... 's aforementioned notion of "Fifth Way" love, which is the idea of "courtly love as a spiritual path and the way of transformation through mystical union with one's 'polar being.'"11 Mouravieff asserted that this form of love represents the "purest and most sublime realization of the Christian spiritual path."12 Bourgeault delves further into the realm of the abstract, maintaining that this "Fifth Way" ... ."38 Coupled with passages of the Qur'an that sequestered the wives of Muhammad from the rest of society, it has been argued that the role of Muslim women became one of "passiv...

• Word Count: 3461
• Approx Pages: 14
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... not raised in Georgia) I feel Clinton successfully revealed the truth behind the myth created of the charming belles and courtly balls in the antebellum south. Even though I have not seen Gone With The Wind in its entirety, I envisioned myself in those times. However, after reading The Plantation Mistress, I have come to realize that the leisure status of the planter's lady is a fairy tale that I scooped up. Darn that Hollywood. Hollywood has ... also portrayed the plantation mistress as a romantic fairy tale. However, Clinton ... ...

• Word Count: 582
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... tried to establish herself as the career woman. Her gender ideology centered on the idea of herself as a woman who would be needed and appreciated both at home and at work. One of her friends, a house keeper who has to run numerous domestic chores is described by Nancy as "a younger version of her mother, depressed, lacking in self-esteem, a cautionary tale whose moral was "if ... you want to be happy, develop a career and get your husband to share at home"" [Arlie Hochschild, 1989: Pg. 40]. The author explains such ideals to be quite popular among women in the last three decades which ...

• Word Count: 2593
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... needed to be called "accomplished" (38). As well as these skills, a woman must possess a natural grace and flawless manner "to deserve the word" (39). Elizabeth Bennet's reply of "I never saw such a woman" highlights Austen's concern with the notion of the ideal woman within her nineteenth-century English context. Commonly regarded as a realist writer in her accurate portrayal of everyday ... idea which, while not overly startling to women today as it would have been in the nineteenth century, is nonetheless deeply inspiring. Through the romance genre and its conventions of the hero and...

• Word Count: 5516
• Approx Pages: 22
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... also portrays her as domineering, sensual, and as an expert in love-related matters; the Wife echoes these characteristics of herself in her Prologue. The realism of the Wife of Bath's life with five different husbands and the cruelty of some and the kindness of the others are mirrored in the witty tale she tells. She begins by showing how, even under the rule of King Arthur and his chivalrous knights, women are at ... but possibly unfaithful maiden. He finally gives the woman power to decide for the two of them what would be the best. In conceding this point of choice and giving the wo...

• Word Count: 1172
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... also portrays her as domineering, sensual, and as an expert in love-related matters; the Wife echoes these characteristics of herself in her Prologue. The realism of the Wife of Bath's life with five different husbands and the cruelty of some and the kindness of the others are mirrored in the witty tale she tells. She begins by showing how, even under the rule of King Arthur and his chivalrous knights, women are at ... but possibly unfaithful maiden. He finally gives the woman power to decide for the two of them what would be the best. In conceding this point of choice and giving the wo...

• Word Count: 1172
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... 6 and 39 of Kate Chopin's story The Awakening, one is able to see that the author planned to depict the final scene to be tragic yet triumphant. Like Edna's final act in chapter 39, the first half of chapter 6 allows the reader to understand that Edna is lost in her search for individuality and freedom in her life. Perhaps the most apparent connection between the two chapters is the symbol and role of the ... sea which allows Edna to find the light that ... she has been searching for. In the end, the reader is able to see that all ... ...

• Word Count: 631
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... . These include the Knights, the lovers, the shepherd, and the girls at the market. The sight of the newlywed lovers incites feelings of rebellion from the lady, and she exclaims, "I am half sick of shadows" (Poulson 26). It is apparent that it is the social institution of marriage that incites in the lady a desire to attain love and move away from the life of shadows. By leaving the interior world and entering, the exterior would of ... him to control. Here he could create and run everything according to his rules." (Hartley 39) The fallen woman shows defiance by making the transition f...

