Two Cafeterias Passages

“Governor Adlai Stevenson Tells College Women about Their Place in Life, 1955” is an excerpt from a Commencement Address at Smith College in 1955. The speaker tells of how women aren’t just house wives anymore. With men becoming more educated the wife must advance as well. He says that women should keep themselves and those about you straight “not to mention keeping you man straight on the differences between Botticelli and Chianti” (page 334). Basically women at this time were supposed to go to college so they could have intellectual conversations with their intelligent husband. He says, “Once they wrote poetry, now it’s the laundry list” (page 334). Women of this time period didn’t have their

Virginia Woolf in “A Room of One’s Own” uses the symbolism of a room to express solitude and leisure time. Women were excluded from education and the unequal distribution of wealth. Through this idea, women lack the essential necessities to produce their own creativity. Women wrote out of their own anger and insecurity. Men wrote intellectual passages that were highly praised because a woman could never live up to a man’s expectations in literature due to lack of education.

The short story presents women as aware but misunderstood by men through use of narrative point of view. In society women are usually seen as inferior to men, and therefore often don’t get the acknowledgement they deserve. “The women held their secrets because when they mentioned it to their husbands or brothers they were laughed at….Instead of sympathy, the husbands and brothers now had a secret weapon”. This shows that women did not share their fears as it gave others ideas to torment them further. Women in the short story are also shown to be fully aware of the boy’s behaviour early on in the story. “The men of his home town said, but how

She loses a lot of weight within a short period of time, which entail sickness and change of her looks. The short story takes place in modern time since the story obtains a television and a car. They short story is published in 1973 and therefore it takes place between the 1950’s and 1960’s, since the social and cultural environment also tells us something about the period of time. Earl uses the pound measurement, which could indicate that the story unfolds in the United States; “Three quarters of a pound”. Nonetheless Earl eats a “cheeseburger” which is a traditional food in the United States. The story unfolds at two locations. In the first location there is a cafeteria, where Earl’s wife works as a waitress. And, the second location is at the couple’s home. The couple has young children; “He checked on the children and then went to the other bedroom”. The reader does not get to know how many children the couple has, but defiantly more than one, since the word “children” is used. The speaker of the short story is the author since it is written in third person, which provides great flexibility to the author. Therefore, the author gets the availability to use objective-narration. And also by using the third person narration,

She gleefully adds in her first passage: “We are all going to heaven…in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one‘s kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window-seat”. Her tone came off as if she was stunned by the environment in the men’s dining hall. The environment was so joyful and lush that she even began to think of how good her life was, merely based on the food that was given in this dining hall. It is a different story for the women’s dining hall when she murmurs: “That was all. The meal was over. Everybody scraped their chairs back; the swing-doors swung violently to and fro...”. She promptly shifted her tone from a thankful and happy person to monotone and dull, and because of this, readers can detect the attitude of hers towards the two very different meals. In the dining hall of the men's her tone gave off that the environment was almost heavenly, where everyone was joyful and they came to eat the delicious food together in a vivid environment. In the dining hall of the women's, her tone gave off that the women came together to eat because they had no choice, as if it was just another annoying task they had to do before resuming their

“When you got to the table you couldn 't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn 't really anything the matter with them, -- that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.” (Twain, 1)

The narrator is totally crushed by the gender discrimination. She longed to be seen by her mother and her grandma. The narrator is heartbroken that her mother loved her brother more than her and failed to notice her. “When she went into Nonso’s room to say good night, she always came out laughing that laugh. Most times, you pressed your palms to your ears to keep the sound out, and kept your palms pressed to your ears, even when she came into your room to say Good night, darling, sleep well. She never left your room with that laugh” (190). Her agony can be easily seen by the way of her narrating. She does not get the affection that she deserves. She really needs the affection from her own mother, but she is not getting it. She compares the love which her mother shows to his brother and herself. This is gender discrimination can be seen with her grandmother too. She hated her grandma as she would always support her brother and find fault with her. Even though what the brother did, no matter what crime. Her mother and grandmother always supported her brother and never supported or showed interest towards

When the notorious topic of women’s role in society comes to mind writers like Kate Chopin and Mary Wilkins Freeman break the norms of how women in America were imagined to be through different cultures and regions. In both Kate Chopin’s and Mary Wilkins Freeman’s time period women are portrayed as an ample servant to their husbands. Together the texts show how the controlled understanding of the nineteenth century society, had on women. At that time of these writers, people were restrictive about the viewpoint of women’s place in society. Women could not really do much without their Husband or another male figure in their life , they really didn’t have a voice of their own. In the stories A New England Nun , Desiree’s Baby, The Story of an Hour, and The Storm, Mary and Kate have represented how this situation of the society affected women and their viewpoints about life and marriage.

