable. Charles Bingley, a rich attractive man, and his sister had a reputation to protect by not letting their brother marry a ‘low class girl’. Reputation even today and back in the nineteenth

In the Middle Age literature, women are often presented or meant to come off as an unimportant character; which can also reflect on how the author wants the women character represent. Women are usually shunned, have no say or control in what they do; due to what men desire; like Ophelia and Gertrude did in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But these female characters that I will discuss are women with power, control, and a voice. Majority of the female character’s appearances are made to represent wickedness, evil, or a seducer who challenges a man belief; and does not symbolize perfect women.

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.

Such as, Marriage, class discrimination, manners and sincerity. Those themes are presented with the Lady Bracknell’s help. Wilde has created, with Augusta Bracknell, a memorable instrument of his satiric wit, questioning all he sees in Victorian upper-class society. With her power and weakness shown, she, as an upper class lady, connects and presents the themes in the play.

The novel demonstrates both popular and familiar gender roles in the 19th century. Catherine Earnshaw, breaks through the stereotypes, and has a mesh of both feminine and masculine qualities. In the Victorian Era, men are seemed as superior to women. Her gender roles are beyond the social norm, as well as her husband Edgar, who is portrayed as more feminine. Catherine holds many masculine qualities such as being adventurous, extroverted, and determined.

Class bias determines attitude of people to social relations and culture (Bryant-Bertail, 2). The character of Betty was brought up in a Victorian era where proper upper class women were objects intended to please their respective men; their function was to be pleasing and reproductive, not to think. In the second act of the play Betty shows how her attitude toward women has been skewed by her Victorian upbringing in a conversation she has with Lin:

The woman that achieves all of this is the perfect lady. The perfect lady is representative of the times, and Jane Austen exploits this socalled perfection to show that her society was quite the opposite when it came to the lives of women. The perfect lady was a categorization. It made the women have to be a certain person. They had to conform. ?A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, all the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner or walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved (35).? A woman herself, Miss Bingley, made this statement. Not only did women have no free will, but they were the ones that supported conformity. This did not apply to all women, but to the perfect ladies, one of which Miss Bingley is implied to be. Jane Austen juxtaposes the perfect lady and Miss Bingley in order to show that the perfect lady is really a shallow-minded conformist. With characters like Miss Bingley, Austen creates a resentment for the accomplished lady generalization in the reader?s head. This makes the reader dislike the highlight of English society, realize it?s sexism in restricting women?s free will, and favor characters that are vessels for feminist notions, such as