Comparing Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre Essay - 1325 Words

Authors, Jean Rhys and Charlotte Bronte constructed their novels in completely different time periods and came from different influences in writing. Jean Rhys’s fiction book, Wide Sargasso Sea is an interesting relation to Jane Eyre. The female character of Jane Eyre forms into a furiously, passionate, independent young woman. The female character of Jean Rhys’s illustration is a character that Jane will know further on as Rochester’s crazy wife who is bolted in an attic. Jean Rhys further studies this character, where as Charlotte Bronte approved that it was left explained (Thorpe 175). Antoinette, considerably like Jane, evolves in a world with minimal amount of love to offer. Both these women are taken cared of as children by†¦show more content†¦These two novels are both feminist works, although each book leads to feminist problems somewhat differently. Jane has a strong foundation in what woman deserve, as well as achieve specific goals for how she portrays her spot in society being a woman; Antoinette has no knowledge where to start to change herself. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys poses the likelihood that maybe; the gap between women and men can’t be penetrated. Possibly, the unbalance is so great that Antoinette cannot have a feeling of cheerfulness and pleasure that Jane discovers near the end of the novel. Wide Sargasso Sea portrays the fluctuating position of woman in the twentieth century. Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre can single handedly be looked at as signs of feminist texts, however, Wide Sargasso Sea presents itself with more description on post-modern shape of feminism. An interesting insight into grasping the un-similarities of how Antoinette and Jane portray their roles as woman are by noticing their spiritual beliefs. Growing up, Jane would often show signs where she would leave her insecurity in the faith and power of religion. Where is God? What is God? Where is that region? Does it exist? (Pg. 84) Show me, show me the path! (Pg. 422) As Jane begins to become more of an adult, she becomes to have more ofShow MoreRelated Comparing Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte1348 Words   |  6 PagesComparing Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte In the novels Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, the theme of loss can be viewed as an umbrella that encompasses the absence of independence, society or community, love, and order in the lives of the two protagonists. They deal with their hardships in diverse ways. However, they both find ways to triumph over their losses and regain their independence. The women in both novels endure

Growing As A Christian Leader - 1529 Words

Me, Myself, and I: Growing as a Christian Leader Looking back over the years of helping people in their needs and helping them to reach their goals has helped me realize the potential in me for leadership. Leadership skills are not always a gift given to everyone at birth, for some like me, it is something that has to be nurtured and developed. The things that come easily to others are issues I must work at to become proficient, the skills are there, but must be coaxed and encouraged to blossom and exhort the abilities that lie within me. My teenage years were spent teaching Sunday School to the younger children and sharing the love of God with them. Working with the little ones was easy, but as they grew, my confidence did too.†¦show more content†¦Being a successful leader require you have an awareness of yourself. One must be confident of who they are and in their abilities. For me, this is something that has developed over the years. Confidence is not something I was born with but something I had to acquire. Bein g raised and consistently told what you can never accomplish or succeed in, takes a toll in a person’s self-esteem. I had to repeat to myself several times a day for years, Philippians 4:13I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (NKJV) The hardest lesson was to believe that I was of value to someone and could be used for God’s glory. I had to learn that it was not I but Christ who lived inside me who could and would stand up and make a difference. Self-awareness requires me to take stock of who I am, my strengths and my weaknesses. One of my weakness is that life has been a harsh teacher and as a result, I shut down when life gets unbearable. Confusion and confrontations are difficult for me if the situation is about me. Championing others will bring out the monster in me but never having someone to stand up for me, I would pretend the person and situation did not exist. A quote from Maya Angelou impacted my life and changed the way I had been thinking: â€Å"You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do