There is a double standard of academics that take place at St. Paul’s. While the school promotes the idea of economic success through personal achievements and merit for all their students, the girls at the institution work hard and tend to do better than the boys. This is done without ease. For example, Mary is a student who continually works hard to achieve academic success but does so in a frantic and uncomfortable manner. An essential part at the elite school is being able to exhibit a certain mark of belonging (Khan 115). Khan states, “Lots of students spend as much time as Mary working in the library and their rooms. This is particularly true of girls” (121). The elite institutions strive for equality between the genders, but tend to have stronger female candidates. The girls inevitably have to work harder than the boys in order to achieve higher grades and perform better in school. The girls at St. Paul’s must work harder than boys in order

In every society each gender’s behavioral response is often a reflection of the societal influences that have been instilled since birth. In every society each gender is subjected to certain roles. Males having to suppress their emotions while women are able to be emotional beings. Women being shunned for exhibiting characteristics of the opposite sex. Although, we live in a society that harps on individuality and self-expression, it is clear that this only applies when individuals do not feel inferior. Additionally, self-expression is only situational and accepted based off of certain agendas. In the following story, Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning, we are able to analyze how a male reacts to feeling inferior to a woman. In The Yellow Wallpaper, which is written by Charlotte Perkins, we are able to analyze how her husband’s lack of understanding and inability to communicate with his wife ultimately leads to her insanity. In each of these stories, gender roles are being depicted in a negative and positive way. Through the character’s actions were able to learn how society views each gender in the time in which the story takes place.

The women have a get-together that they believe to be entertaining; however, they continue to repeat themselves and that’s all the conversation it. One woman would say something is “swell” or “nice” and they all agree (Bradbury 93). This is a normal conversation for the women in this society, and it is a merry conversation. Multiple times previously in the book the women say they are “happy”; however, today in our society this conversation is very depressing. The women have nothing to talk about because nothing true happens in their life. They just repeat what they say because they have nothing else to say, and they have no events to talk about. The ladies may say that they are “happy” but they really are not. Because of the shallowness of their life, the women are more depressed, but they do not realize

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

The movie then fast forwards to a stormy night when Babette, a French refugee, came to them for help. A good friend of hers and former acquaintance of theirs, Achille Papin, recommended the sisters to Babette. Papin knew the kindness of the two and knew they would take a stranger into their home, especially a stranger in need of shelter and love. In France, Babette had been a world class chef. She loved to cook, it was her passion. When she began to work for the sisters (for free) she no longer was able to cook gourmet meals. She was only given a budget to prepare dried cod and ale-bread, the staple diet for those who lived in Jutland. Even though she could only prepare simple, cheap, and rather unpalatable dishes, she still put her heart and soul into each dish. Her love of food was apparent if you watched her cook, she took time to add spices which she picked herself or had specially ordered to the corner store to add to the normally bland dishes and made them her own. The differences in the food was apparent when Babette was unable to cook the soup for one of the elderly followers, so the sisters prepared the dish instead. The was an obvious look of disappointment on that man when he looked into the dish and realized it was not Babette who had made it. Her presence with

Woolf believes that women are different from men both in their social history as well as inherently, and that each of these differences has had important effects on the development of women 's writing.

Throughout the ages, women have been graded on their performance and instructed on what is supposed to be their purpose. In the poem, “Marks,” by Linda Pastan, the speaker expresses her distaste for being graded on how she performs her “womanly” tasks. Likewise, in the poem, “Women,” by May Swenson, the speaker seems to be comprised of a contingent of people from the time the poem was written – around 1978 – likewise, the speaker of “Marks” is a wife and mother of two children – a boy and a girl. The poem, “Women,” details how the people of the time feel about women and who they should “serve.” Since both poems seemingly depict the purpose of women, the poem “Marks” could be incorporated into the class discussion to show conflicting perspectives between women and the public about the treatment of women.