Steinbeck uses Curley's wife's character to depict the inferiority of women. He also uses her to inform the reader of the dire range of choices for women of that era. Steinbeck creates the character of Curley's wife to show the reader that life as a house wife is dull and repetitive. He does that by making Curley's wife not fit into the expected mould of a married house wife. She is a lonely character constantly searching for attention, even if it is from ranch workers, cripples and the coloured.
She dislikes her husband and had a desire to become a movie star. She is not seem as an individual and has no name. This shows how a woman belonged to their husband. This essay is going to examine in detail how Curley’s wife has been presented in this novel. Steinbeck presents her as a negative married woman.
The two texts present a woman from a disadvantaged point of view and how she struggles to establish a foothold in a male-dominated society. In Hamlet, analysis of the plight of women falls on Ophelia and Gertrude. The two women endure chauvinistic suffering and finally break loose. Gertrude transgresses the patriarchal bounds of femininity by marrying soon after her husband’s death, much to Hamlet’s chagrin. Consequently, he refers to her as “frail” (Act 1, Scene 2, line 146).
To what Extent does Steinbeck present Curley’s Wife sympathetically? In the novel of Mice and Men, there is a woman merely referred to as Curley’s Wife. Her lack of identity could imply that she is not a human, but rather a possession of her husband. This attracts the readers sympathy as she is not given a name of her own, thus showing she is overpowered by her husband. Steinbeck presents Curley’s Wife in different perspectives.
Kamara Bellis Buckner English 1301 25 JUN 09 The Victorian Woman’s Insane Treatment in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” During the Victorian era, woman were to be dependant and obedient of their husbands. They were not allowed to pursue careers or interests. Gilman, being a woman of this time experienced this oppression first hand. She had been diagnosed with a nervous condition and was ordered to bed rest after the birth of her child. This ill-fated treatment prescribed by her physician Weir Mitchell, whom she referenced in her story, drove her to the brink of insanity.
Once married, all of her inheritance (if any existed), would belong to her husband as well as anything else she owned including her own body. Not only was this upheld by the laws during those times, but the marriage vows were inclusive of the command of the wife to obey her husband. Divorce was very rarely allowed and if a woman attempted to escape an unhappy marriage, she could be captured by the law and punished. (WordPress, ) Both Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, are written during this era and criticize the male dominated society by demonstrating the negative impact that it had on women during that timeframe. Both women in these stories are symbolically the same character because of the inordinate oppression that they were both experiencing and their passionate, unrelenting desire for freedom.
Are Louise Mallard and the unnamed narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” symbolically the same woman? Wives, who would rather die than continue in the Victorian Era of Matrimony, voice their marriage issue in two poems The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Gilman’s and Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. Both women lived in a patriarchal society. A climate that demands women to be completely subservient to their husband’s in marriage. The issue exposes their feeling of imprisonment not freedom.
The male dominance within the Stepford community highlights the enforcement of patriarchal laws, creating a divide between genders. The lack of individuality represented through Carol Van Sant and the transformed ladies of Stepford reflect the want for female beauty and the characterisation of the Stepford families reflects the want for a nuclear family. Through the characterisation, The Stepford Wives intertwines the concerns of the 1970’s to create a fierce reminder of the freedom women have gained and is a critique of the world, which the author knew so well. Despite having gained the right to vote, during this time, women felt trapped within a domestic sphere. The women became wives and mothers without a voice.
In the 1930s America, women were seen as inferior to women. They were deprived of many rights and their default position was thought to be at home. Married women were by law forbidden to work and those unmarried were reduced to the worst jobs of society. In Of Mice and Men which is essentially a poignant tale about the friendship between two men, Steinbeck presents to us an unvaried sample of women. One of which actually speaks and appears for herself in person and another who although appears to have some moral values is “dead” and only appears through Lennie as a figment of his imagination.
Because Creon was attempting to become a dominant male figure and became overwhelmed with power he created laws that the society had to abide by. He wanted his laws to override any other religion and any family values. The way in which Creon went about this is conflicted with Antigone because Antigone would not abide by his rules. Creon clearly discriminated against woman and felt as they were inferior to all males. The way in which Creon and Antigone oppose each other adds fuel to the fire in the conflicts between the sexes.