... norms by rejecting them altogether. It is not necessary to judge Gertrude's actions, or those of the other female characters who have been examined here; rather, 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 ... avoids an overly facile approach to solving women's problems, and he similarly avoids reducing women to one-dimensional characters. Finally, how can the reade...

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

... . As women grew as literary writers by reading and responding to their contemporaries, their literary tradition grew with them. For instance, In North Carolina the number of published women writers in the whole of the 1800's totaled 11, from 1900 to 1929 - 10, from 1930 to 1959 - 47, from 1960 to 1979 - 100 and, from 1980 to 1992 - 114. (Statistics compiled by Ginny Daley ... first woman writers who, through their strong will and courageous stands against the male oriented culture of the day, eventually formed the tradition of women writers that exists today. In addition to the fortitude...

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

... Old Arcadia Sidney is quick to dismiss his pastoral romance as an "idle work". Such a comment invites the reader to look past this initial reflection. In a highly artificial tableau, his mirror offers a distorted manifestation of Elizabethan court and the Queen herself, one angle presenting a warped realm, the other a cautionary tale to his dismissive monarch. The body politic is a ... listeners trapping them with obsequiousness before asserting her own views and desires. She offered "hearty thanks for the good zeal and loving care of her people" in her first speech to parliament, and a...

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

... the influence that 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 years with lead them to become more financially independent which has also caused females to gain more ... or consider that as being helpful as the division between how many days each spouse washes up is not even and it's segregated. In her own research she found little evidence of symmetry in Young and Willm...

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

... that the title was chosen to show how girls came to define themselves progressively through their bodies, thus becoming the primary project of the female society. Brumberg argues that there is a mismatch between biology and culture in the lives of contemporary adolescent girls. She states that "Although girls now mature sexuality earlier than ever before, contemporary American society provides fewer ... " as opposed to "good looks." This emphasis deals with the fact that the lives of young women in the nineteenth century had a very different orientation from those of girls today. Being c...

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

... the extent to which this supposedly invaluable entity was treated as a bargaining tool, a material representation of the value of a "proper" woman. In the face of Roderigo's urgent persuasions, Violenta claims to be "a maidwho knows the the true estimation of virtue" and counters his dramatic claims of death by simply stating, "You very eloquently tell me you shall die if I continue ... or never to be regained." Perhaps somewhat astonishingly, Violenta is not adverse to Count Roderigo's suit; rather, her objections lie in the Count's intentions of having Violenta trade in her virginal st...

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