... (Harvard website). Chaucer's vehicle to maneuver between the gender roles was the WB caricature. Through means of reversal, Chaucer leads his main female character down the road of maleness. I will argue that by using this technique Chaucer is able to create a perceptive critic of misogynist orthodoxy who ... convince while traveling the road to Canterbury (Biebel 64). How she chooses to travel is a minor aspect of crossing the lines of cultural gender expectations. She is also described as an efficient business person, not afraid to verbalize her desires, and she laughs and jokes in [m...

• Word Count: 2959
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography

... "to-be-looked-at-ness". She offers that female characters add nothing or very little to actual elements of plot and character but rather are subjected to male scopophilia, the fetishistic and voyeuristic, due to phallocentricism and psychoanalytic fear of castration. She laments the way ... subtext. She subtly bemoans these tendencies and offers hopes to "[transcend] outworn or oppressive forms, or [dare] to break with normal pleasurable expectations in order to conceive a new language of desire."4 This implies that an awareness of the way pleasure and beauty elicits a scopophilic gaze .....

• Word Count: 4301
• Approx Pages: 17
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... women as creatures who can stand the heat! the heat of Nature and the heat/stress/pressure imposed upon them by the male-dominated culture, social expectations and lifestyle. She wins a victory for women in this issue of 'having the right to exist' and also the issue of sexuality and women's ... woman on the roof sunbathing again but this time she had tied a red scarf around her breasts and wore a brief red bikini pants. Lessing reveals the character of the woman here. She is very bold, totally in control of herself, individualistic, independent and not easily intimidated. Surprisingly ...

• Word Count: 4111
• Approx Pages: 16
• Grade Level: High School