Essays on Domesticity

Having rediscovered the traditional German fairy-tale about Snow White and the wicked queen, Neil Gaiman introduces a perspective, quite different from others previously expressed. In his story Snow, Glass, Apples Snow White and the queen appear in different colors. They are both strong, and they both appear to implement their powers in their own ways. In the story, Neil Gaiman seems to present both female characters from different perspectives, enduing them with both traditional and feminist traits of their personalities. The entire story by Gaiman seems to be a feminist interpretation of the traditional German fairy-tale by Grimm brothers. ...

Zora Neale Hurston's, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God' is a book about a girl called Janie Crawford who is of mixed parentage at a time when it was difficult to be of mixed parentage. Upon becoming an adolescent, Janie becomes overly obsessed with finding and meeting her true love. Neale then documents Janie's journey and experiences coupled with the maturity and emotional growth she goes through in her three marriages. American history depicts a new ideology that begun in the mid- 19th Century about women that was referred to as the Cult of True Womanhood. According to True Womanhood, ...

The ideology of domesticity

The women played an important role in the ideology of domesticity. Domesticity is an act of living together in a family and a home. The home life started during the 1800s and it was a time when people considered that women should stay and work at home instead of going outside. The women were expected to perform different tasks at home for other family members. Later educating women through different manuals and conventions changed the concept of domesticity. The women started the feminist movement and were informed that both men and women have equal rights. The paper investigates that ...

Jamaica Kincaid, an Antiguan-American novelist, wrote the short story under consideration. It presents one paragraph, which is really a flow of advice the mother gives to her daughter. The pieces of advice are separated with either semicolons or commas, while stops are completely absent. The end of the text is left open as it finishes with a question mark. Interestingly, the long list of the mother’s advice is interrupted twice with her daughter’s remarks highlighted by italics. Overall, the text produces quite an unusual effect due to the extraordinary punctuation. Therefore, the list of advice, the main ...

The issues in the network society have attracted enormous attention in the recent times. Rather than totalizing coeval working experience, the book “Work’s Intimacy” written by Melissa Gregg focuses on the ramifications and contradictions of professionals that hold a mid-rank, formerly defined as the white-collar workers. Mobile and online technologies have a great impact on the work, life and social relations of the people, especially professionals. After examining 26 professionals from four organizations, namely, education, telecommunications, government and broadcasting in Brisbane, Australia for three years, Gregg’s book bridges the gap in the existing literature on digital labor. In ...

Nancy F. Cott. The Bonds of Womenhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England 1780 1835.

The purpose of the book, The Bonds of Womenhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England 1780 1835, written by Nancy F. Cott was to demonstrate that women from a century ago were breaking out of their traditional sphere of working in the home and shaping new roles for themselves in the community. During the process they also learned how to strengthen “the bonds of womanhood” with other women (Cott, 204). Cott (160) calls this new feeling sisterhood. New England middle class women were very smart about ...

English

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman which first appeared in the 1892 edition of the New England Magazine. The story narrates the perils of an anonymous women who is confined by her doctor husband. The tale narrates the manner in which the main protagonist becomes obsessed by the yellow wallpaper in her room during her period of confinement by her patriarchal husband. Gilman’s short tale intricately describes the oppression of women living in a patriarchal society. The main theme being feminist in nature, the short story has inspired several linguistic analysis. Despite the fact that ...

In the 19th century, between 1820s and 1860s, numerous events happened leading to drastic change in social, economic and cultural activities in America thus causing the second revolution to occur. Furthermore, this era was marked with development in technology .For instance, the introduction of mechanized cotton spinning driven by steam or by water increased the production of the industries, since the cotton gin increased the speed of removing seed from cotton. Again, there was a new technology in iron making where coke was used instead of charcoal. With this technological improvement many people were eagerly ready to adopt and ...

Introduction

Domestic violence is considered a serious offense that regularly happens around the globe. It has indeed been confirmed that its major causes comprise physical, psychological, mental, and sexual forms of distress inflicted upon by the absolute abuser over their victims. This paper focuses on the analysis of the comprehensive conceptual structure of domestic violence with a major purpose of bringing sufficient understanding of these elements. The paper will involve a basic yet robust foundation upon which domestic violence will be understood, thereby advancing past and present debates regarding justice systems and their response to numerous domestic violence transgressions. This article progresses its ...

Introduction

‘The yellow wallpaper’ is a famous short story written by American writer charlotte Perkins Gilman. The story is considered as a landmark in American feminist literature and the same was published in a magazine in the year, 1892. Writing such feminist story was a brave step and this was very innovative for any contemporary writer. This paper intends to discuss ‘The yellow wallpaper’ with a special perspective to examine feminism along with discussing several other related aspects of the story.

Discussion

The yellow wallpaper is the story of a woman who is also the narrator of this story. This woman belongs to upper middle class society ...

The perception that women are weak is slowly changing as more women engage themselves in occupations and businesses that used to be dominated by men alone. Though in the past women have always been downgraded to do menial jobs, there are some areas in the world where sensitivity towards women and acceptance of their new role are being received positively. However, while there are societies that are more accepting of roles that women play now, there are still some cultures that ignore and restrain the changes happening in women. This could be brought about by the differences in cultural ...

Part I

Leonard Michaels was born in January 2, 1933 and died on May 10, 2003. His birth place was New York and his parents of Jewish background with his father coming from Poland. He was an American writer who mainly wrote short stories and novels and even essays. He got his B.A. from the University of New York while his M.A. and Ph. D were earned from the University of Michigan. Among other short stories, Michaels has to his name a short story titled “Crosssbones.” His stories mainly embrace the use of couples who are violent just like in this case, ...

Essay 2

1 Literal borrowing is one of the issues that are discussed by people in the literal world on a daily basis. Authors borrow ideas for their literal works to improve on the quality of work presented. Borrowing of intellectual material can be good or bad. Good borrowing of literal material is an act that almost all researchers perform. It is perfectly genuine if done according to the standard guidelines and the act is documented correctly (Yu and Peter 45). Bad literal borrowing also known as plagiarism is a wrong act since the author copies the works of another author to a wide ...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, entitled “The Yellow Wallpaper” depicts the psychological deterioration of a young mother, based on the author’s own experiences with the resting cure. It shows a society which treated women who endeavored to become writers, which was considered a strictly male profession, as psychologically unwell and would infantilize them, in an effort to cure them. Thus, read as a feminist text, this story is an acute portrayal of the restrained and infantilized position women were subjected to at the turn of the century, where the woman had a strict position inside the household, where her word was a little ...

Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” is a poetic construct of no beginning and no end, an intrusion into a list long recommendation of a mother to her daughter on how she should attend to her work in the domestic sphere and how it will put her back on the right path in life, instead of the one she is supposedly, on now. The mother fervently believes that by telling her daughter exactly how to do her womanly duties, the daughter will be saved from a life of debauchery and promiscuity and she will become an empowered (female) head of household and eventually, a prolific member ...

The Role of Women as a Wife and a Mother in the 1870s

Throughout history, men are considered the dominant actors in political, social, economic, and military events. Rarely could one see a woman’s name in historical events in these fields, even see literature depicting the successes of these women without first touching their not so grandiose history, which usually depicted many hardships as compared to the history of heroic men one hears about. One reason for this rare occurrence is the fact that women back in the early centuries did not possess much power, right, and liberty in a male dominated ...

Parents work hard to educate their children - to teach them lessons and impart their knowledge to their progeny. This is often exemplified in American literature, often through the perspective of the parents. The particular lessons that men and women give to their male or female children never cease to amaze; often, these lessons speak volumes about the temperament and priorities of the gender itself. What's more, generation gaps and changes in priority are usually exemplified in the particular conflicts that these people have. In this essay, several different poems and short stories on the experience of parenting and ...

Female protagonists are not often presented with a great deal of angst or flaws, especially in 19th century literature. However, the following short stories are a notable exception. The protagonist of “The Yellow Wallpaper” gradually grows psychotic from isolation and confinement to a small wallpapered room; Calixta in “The Storm” falls into a passionate one-night affair with a former lover on the evening of a thunderstorm; and the titular “Eveline” is solemn and contemplative, not really knowing what direction to take in her life. In this paper, we will examine the similarities and differences between these three women, and how the circumstances in their lives ...