The Blossoms Of Fire By Maureen Gosling

Throughout this course, we learned that women’s studies originated as a concern at the time that “women and men noticed the absence, misrepresentation, and trivialization of women [in addition to] the ways women were systematically excluded from many positions of power and authority” (Shaw, Lee 1). In the past, men had more privileges than women. Women have battled for centuries against certain patterns of inadequacy that all women experience. Every culture and customs has divergent female

Because of the Virgin’s Mexican history, she holds great significance to Mexican Catholics, so it is no surprise why the Virgin remains inherent in Mexican culture, or as literary scholar Debra J. Blake so aptly defined, “Guadalupe equals Mexico.” Both men and women admire the Virgin, but her religious setting provides a context for oppression through the church. NietoGomez explains how the church utilized Guadalupe’s image, "Marianismo, the veneration of the Virgin Mary, became the model of how to make oppression a religious obligation. This is the heritage of the Chicana." The church created a patriarchal role for themselves by weaving the Virgin’s image as a pure mother to model ordinary women’s behavior. By applying this method through the guise of subjugation, the Church rationalized their need to “protect” women in order to maintain their pure, moral status. Paradoxically, feminine virtues expressed by the Virgin as to be employed by women represents many contradictory elements. Debra

In several cultures, women are seen as archetypes more than men. The proposition of women are instantly idealized and glorified and instantaneously ignore the true complexity of a woman. Countless of these superficial images can be seen across various cultures where the societies within these cultures define what it means to be a female and what type of behavior is and isn’t acceptable within those parameters. The persistent restatement of these stories throughout these generations reinforces the gender system. Women who step out of the norm in these societies are then held punishable for their actions. Alicia Gaspar de Alba pinpoints the three archetypal roles that are given to the women in the Mexican and Chicana cultures. These are,

There was a time (not so long ago) when a man's superiority and authority wasn't a question, but an accepted truth. In the two short stories, "Desiree's Baby", and "The Yellow Wallpaper", women are portrayed as weak creatures of vanity with shallow or absent personalities, who are dependent on men for their livelihood, and even their sanity. Without men, these women were absolutely helpless and useless. Their very existence hinged on absolute and unquestioning submission…alone, a woman is nothing.

There are two types of people in this world: those who can handle economic struggle and those who cannot. Danticat highlights this point in her short story set in Haiti. "A Wall of Fire Rising" is a short story about a family that is struggling economically and in their relationship with each other. Through the author, Edwidge Danticat, we are introduced to the characters. Mother and wife, Lili, a son "Little Guy" and his father "Guy" as they live a life of poverty in one of the shantytowns in Haiti. Lili is a Haitian mother who understands her predicament and seemly wants to make the best out of it. Throughout the story Lili goes about her unfortunate life without a complaint. Little Guy is your typical innocent youth that admire his

In “A Rose for Emily”, Charles Faulkner used a series of flashbacks and foreshadowing to tell Miss Emily’s story. Miss Emily is an interesting character, to say the least. In such a short story of her life, as told from the prospective of a townsperson, who had been nearly eighty as Miss Emily had been, in order to tell the story from their own perspective. Faulkner set up the story in Mississippi, in a world he knew of in his own lifetime. Inspired by a southern outlook that had been touched by the Civil War memory, the touch of what we would now look at as racism, gives the southern aroma of the period. It sets up Miss Emily’s southern belle status and social standing she had been born into, loner or not.

One of the most important and controversial figures in Mexican history and literature is La Malinche. La Malinche, also known as Dona Marina, Malintzin Tenepal or Malinalli, played a significant role in the Spanish Conquest as translator and political mediator to Hernàn Cortèz. Although her importance in the conquest is undeniable, her depiction in literature and as a woman have been up for debate and the interpretations of her have influenced Mexican feminism. The two well-known interpretations of Malinche’s story are polarized interpretations of the historical figure and

The book I have read is Through the Woods by Emily Carroll. This is an Eliot Rosewater book for 2016-2017 so I decided to give it a try and I think you should too. It is a pretty scary read so If you are the least bit frightened by anything you might not want to read this… especially at night. I enjoy watching scary movies and reading scary books so I found it very hard to put this book down.

Historically, men have held every position of power and status in known societies, civilized or otherwise. Men have been the fore-runners, the providers and the respected warriors of every age since the dawn of recorded time. These cultures did not confuse their identities or cultural roles in regards to gender; men were expected to win fame and fortune for themselves and their families, tribes or clans while women were expected to support their men in domesticity and child-rearing. Men knew what was expected of them since birth as they were often surrounded by masculine role-models in their own societies. However, modern masculinity has become something else entirely. Too much has been written about these time periods to rehash any of the

Through this examination of the differences between past and present, wrong and right, and North and South, by Ray West Jr., the different viewpoints and conflicts that appear throughout “A Rose for Emily” are deeply analyzed. West’s critical assessment divides the characters based on who represents the old ways and who represents the changing times. However, the story shows the South’s fervent desire to keep their lifestyle the same. Emily attempted to hold her love for Homer like the South attempted to hold its love for gentile days before the Civil War. West’s asserts that Emily’s fall from grace symbolizes the South’s fall. The deterioration of Emily and the South during reconstruction parallels the slow deterioration of Emily’s house.

Comparably, Ooka Shohei also utilizes theatrical effects in his story as a tool to convey unconventional themes such as cannibalism that happened among Japanese troops oversea. Ooka is a survivor-author with personal experience of war’s dehumanizing nature when he was drafted abroad to the Philippines during the Pacific War. Thus, his work, “Fire on the Plain,” which serves the therapeutic purpose as Ooka recovered from wartime trauma, is somewhat based on his direct experiences. However, the book reads more like a fictional account of the war by focusing on the psychological turmoil. When working on provoking readers’ sympathy with the agony suffered by Japanese soldiers stranded in an unfamiliar land, Ooka has to overcome the problem of possibly

"As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain." An excerpt taken out of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games book, "Catching fire", Suzanne explains that there can be beauty found in all the pain of the world. With this excerpt, Suzanne uses the "pearl" to help her audience visualize and paint a picture of the beauty inside this pearl and the power that it has on "our weighty existence". By doing this, the audience gets a clear message of what Suzanne Collins is trying to convey in this quote. In a similar sense, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses a "Pearl" as a symbol in his story, "The Scarlet Letter." The daughter of a woman, Hester Prynne, convicted of adultery, Pearl is a symbol of many aspects throughout the book. In fact, this story seems to surround the life and "happenings" of this young child. In "The Scarlet Letter," Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts Pearl as a symbol of Hester Prynne's sin, the town's irony, and the directing force of the plot.

In Mexico, men and women are equal in the eyes of the law. However, the man is head of the family. Mexicans use two types of cultural representations to separate the male and female gender roles. The male role is defined by machismo, which is described as violence, power, aggressiveness, and assertive behaviors in sexual situations. For the female role, Mexicans use the Virgin of Guadalupe as an icon. This virgin represents the suffering and sacrifice that women have to make daily for their families. She also represents the submissive, but virtuous woman that Mexican women strive to be. While some still follows these gender roles, the cultural is transforming with urbanization and the roles are shifting (“Mexico”, n.d.)

During the 19th century, women were controlled by a male dominated society. The women were in pure agony knowing that there was no faith for them to have a crucial change in civilization. This could often lead to “clinical depression” in which a human could feel lonely, empty, confounded and miserable. In this time period, women’s role in society was to be simply mothers and wives. A world where women had rights, control, and power was a fantasy. According to Hall, he states, “Key to all feminist methodologies is the belief that patriarchal oppression of women through history has been profound and multifaceted” (Hall 202). In other words, it is known that the male takes complete cruel supremacy over the years in our history. In The

Before examining particular societies, the general notions of patriarchy must be established. Generally, women were considered inferior to men, but each facet of society provides a distinctive insight into gender roles. A fundamental difference between the two genders was that the responsibility of a man was to be a member of the public, whereas the responsibility of a woman was to be in the home. Social norms defined men as “rulers, warriors, scholars, and heads of households” (Ways of the World 59). Even if a man had little