• Word Count: 3387
• Approx Pages: 14
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy does exist under the Constitution and that the roots of that right may be found in the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments, in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, in the Ninth amendment and in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. There have been many Supreme Court cases since Roe v. ... not to take a life. Because of the pros and cons on the issue of abortion states have constructed many abortion laws that include regulating and limiting whether, when and under what circumstances a woman ma...

• Word Count: 2395
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... specifically, woman's complicity in the oppression of others by the dominant male. The story's subject is the wedding in which Herr and Frau Brechenmacher attend, including their preparation beforehand and a post-mortem afterwards, which, if read by itself, would not intimate anything sinister or unhappy about the idea. However, the theme of suppression and domestic violence is developed very soon within the tale. Frau Brechenmacher's husband, from the first, is presented as ... a dominating, patriarchal man who controls her absolutely. The Frau calls him "The Father", which at once dis...

• Word Count: 1523
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... was mearly irrelevant. Ford points out that Mary is described as "good with the baby" and Jennie as "a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession." These characters obviously serve as a representation of women's expected roles for this particular era and as foils to the main character. The main character is the only woman who doesn't fall into an expected feminine role of that nature ... that she truly escaped from what was holding her back and attained freedom. The reader is left wondering if this was the author's way of saying that women should do out wit...

• Word Count: 552
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Aphra Behn's genre-blending tale "Oroonoko" melds travel narrative with fictional biography to tell the story of Prince Oroonoko, "the royal slave. Although Behn writes of Oroonoko's honor as unique among men, her admiration for him seems to derive directly from how closely he mirrors the prime model of a nobly descended, Christian Englander. Indeed, Behn measures and praises Oroonoko's masculinity only in terms ... her characters in such a way that they function only as dark-skinned representatives of white virtue. Furthermore, this paper will analyze the texts of Oroonoko and Addison and Ste...

• Word Count: 876
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... since slavery was started in 16th century. Black women had never enjoyed some of the supposed benefits the womanhood and its separate spheres for men and women, an ideology developed as a result of 19th century industrialization in the U.S. Slave owners thought that black women were profitable labor unit like black men, and sometimes as sexual exploitation for owners. Some of historians had tried to prove brutal ... slavery in human history directly or indirectly, especially black women described as great victims and established the basis of ideology of womanhood or femine. Even they we...

• Word Count: 215
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... religious law forbidding women to speak persuasive extended speeches to a semi-public or public audience including men, it was certainly not the custom and would have been considered disorderly conduct in a woman; people would wonder why her husband or father responsible for her would encourage or ... the call to speak comes to another person present . So in this very same passage he is telling men as well as women to be silent in certain situations, so that order can be established "and he finishes the topic with a balanced phrase of speech and silence in v.39- ... 40 ""Therefore, my b...

• Word Count: 2588
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... observe throughout other people. People who adapted themselves to believe in follow these cultural practices think that the best thing to do is to get them involved in these kinds of cultural practices. One of the things that we can say that would be weird from people from other cultures to observe can be ... This can become a seious problem because it can cause damage in people. Sometimes, girls who are pretty and have a nice body to show up, believe that they are getting fat and they start to eat less and less until the point that they become really thin, but they don't realize that. I...

• Word Count: 335
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... when Esther was coming of age (Nash 614). Plath expresses her longing for escape from the confinement and inevitable fate of being molded into an ideal woman through Esther's sad and heart-wrenching tale of the bell jar enclosing her. The Bell Jar is set during a six month period in 1953, beginning with Esther's brief stay in New York while working as a guest editor for a fashion ... magazine. Although unconventional in her thinking from the beginning, it is quickly revealed that the fateful edges of the bell jar are increasingly pushing down ... in her suicide attempt, exhibits her sli...

• Word Count: 1473
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... a crush on "feminine" Ruth. But, unlike the reader of the novel, the viewer of the film never understands that Ruth's love is as early, total, and absorbing as Idgie's. Ruth's early love has been censored in the movie version. What names should be given to the relationship of Idgie and Ruth? Are they lesbians? Neither the book nor the film portray Ruth and Idgie as sexual partners. The closest we come to a "sex scene ... " is the sensual, playful regression of the food-throwing ... ...