A description of the immigrants struggle free essay sample

Immigrants often had a difficult and complicated experience when adjusting to life in America. Immigrant families had to find ways to adapt to American society. In some cases immigrants found it necessary to challenge American society. Immigrant ideals were challenged by American values that were pushed on them. Due to these as well as other hardships, immigrants from all walks of life living in America had a genuinely arduous task in adjusting to American life. One of the many hardships immigrants had to overcome was that of appalling living conditions. They did not make enough wages to afford anything remotely close to comfortable living. However, as Jacob Iris states, this does not corrupt immigrants, however it is a powerful argument for the optimists belief that the world is, after all, growing better Immigrants use their poor living conditions not as an excuse but as a lightning rod for growth and expansion. We will write a custom essay sample on A description of the immigrants struggle or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page They use it as a way to better themselves because they started from the bottom and are working their way up. This challenged American ideals because the majority of Americans did not think it was Seibel for people to cross social or economic boundaries. Americans also especially did not want the immigrant population to do so because Americans did not see immigrants as equals both socially and economically. Along with the poor living conditions, another factor in the economic struggle for immigrants was the lack of steady and livable wages. Often times immigrants were forced to work the most difficult and dangerous jobs while making less than desirable wages. In a private letter written back to a relative in Europe, one immigrant wrote that if dont earn SSL . 50 a day, it would not e worth thinking about America Ere in America one must work for three horses. It was a difficult task for an immigrant to earn those types of wages. Stating that one had to work for three horses in America shows that the work they were forced into was backbreaking to the point that it felt like it was the work only three horses could handle properly. All of this culminates to the complete opposite of American ideology. America was supposed to be a land Of Opportunity and easy money. The immigrants were not included in either of these because they were outsiders in the country.Perhaps the most shocking adaptation to American culture by immigrants was child labor in the sasss. Since it was rare for a male to make enough money to provide a living for his family, often times women and children were forced into work as well. For children, this meant working during the day and if possible, going to classes at night. This was detrimental to a childs health in many ways. Besides the fact that children were working in factories with dangerous machinery, they were working long hours only to have to go to class at night. This meant very little sleep.A human body, especially a evolving child, cannot function properly on such a small amount of sleep. This made it that much more dangerous to work because it was hard to focus on the task at hand due to the lack of sleep. Some immigrants were not excited or anxious to adopt American lifestyles in their homes. Many times mothers would try to control the colonization of their children. This could be done so in many ways. One way is making the children speak their native language at home. In doing so, this gives children a link to their heritage.Another way of keeping their children interested in the sat was by telling stories. Story telling encouraged children to think about where they came from and what it was like there. Thankfully for immigrants there were people that wanted to help them adjust to American life. One such person is Jane Addams. In opening the Hull House she gave immigrants a place to gather unwind from all the hard work they had been doing. The Hull House made it a much easier task to adapt to American society in numerous ways. One way is by offering classes in English.One of the biggest issues with immigrants in the workforce is the language barrier. It was difficult to get ones ideas across to a boss or manager without being able to speak any significant English. There were also vocational classes offered. With better job skills, one could hopefully raise his or her income by getting a better job. The Hull House offered children something they had never seen before, Chicago first playground. It gave kids a place to enjoy themselves and gave them a safer environment to play. Perhaps the most important thing that the Hull House offered was a place for class connection.Immigrants came to Hull House and could meet and talk to other immigrants n the same situations. In seeing that they werent alone, it made them feel not as bad about their situation in America. They could relate to each other because they were all going through similar ordeals and feeling the same way about American life. Life in America was a difficult thing for immigrants to grasp in the sasss. It was an uphill battle in trying to assimilate and adapt to American norms and values. There were many barriers standing in their way but with the help of others they were given a chance to break these barriers down.

The Lack of Feminization in Ernest Hemingway’s free essay sample

In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway â€Å"not only contributes to the body of travel literature that offers an insider’s perspective on the lifestyle of the self-exiled writers, artists, and bon vivants who made Paris in the 1920s legendary, but also mythologizes this historic moment† (Field 36). Lady Brett Ashley is a â€Å"symbol of this post-war environment† in that her power comes from â€Å"preying on the weakness of a society devalued by the breakdown of pre-war values and ideals† (Wilentz 189). On the other hand, â€Å"Nurse Ratched—a sterile, distant, and oppressive force who psychologically castrates [her] male patients—represents Kesey’s fears of a cold war era that fosters an impotent, feminine American masculinity through a climate of fear and conformity† (Meloy 3). Kesey’s criticism of a â€Å"cold-war society that he believed fundamentally emasculated men strikes a chord in contemporary America† (4). In both Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, men are not capable of being dominant in their shattered environments; therefore, masculine qualities must ironically be found in the female characters Lady Brett Ashley and Nurse Ratched, which emphasizes the destructive atmospheres of post-war Europe and the Cold War Era. We will write a custom essay sample on The Lack of Feminization in Ernest Hemingway’s or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Lady Brett Ashley is one of Hemingway’s â€Å"richest† female characters; â€Å"her personality gradually emerges as an intriguing mix of femininity and masculinity, strength and vulnerability, morality and dissolution† (Fulton 61). However, she has also been seen as â€Å"either a destroyer of men or fantasy figure—‘bitch or goddess’† (Nolan Jr. 105). Thus, as a true â€Å"Hemingwayesque protagonist†, Lady Brett Ashley â€Å"comprehends many forms of identity besides her maleness and attendant social masculinity† (Onderdonk 67). In addition to her ambiguity, as Richard Fantina described, â€Å"The ideal Hemingway woman demonstrates power and a will to dominate† (84). Although, â€Å"Traditionally, when critics comment on masochism in Hemingway they generally do so idiomatically, without touching on the sexual implications, by referring to the many physical wounds his characters suffer† (Fantina 85). For example, there comes â€Å"an emotional wounding by Brett, which Jake associates with his unmanning sexual wounding during the war† (Adair 73) and he receives â€Å"intense humiliations at the hands of the sexually peripatetic ‘new woman’† (Onderdonk 62). Both masculinity and opposition to the war exist â€Å"at the cost of marginalizing all women† (Michel 127). As Lorie Fulton mentions in her â€Å"Reading Around Jake’s Narration: Brett Ashley and The Sun Also Rises†, â€Å"The most damning critical charges against Brett, the ones that delineate her as a ‘bitch’ with devastating powers, seem rooted in one portion of the text: Jake’s aforementioned assertion that he would probably have had no problems after his injury had he not met Brett† (64). Being described as a ‘bitch’ here â€Å"implies that the condition it names is—that bad thing—to be feminized† (Onderdonk 61). While feminization is not a word Hemingway himself uses, the metaphorical representation of men acting or being treated ‘like a woman’ is a central concern of his works† (Onderdonk 70). However, â€Å"sexual difference† is â€Å"the driving force behind the novel’s other iterations of difference† in The Sun Also Rises (70). For instance, Brett Ashley â€Å"wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that† (Hemingway 29-30). Whatever is meant by ‘all that,’ Brett evokes â€Å"androgyny and gender ambiguity in both physical appearance and attire† (Elliott 77). As Dolores Schmidt said in â€Å"The Great American Bitch†, â€Å"Her freedom to travel, drink, and talk like one of the chaps† is, nonetheless, ‘damned attractive’, although her ability to â€Å"dominate every man she meets dooms her to a life of unfulfillment† (902). In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, themes of â€Å"control, submission, and alienation link to gender, representing similar fears of female empowerment and a male power rendered impotent by a sterile social structure† (Meloy 5). As Daniel Vitkus explains, â€Å"The text celebrates a ‘natural’ maleness which s placed in opposition to a domineering, emasculating representation of the feminine†, much like in The Sun Also Rises (66). â€Å"As Robert Forrey points out, ‘The premise of the novel is that women ensnare, emasculate, and, in some cases, crucify men† (qtd. in Vitkus 66). In the novel’s setting, an insane asylum, â€Å"The wa rd is run by Nurse Ratched, who controls the process of turning men into machines† (Vitkus 65). This process of transforming the patients into â€Å"obedient automatons† involves the loss of their sexuality, their masculinity, and their individuality (65). The decline of the â€Å"single working woman† is apparent in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when she becomes the â€Å"castrating bitch, and the neglectful mother, the selfish pursuer of sensual pleasures† (Alvarado 353). â€Å"Richard D. Maxwell, in ‘The Abdication of Masculinity in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ says that Ken Kesey ‘blames the loss of man’s freedom on his willingness to allow the female to take over his role, dominate him, and a consequence rob him of his masculinity† (qtd. in Alvarado 351). Nurse Ratched derives a great deal of her power from her ability to infantilize and humiliate the men—to render them sexless† (Vitkus 77). Thus, the text associates â€Å"naturalness, maleness, and sexuality: overly aggressive women are presented as a threat to all this and the cause of madness† (78-79). â€Å"The Big Nurse is described as a woman who denies her essential femaleness in order to exercise power over men† (77). The men in the ward have been â€Å"whipped† by the Big Nurse, consequentially taking away â€Å"their ability to laugh and replaced it with fear† (77). Kesey’s description in the novel itself captures both the resentment and uncertainty Nurse Ratched exudes, an obvious factor in her dominant character: Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive baby doll, skin like flesh-colored enamel, blend of white and cream and baby blue eyes, small nose, pink little nostrils—everything working together except the color on her lips and fingernails, and the size of her bosom. A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing, putting those big, womanly breasts on what would of otherwise been a perfect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it. Kesey 11) In this passage, the â€Å"satirical intentions† are clear: â€Å"Big Nurse is inhuman, this time herself rat-like, and a piece of machinery; her breasts create a confusing, bionic effect, which she wants to conceal in her stiff, starched uniform† (Gefin 98). American fiction does include, without a doubt, a long line of â€Å"negative femal e characters, from Dame Van Winkle to Margot Macomber and beyond, and Big Nurse stands out even in this infamous company† (96). Although their novels were written about forty years apart, Hemingway and Kesey both wrote novels dealing with the aftermath of war, and how it affects certain gender roles. For Hemingway, most of his characters are â€Å"truly members of the lost generation and are affected not solely by war†, but also the â€Å"political and social climate in America as well† (Schwarz 180). Likewise, Kesey’s description of the Combine is â€Å"a powerful critique of American society and the function of madness in that society† (Vitkus 65) and her ward is â€Å"a representation of an American culture that has allowed men’s sexual impulses to be repressed†.