Throughout the modern world, women fight to gain equality in all settings of life. Maxine Hong Kingston, in an effort to portray this struggle through a series of carefully interwoven stories, blurs the line between both fictional and nonfictional struggles in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. Kingston’s use of declarative sentences, active voice, and effective variation of speech successfully manages to continuously engage the reader in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, while adding a personal touch throughout the story. Kingston’s use of declarative sentences highlights the stereotypes women face while simultaneously contextualizing information for the reader. Macauley and Lanning claim that “a string of declarative sentences”, especially when “built of cliches”, quickly become boring (Macauley and Lanning 58). These sentences have the effect of creating an impersonal situation devoiding the reader from a personal response. Kingston’s use of declarative sentences, however, aim to do exactly that. Kingston describes how her aunt was driven to commit suicide because the baby she was having was a girl, while for boys “there is some hope of …show more content…
Active voice serves as a way for a character to speak with “a slowly growing ability” and a “voice of his own” (Macauley and Lanning 64). In this sense, the active voice allows for both character development (a slowly growing ability), and individual character expression (voice of his own). This is shown when Kingston goes from stating “I’ll stay with you” to “ I praised the new infants” (Kingston 23,33). The shift in active voice characterizes a shift from a dependent Kingston to a strong independent Kingston capable of looking after others. The use of the active voice not only provides an outlet for Kingston to speak through, but also catalyzes her character
In the text “Broken Sentences,” Anna Deavere Smith is informing the reader of the stories of African American females who are incarcerated. Before Smith incorporates the women’s stories into the text, Smith goes into a backstory of her childhood. She speaks of the quality of her childhood and tells it as not only pure, but also as a revealing time period. Also, she speaks of her experience with the prison setting during her time in the Girl Scouts. Smith encompasses this short anecdote to not only set up an ambience of innocences, but to also foreshadow the testimonies to come.
Later when Janie marries Jody Starks, we see another example of a member of the “in-group” enforcing the negative stereotypes the dominant culture has imposed upon them. Jody remembers the “other men figuratively wallowing in” Janie’s hair (55). He has her cover it up because “she was there in the store for him to look at, not those others” (55). Janie’s hair is a symbol of her sexuality and womanhood. Janie remarks that when Jody forced her to start wearing the scarf, their sexual relationship suffered.
“The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says ‘it’s a girl’.” - Shirley Chisholm, a late 1970’s educator, author and the first black woman elected to the United States Congress. Chisholm and other women for generations have been victims of male projected and specified stereotypes. Due to the impact of the male opinion on women in society, the female characters in both novels suffer from emotional, physical and psychological stereotypes. Steven Galloway, a critically acclaimed male author, is responsible for the literary work titled “The Cellist Of Sarajevo”.
Firstly these texts have new themes and problems that could not have been predicted by Campbell’s original theory that focused so much on historical literature. Second, and most importantly, a large number of young adult dystopian fiction features female protagonists. These female characters have entirely different struggles that are interwoven with their gender and the conflicts that arise because of it. This text is still important to the critical conversation as it started the discussion and theory that the hero of a story follows a specific arc that is mirrored throughout texts but needs to be analyzed more for the ways in which it no longer works and less for the merits of the original
United States Women during World War 2 Women are part of our history, they made us who we are. The women in World War 2 where a huge part of our history. When or fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons went off to the war. There was a symbol that every woman believed to help the world.
Over the course of this book, she learns how important it is to speak up because if you stay silent you're letting the person who immensely changed your life for the worse win and get away with things that are unacceptable. In our society young women are being assaulted and are the victims of rape quite frequently and this book really stretches the importance of speaking up for your rights and to
In conclusion, both short stories consist of sexism in a feminist lens. However, “Soldier’s Home” is more sexist than “The Necklace” because of a female’s greater dependence on a male to construct her self-identity in “Soldier’s Home”. In addition, there is an unspoken hierarchy between male and female characters in “Soldier’s Home” unlike “The Necklace”. Moreover, a female is socially restricted in a confined space to limit the spectrum of movements and activities in the outside world. Female characters in both texts are portrayed by male writers, which exhibit the readers about how men consider about women and gender roles.
things they can't help?” A memorable quote by the well known author CS Lewis in his novel Till We Have Faces, a question that could stick in the back of one's mind, always on the edge of one's thoughts. Author, Maxine Hong Kingston, in her collection of stories, The Woman Warrior, memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts has a clear dissenting voice that displays criticism of the heavily impressed upon idea of shame of femininity and female sexuality. She displays the harmful effect shame can have as a powerful force used to control women to maintain them as the submissive sex. Her short stories show multiple times that shame is a driving power in the story.
Throughout history, women have faced many restrictions set by men. Man’s desires have overpowered the actions and thinking of women. In the past, women have only had the role of being a housewife while other professions implied a rebellious nature. The novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, is set in Colombia, where women have to follow the stereotypical jobs of a woman.
With a change in consciousness due to a mystical experience, women need language that articulates the nothingness that they have endured into an opportunity for awareness and validation. During this stage of insight and new naming, women have the ability to put their experiences into a language that corresponds with women’s orientations in the world, overcoming male-dominated dualities. Naming women’s experiences in literature and fiction allows other women to then find their own awakening and validation (23). This model of Women’s Spiritual Quest is exemplified throughout Deborah Lipp’s memoir, as she goes through victimization and questioning her spirituality, to overcoming dualities and expressing her understanding of the
The Woman Warrior, Book by Maxime Hong Kingston This paper will discuss the narrative strategies in The Woman Warrior by Maxime Hong Kingston. Particular emphasis will be placed on the controversy of the genre, the informative aspect of the content and the narrative intent of the text. The Woman Warrior has generated much controversy since it was first published in 1976 (Wong 249).
Kingston’s mother exposes the story of her aunt to her as somewhat of a warning. Kingston’s mother explains to her how crucial it is to understand that what she does as a woman in their society is looked upon closely
Many critics agree on one fact about Canadian author Alice Munro: one of her most notable qualities in regards to her work is the distinct use of realism in her writing. Her writing provides a strong sense of familiarity to the reader, while also containing stronger metaphorical meanings that one can note when they begin to closely look at her work. Her short story “Boys and Girls” portrays the socialization of a young girl, once very close to her father and unaware of any sort of gender bias within her society, into a young woman with a pessimistic view of femininity and her expected position in society. This story shows the socialization process in a way that makes it easy to recognize, illustrating circumstances that the reader can notice the blatant sexism and misogyny; however, its portrayal is extremely realistic, allowing the reader to recall how oblivious they may have been in the past during times that they have been impacted by social biases in our world. Critics of Munro typically agree on her overall theme of femininity and coming of age in her writings; “Boys and Girls” emphasizes the ways in which young girls are socialized into a seemingly natural understanding of the sexist expectations and gender roles.
With these sets of declarative sentences, I am examining a specific part of the football team, the linebackers. These men are primarily focused on their season and their schoolwork. That puts them at a group mindset because they spend most of their time thinking about the season and the team. These declarative sentences are meant to determine if this specific group leans towards either an individualistic or a group mindset. Being that they are thinking about the team for most of their time they should be in a group think mindset.
The role of women in literature crosses many broad spectrums in works of the past and present. Women are often portrayed as weak and feeble individuals that submit to the situations around them, but in many cases women are shown to be strong, independent individuals. This is a common theme that has appeared many times in literature. Across all literature, there is a common element that causes the suffering and pain of women. This catalyst, the thing that initiates the suffering of women, is essentially always in the form of a man.