• Word Count: 540
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... pursuit of love are Macbeth and Love's Labour's Lost, which focus not on the optimistic journeys to secure love, but rather the dark road paved from a mind clouded by love's thick disillusionment. Through the manipulation of stereotyped gender roles and the emphasis on romantic attachment in Macbeth and Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare clearly points to love as the root cause and instigator behind the deception and wicked results found in both plays. In Macbeth, love is the source for ... dark ambition and deadly motivation which leads ultimately to madness and destruction. Love in Lov...

• Word Count: 1704
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... ;women, cash, annuities, rents, land- (p. 23). This literature as well as the commercial language represented in The Merchant of Venice represent a newly capitalist England in the Renaissance. Newman reminds her reader of the speech Portia gives, offering her love to Bassanio where her account of herself "illustrates the exchange between the erotic and economic that characterizes the play's representation of human relations- (p. 25). Portia objectifies herself as she describes ... toward the middle of the speech, herself in the third person, as the gift being given to Bassanio. Further, ...

• Word Count: 772
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... goal for most women was to get married. Before matrimony, she would do all that she could to please men and, afterward, her self-worth was determined by the amount of attention her husband gave her. Wollstonecraft did not believe a woman should center her life on her husband, for she said that women who act in such a way will ... "fade", having lived their vane ambition for a short time, rendering the rest of their lives meaningless and pointless. "For, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty," she wrote. "And the flaunting...

• Word Count: 330
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... than that. When Prospero is about to "give" Miranda over to Ferdinand, he sternly warns him not to break the virgin-knot before the wedding had been officialised. We realise that this marriage is more than one of mutual love and support; it is not only a new political alliance, but also an exchange of patriarchal power. She now belongs to another man ... , this could be too facile a motive to justify the extents Oberon went through to obtain the boy; he makes use of emotional manipulation and drugs to procure the child. This brazen lack of concern, not only for the welfare of his wife (f...

• Word Count: 2000
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... play that is turned to film, new interpretations are conceptualised to which mirror the age and generation of the viewers. The 1998 film, Shakespeare in Love, cleverly altered the way in which audiences viewed Shakespeare by adjusting the temperament of the film with a modern lens. Moreover, to cater for a 'modern' audience at the time, the film tackled the issue of 'gender' by capturing a woman's desire to act on stage ... secret. Her identity is soon discovered by Will and thus, the illustrious and forbidden affair begins. As their relationship takes shape, as does the play....

• Word Count: 1880
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

...  women who are younger, "girls". "Wasn't I beautiful?". "Wasn't I fragrant and young?". These rhetorical questions sound to the reader almost like Medusa is pleading to her partner, desperate for the love and attention he once gave her. This also stirs the reader's sympathy felt for Medusa. In the last line Medusa instructs to "look at [her] now", which is ironic ... famous men in history and literature and the women 'behind' them. In the poems Mrs Midas and Medusa, Duffy uses language features such as metaphors and alliteration to stir the reader's emotions. The reader's emoti...

• Word Count: 1489
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... as "A Song" or "Ask Me No More," Carew revolutionizes the love poem and redefines beauty in such a way that the recipient of these words could care less about what the poem is called simply because it would be just as romantic with any other title. Breaking from the Shakespearean sonnet that had become commonplace, Carew's poem exhibits a few distinct structural differences that ... this beauty is contained within this woman that Carew is describing. The fact that something as powerful and majestic as a phoenix is contained within this woman's chest is enough to portray the sheer amount...

• Word Count: 1528
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... to creation stories such as in the Bible, where female is created from the rib of a male, this scenario is even stranger. Gilgamesh and Enkidu as forces of good for the society, are often controlled by women, once again showing the force of civility as portrayed by women. An attempt at manipulation through woman sexuality came from the goddess of love, Ishtar, who attempted to ... this field. It seems odd that in a setting that appears to be so male-dominated on the surface, a woman would be able to control love. However, as woman are representative as fountains of civility and civilizat...

• Word Count: 1389
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate