... being traded like a material commodity - so long as it came with the proper packaging. Thus, the text reveals the paradox: sexual chastity was not a measure of how truly virtuous a woman is, but rather was an important negotiation tool in securing a husband, getting paid off in a sense by said husband's wealth, and cementing a woman's societal status as a "proper" woman. The ... has been stripped from her. She is quite literally reduced to nothing by the terms of a society that has no place for a woman who doesn't fit into the proposed mold of "femininity", simply because she happened to...

• Word Count: 1986
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: Graduate

In the book "The Body Project", Joan Jacobs Brumberg examines how the social changes of the last century have affected the ways in which teenage girls regard their bodies and themselves. By the use of various historical documents, including the many diaries of adolescent women, the author looks at the developing attitudes towards such issues as physical occurrences like that of menarche which we know as "menstruation ... , a situation that leaves them unsupported in their development and extremely vulnerable to the excesses of popular culture and to pressure from peer groups." This mismatch ma...

• Word Count: 759
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Graduate

... they believe that gender segregation still exist but symmetrical families are developing much more joint conjugal roles and that there has been a large amount of equality between men and women. Young and Willmott also suggest that symmetrical families are opposite but sill similar stating that the husband and wife might ... feminism has had on their attitudes, they have fought a long and hard battle for equal rights in the workplace and in education. As a result of them practically 'winning' the battles to a certain extent more females are in paid-employment that in the last 50 year...

• Word Count: 676
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Graduate

... entwined in The Old Arcadia. The Old Arcadia, through a series of surrogacies demonstrates the ideal of the body politic transferred from male to female, in similar circumstances to that of Elizabeth, culminating in an address by Cleophila to an unruly mob. Alfred Bill states that despite the "background of forest shepherd and shepherdesses, flocks and herds" political undercurrents make Arcadia ... . It would appear that Sidney has conformed to worshiping the glory of Elizabeth, or is he, like Elizabeth batting his desired with flattery before revealing a more sinister motive? Written ...

• Word Count: 1452
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Graduate

... , it is important to determine their significance as assertions of female agency, authority, and autonomy in a socio-historic context that allowed women little of these rights or privileges. A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night remain compelling plays to the contemporary reader because, among other reasons, they portray women in their full human complexity. By confronting difficult social circumstances and challenges, Shakespeare allows many ... of his female characters to be aspired to heroic figures, even though as heroes the women do have significant flaws, particularl...

• Word Count: 2208
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Graduate

... Woolf, also know to occasionally write under the pen name Stephen (if Woolf had been a man, she would probably had gone to university), was educated at home by her father: The women artists of the time were unwanted at the universities thus barred from attending and kept in solitude in there own homes tending to the children and/or other household necessities ... and/or other predominantly male literary forms, that she encountered would she experience her first taste of true literary art. Although she would generally find these literary treasures a very pleasing and insightful example o...

• Word Count: 1471
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Graduate