... complexity of children's literature. The argument I put forward in this paper is such: children's literature is a vital tool in didactic fiction, as in the words of Phillip Pullman, it teaches lessons "about what it means to be human, to grow up, to suffer and learn- (assignment handout, 11/3/03). I will argue why, and discuss how, Little Women and Peter Pan fall ... the critic Rebecca Lukens points out, Alcott's idealistic writing reflects her father's efforts "to form the perfect social community- (291). In other words, she is teaching her young readers the lessons about growing up, a...

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

... and This Earth of Mankind. Both Allende and Pamoedya seem to develop some strong female characters who affect the male characters. Men in both novels are attracted to physically beautiful women and have powerful urges to seduce them. The relationship between Rosa the Beautiful and Esteban Trueba is an example ... European woman; on the contrary they look up to her because she is a woman with her own independent ideas and beliefs. The female characters in both novels also possess wisdom and intuition. In The House of the Spirits, for example, Alba is an educated woman who is very open-min...

• Word Count: 1678
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... Victorian era. Natural careers available were rarely more adventurous than domestic roles such as maids, or in Charlotte's case, governesses- an occupation echoed throughout her novels as a testament of her girlhood. Women were objects of attraction; existing to serve the purpose of the male eye alone, and in a time of ... tested by society in more ways than one. Beauty was the foundation of power, and a common presentation of women without said asset was hardly accidental. Her novels were merely an excerpt into the authority a female could command, with or without a face 'worthy' of...

• Word Count: 2473
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... Matilda, an adversary of Satan himself and Eve, the biblical character who threw all men's chances away by condemning us to constant sin. We see cruel women in both these novels, the prioress in "The Monk" torn apart for her sins and the Marchesa in "The Italian", jealous of her own son, Vivaldi and in league with the villain of the ... who eventually transform into vampires after being gouged in the throat by the teeth of a male vampire. Seduction techniques such as this are utilised in novels such as Bram Stoker's "Dracula". Men are the evil of these novels, taking advantage of helple...

• Word Count: 2147
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Henrik Ibsen was born in Skien on 1828, a tiny coastal town. He wrote many novels and plays in his age. Many of which dealt with satire and drama. One such novel was a Doll's House written in 1879. It was a social drama on marriage, in which a ... woman refuses to obey her husband and walks out from her apparently perfect marriage. The work caused a sensation and toured Europe and America. Amongst all his novels and plays Doll's House managed to encompass an important subject, women's rights, which would not be dealt with for be until the mid 20th century. His insight upon such matters ... a...

• Word Count: 1539
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... want to be reckless and free to direct their lives. Today's society women strive to be leaders, and to prove they can accomplish and exceed in a difficult environment. Many fictional novels today have leading women roles, who excel in places men do not. The progression of women's roles in society has been expanding, although men still hold most of the power ... and independent with freedom, or they were tamed wives with one job, being a perfect housewife and mother. Wholehearted Leaders By the 21st century, feminist views show in many young adult novels. For example, Divergent by Veroni...

• Word Count: 1708
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... So Long a Letter and Half of a Yellow Sun, many of these themes are present and examined through the lens of the female friendships and sisterhood represented in the novels. The women in these novels use female autonomy and cooperation in order to address these issues and cultivate an African feminist aesthetic. Throughout So Long a Letter, Bâ highlights the importance of female friendships ... of female relationships to bring about liberation and empowerment. This focus on female relationships is also prevalent in Half of a Yellow Sun, through twin sisters Olanna and Kainene. In both ...

• Word Count: 1849
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... autobiography was written with the inspiration of her disrupted life. Many say it reflects the pain of her struggle to overcome restrictions that were placed in her environment. The autobiographical novels of this great poet, actor, writer, and educator are read and taught in schools and universities and continue to inspire many critical responses. Some critics have referred to her poetry ... , Angelou's readers, mainly black women, aren't affected by what critics have to say about her work. They read her work because it is enlightening and expressive. With ten best-selling novels, Angel...

• Word Count: 1257
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Fasick, Laura. "Sentiment, Authority, and the Female Body in the Novels of Samuel Richardson." Essays-in-Literature. Fall 1992, 19:2, 193-203. Laura Fasick is concerned with the relationship between the attempt to split the female mind and body and authority. ... Louise Kibbie deals with the relationship of the female characters in both Pamela and Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure to the competing forms of property present in both novels. She states that both novels are "concerned with the tension between two ideas of female character, represented by two versions of property: a narrative of cur...

• Word Count: 1788
• Approx Pages: 7

... boys were a little lighter than those performed by girls. Passage to Adulthood After the circumcision rite, which was performed at the age of 10-12 years, girls were given thorough lessons to usher them into adulthood. They were considered adults and eligible for marriage thus ready to bear children. They were taught how a responsible wife should behave and how she should ... "Daily Nation" extract " .What terrified me most was thinking about the negative effects of female genital mutilation as they had been explained to us in school. It was from these lessons at Enoritit Primary School...

• Word Count: 2353
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

American author Kate Chopin has written two published novels and over a hundred short stories. Most of her stories are set in her hometown of Louisiana and focus on the lives of women. Based on the literary criticisms researched, a lot ... , where she would live the rest of her life. Within the next decade, after beginning to write poetry and fiction, she had published twenty poems, ninety-five short stories, two novels and eight literary criticisms. A number of her stories including "The Awakening" and "Story of An Hour" feature wives and mothers who feel enslaved. She created works ... ...

• Word Count: 1852
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

While reading this novel, the reader can encounter some features of it which are typical of Victorian novels: the plot is quite realistic, the characters belong to the middle class, and some of them can be described as typical Victorian characters (for instance, Tom's and Maggie's aunts). On ... herself and becomes Tom's rescuer when the flooding of the Floss destroys the mill. The characters' actions are in some kind of a discrepancy with actions of characters in other Victorian novels. The characters are responsible for what they are doing. They often know that, but, still, they find some ...

• Word Count: 1400
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... of course she must be beautiful. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Jane Austen's Persuasion, both advocate the ideal woman, in many ways by contrasting how the protagonists in the novels, Jane and Anne, act to how an "ideal woman" should look and behave. The characteristics described of a woman in Wakefield's work are well presented in both our heroines ... norms and behave like the "ideal woman". Women have the power to create their own happiness; the contrasting of how Jane and Anne behave shows this repeatedly. The novels stirred up discussions at the time they were written because o...

• Word Count: 1474
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography

... struggle to survive in a politically torn and male-dominated country. Good! Eva Luna was my introduction into the world of Isabel Allende's novels and I have to admit that in the beginning I had to struggle with the stereotype of "romantic pulp novels- to get myself through the first twenty-five - thirty pages (Wilson). I think that a reader, in this case me, starts to appreciate ... ...

• Word Count: 2213
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... she wants out of life, when it chooses her to be its mother by making the final transformation into a growing baby inside her body. The point of view for both novels was third person omniscient, and it was constantly changing between characters and scenarios. The majority of the characterization was round. Many of the characters in these books were not the ... can create in people. There is plenty of suspense and action intermingled with scenes full of Love, Hate, and Despair. This book is an honorable example of Fantasy Fiction. Both novels are very enjoyable reading material, and the ...

• Word Count: 2201
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

... , and grandparents"(pg 9). Her father's library was not big, but she still went to it to read books (pg 9). Abigail's favorite books were novels by Samuel Richardson (pg 11). She got a lot of her ideas from reading Richardson's novels, especially the book Sir Charles Gradison. The book "gave the woman of innocense the sheltered environment necessary ....realization of her full potential" (pg ... ...

• Word Count: 1735
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... Tradescant, both an adventurer and the king's gardener. Jordan travels with him, but his most important travels seem to be those in his mind. Sexing the cherry is unlike many novels. The book doesn't seem to set time in a linear fashion (i.e. time is flexible). Both Dog Woman and Jordan are characters who have traits opposite to their own. This is an ... to Dog Woman's. Some might argue that her style is not that dissimilar to the average writer today. Although many writers today do have unusual styles and thoughts in their novels, Winterson has been able to do this successfully while p...

• Word Count: 1556
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

In the mid-Victorian period women have been represented in many different ways, using various forms of literature, for example through poetry, novels, and newspaper articles and also in visual form through paintings and etchings, they show how women were represented, how fathers, husbands and society treated them in general. The mid-Victorian ... as being around 1851-1870, a period of "intense and prolific activity in literature, especially by novelists and poets, philosophers and essayists," (The Critical Poet). Unlike the earlier romantic 19th century novels of Jane Austen whose characters...

• Word Count: 1599
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... , and control over their thoughts and actions. These general ideas and numerous others are present throughout Charlotte Bronte's novel, Jane Eyre, and Virginia Woolf's essay, A Room of One's Own. Both novels express themes of the courage women must possess in order to succeed, the history of the assertive superiority of men, and the idea that in order for two opposite sexes ... who relies upon the woman. Woolf recognizes the fact that woman and man must coexist together in equality, thriving off one another's strengths and flaws. The themes portrayed in these novels were extremely contro...

• Word Count: 1348
• Approx Pages: 5

... . Through further analysis of some stereotypical female roles from Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony, and Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman it will become evident that the females in these two novels are themselves heroes. Some stereotypical roles that women will often fulfill in literary works are, what I will be naming, the passive female, the unsympathetic woman, and the new woman. All ... her family and be strong for them; her character is worthy of the readers respect and approval. Marian and Lily may have played passive, relatively non-active roles in the novels but they were also stro...

• Word Count: 1599
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... specifically talking about a man which also makes it so I have no connection to the song. This is not the only song I felt no connection with. Another song was "Daddy Lessons." This song is about a girl growing up in a country town with a tough father. It focuses purely from a women's perspective about the ... lessons her father told her. The lyrics show that a girl grew up tough and her dad didn't want anyone to take advantage of her. Some of the lyrics include " Came ... ...

• Word Count: 1879
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... . She remembers: "There was always music in our house, either records or the radio or someone singing on the bathtub."( Krupp 144 ) Soon her father wanted her to take piano lessons, because most of the family played an musical instrument and his father was really big on that. This was not to be, Madonna was her father's favorite and persuaded him ... to let her take dance lessons instead. In 1977, she went to New York, studying with noted choreographer Alvin Ailey and taking modeling jobs. Two years later, Madonna moved to France to join a show featuring disco ... ...

• Word Count: 2407
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography

... 21st centuries. Some of the more modern heroines have aspects of them like independence and determination that it would be excellent for young woman to aspire to. There are social lessons to be explored in this movie. Mulan is expected to be a good wife, not a war hero. Her credibility and good sense are compromised exclusively on the basis of her gender ... ;no matter what the gender "to aspire to reach their dreams, no matter how out-of-reach they may seem. Snow White, on the other hand, has good moral lessons about not trusting strangers, but it also could persuade children to discrim...

• Word Count: 2236
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... remains ignorant of just how dangerous her situation is (239). Antonia's virtue prevents her from having the knowledge to properly protect herself and causes her to be one of the novels weakest characters. To become a stronger character and have control over personal control in this novel, a woman must come face to face with her sexuality and learn to use it to ... ...

• Word Count: 1567
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... as a pillar of English literature. She was an adventurist, an abolitionist, feminist, and civil rights advocate who used pen and paper to reiterate her ideology, which is demonstrated through her novels, Oroonoko: or the Royal Slave and The Rover. Her works and the influences they cast prove Aphra Behn to be a dramatist worthy of the ranks of other famous British writers ... ...

• Word Count: 2238
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate