This paper contrasts the importance of femalefriendships as described in J. Bauman's "Winter into Spring" and despaired of in "The Existential Paralysis of Women" by Simone de Beauvoir.
Abstract This paper explains that, although male dominated society excludes and exploits women, as portrayed in Ibsen's "A Doll House", the importance of friendship between women can overcome their marginality and restore women to the center of a husbanding society. The author compares Bauman's work to Beauvoir's and points out that Beauvoir writes about the exploitation of women in Western bourgeois society; whereas, Bauman recounts the trials of women in the void of that society smashed to pieces by the Nazis. The paper relates that Beauvoir sees the "eternal feminine" nature of a woman as shaped by the male dominated, patriarchal social structure even if women join together to off set the "masculine universe". The author thenstates that, in contrast, in Bauman's existential account of WWII, the friendship of five women who do "band together" to establish a "counter-universe" and survive is not only important but also vital.
From the Paper "The women in Mrs. Pietrzyk's room joined their common longings for life and love to link themselves back into the woman's world of hope, mystery, the sway of her body moving through the ebbs and tides, and the attainment of woman's wisdom. They did this with nothing but their hearts in a time of death. The rejected martyrdom and the paralysis mold. De Beauvoir says the lot of woman's life is passive waiting, but in truth nothing is more powerful: "I've been thinking now about this glorious future that I dreamed up last night. Will it come true? Shall I ever live a free, useful, happy life with someone I love and who loves me? "
Abstract This paper uses the characters of Janie from "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston and Rigoberta Menchu? from her autobiography, "I, Rigoberta Menchu? An Indian Woman in Guatemala," to discuss the portrayal of strong, ethnic females in literature.
From the Paper "The protagonist in Their Eyes decides to thwart conventional thinking and strike out on her own, seeking approval from herself. Janie decides that she is not content with a loveless marriage. She internally feels that the only true way to live is to live a life filled with love. Disenchanted with her state of affairs, she seeks "confirmation of the voice and vision" (Hurston 15) and wants to find the "acknowledged answers" (Hurston 16) to the questions she has inside. The decision to not be satisfied with status quo definitely aids Janie in the exploration of her purpose on earth. Rigoberta too has a decision to make that will transform her life."
Abstract This paper takes a look at the concept of friendship in the Ancient World by comparing two pieces of literature - "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and "The Iliad". It analyzes the friendships of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and Achilles and Patroclus and shows how these are representative of the times. Through trials such as death, disease and heroic rescues, these friendships survived.
From the Paper "The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Iliad are both ancient literary works that offer us insight into the lives and values of our ancestors. A common theme of each is the effects of friendship on powerful men. Unlike most modern cases, social standing and imbalances in power complexly influenced the nature of these friendships. Men with great power sometimes saw their friends as servants. However, despite the apparent inequalities, it is obvious that the friendships were intensely valued as more than a servant relationship when the heroes Gilgamesh and Achilles experience the loss of their friends. For these two characters, the deprivation of friendship proves to be life altering."
Abstract This paper examines how Edith Wharton's short story, "Roman Fever", offers a dark glimpse into the characters of two upper-class women, Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade, who have known each other for years in New York City, and who serendipitously meet in Rome where they are vacationing with their daughters. It analyzes how Wharton's exploration of the characters of these two women illustrates much about the nature of femalefriendships, jealousy, and forgiveness. It also shows how the character study illuminates Ansley and, especially, Slade as exemplifying few of the cardinal virtues of wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice.
From the Paper "As they sit knitting together on the terrace, Slade muses about their pasts, insulting Mrs. Ansley thoroughly in her mind. This silent, passive character assault indicates that Slade lacks true courage. Although her past action of luring Ansley with a fake letter by her fianc? demonstrates a degree of compunction, brashness, and guts, Slade nevertheless acts passive-aggressively. She allowed an irrational, as yet unfounded jealousy cause her to entrap her friend. Then she lets the wound fester for decades. Her envy of Ansley and her upper-crust lifestyle also cause her to compare their daughters and Slade feels that her Jenny is inferior to the livelier, spunkier Babs Ansley."
Abstract This paper examines four children's stories concerning the theme of friendship and the cultures in which they were written. The cultures are France, Spain, England, and America.
Abstract This paper examines the process through which a typical friendship is developed and maintained, looking particularly at the ways in which interactions with other people help to mold our sense of self and how interpersonal communication is the bedrock of friendship using examples from the movies "Steel Magnolias" and "City Slickers". This paper incorporates a theoretical model developed by Long and Wood as well as drawing upon the writer's personal experience and popular notions of friendship.
From the Paper "Many of us would like to think that someone deep down inside of us is our own true self, a person who never compromises or is compromised, an independent person who makes up her own mind, who is never subject to peer pressure or societal influences, a person who stays the same through thick and thin, who endures over time and through all challenges.
But while such an image of a pure, unchanging and incorruptible self is appealing (and has its roots in the Romanticism of the 19th century, which taught that we should believe in the innate goodness of all people, a reverence for individuality, and in the primacy of the connection between the pure human heart and the state of nature), it is in fact not an accurate one. In fact, while our sense of self is dependent on some internal factors, such as our genetic heritage and our physical state of well-being, most of our sense of who we are is derived from the people with whom we interact, and especially our family and friends. We are not in fact always the same person: We differ from one situation to the next and certainly from one year (or decade) to the next."
Abstract This paper contends that Aristotle and Derrida both devote a great deal of attention to the issue of friendship. This paper analyzes both men's opinions on the question of whether reciprocity is necessary in friendship.
Abstract This paper examines the difference in depression levels among female adolescents attending rural schools versus female adolescents attending urban schools. The paper looks at the rationale for the study; presents a review of related literature; methodology and implications of the study. The focus is on urban versus rural schools.
This paper is a serious research proposal to study the ways in which Latina, female high school students express aggression and focuses on the ways in which both gender and race condition the ways in which they act on aggressive tendencies.
Abstract This paper, a research proposal, examines a number of different sets of literature, including that specifically addressing the ways in which the expression of aggression has a gendered element. The author states, after an extensive review of research methodology, that the research will be based on a quasi-ethnographic qualitative method, consisting primarily of unstructured interviews combined with observation in a naturalistic setting. The paper stresses that, even though boys and girls may exhibit their aggression and cruelty in distinct ways, the effects can be equally detrimental; therefore, teachers, parents, and the children themselves must be able to recognize and work to stop all forms of inter-personal aggression in children and teenagers.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Proposed Methodology
The Data Gathering Method
Database of Study
Comment on Validity of Data
Originality and Limitation of Data
Summary of Research Design
Literature Review
From the Paper "Quantitative research is most valuable when it is used to investigate any behavior (or value or belief) that can be quantified without doing harm to the core concept that is being investigated. Some concepts and behaviors are in fact very difficult to quantify, as Patton (1990) argues. How, for example, can one quantity the idea of religious belief without coming up with a unit that is so far divorced from the idea of faith that the research design has destroyed its own subject? Likewise, subtle measures of aggression are best determined through qualitative methods."
Abstract The writer of this paper discusses the lack of females in the field of American history, up until the 1960s. This paper cites various male historians such as Arthur Schlesinger who stated that historians' silence about women made it seem that half of the U.S. population had not had any impact whatsoever on the country's history. It was in the 1930s when Schlesinger made his statement, a time that had been slanted by male historians. The writer contends and explains that, although there were a number of women during this time that impacted the social, economic and political happenings in the country, they had not been discussed in most history books. This paper examines the events, in the 1960s, that led to the emergence of women who finally took to writing about historical events. This paper also delves into the accomplishments of various female historians, such as Lucy Maynard Salmon, whose work wasn't appreciated till long after her death.
From the Paper "There were women writing about this period. However, their work was hardly acknowledged. Woloch notes that several middle-class women, such as Elizabeth Butler and Mary Van Kleeck, "conducted scholarly inquiries into conditions of women's wage earning in various industries." Also, Vassar historian Lucy Maynard Salmon extensively questioned servants and employers for a major study of domestic employment. Such women gained a much better idea of the women's involvement in the labor movement than many of their male counterparts because they worked undercover to learn what was occurring in the real world. Kleeck studied New York City's female factory workers and child laborers. For decades she served as director of the Russell Sage Foundation's department of industrial studies, where her work helped bring about legislative reform by providing valuable information on the conditions in various trades."
An analysis of how form contributes to the representation of the 'female malady' in Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" and in Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper".
Abstract This paper examines how the imposed confinement of Gilman's heroine in "The Yellow Wallpaper" drives her to insanity as a means of liberation and how in contrast, Walker's heroine in "The Color Purple" goes through rage to achieve hers. It discusses how form contributes, in Gilman's story, to represent the 'female malady' as insanity and in Walker's novel, to represent it as liberating rage.
From the Paper "The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story covering, chronologically, one summer. The protagonists spend it in a house in the countryside as part of the medical treatment prescribed to the heroine for her "nervous depression" (Gilman, p. 348), diagnosed by her husband and her brother, both physicians. The heroine spends most of this period in one room, deemed by her husband as the most suitable (given her "condition") and which she dislikes from first sight because of its yellow wallpaper. The isolation and, mainly, the prohibition to work (write), slowly drive her to insanity."
Abstract The writer presents the view that both of these novels illustrate the cultural conflicts of women's social and economic status. These two literary pieces challenge the stereotypical roles of women by depicting the female characters as heroic, wealthy and experienced in areas outside of the household.
From the Paper "To fully understand and appreciate the challenging characteristics in The Wife of Bath, one must acknowledge the traditional and antifeminist writings that dominated literature at that time. The medieval church identified certain characteristics with men and others for women. The rational, intellectual, and more authoritative side of human nature predominated in men while the irrational, material, and sensual side of human nature predominated in women. These beliefs were revealed throughout much of the literature written before and during Chaucer's time. One of the central sources for his work follows that of Jerome's letter Adversus Jovinianum. "
A paper which details the contributions writers such as Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe and Mary Wollstonecraft made to the emancipation of female literary talent.
Abstract The paper shows that the objective during the time of revelation in early nineteenth century Britain was for British women writers to give of themselves in a more defiant manner, setting themselves apart from the calmer, more feminine climate that had heretofore inhabited British literature. The paper shows that British women writers decided they wanted to be better recognized for their inherent literary contributions without being labeled either too feminine or too masculine; rather, they wanted to write like a man without having to be branded by the stigma that typically came with it. The paper explores how authors such as Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe and Mary Wollstonecraft contributed to this emancipation movement.
From the Paper "Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe and Mary Wollstonecraft represent an era of the Romantic Period where women were beginning to come out of their literary shells and confront the strongly emotional and defiant aspects of writing that their male counterparts had harbored for so many years prior. With their guidance, subsequent British women writers were given the much-needed opportunity to express themselves in such a manner that embraced both their feminine and masculine sides."
Abstract This paper focuses on three female writers whose works were published in the first of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and Angela Weld-Grimke. The paper attempts to show how each of these women described their own lesbian feelings in different ways, reflecting their different experiences of being a lesbian through their writing expressions in the early twentieth century.
From the Paper "The three female writers described in this essay all lived during the first half of the twentieth century, when lesbianism was not as socially acceptable as in the modern era. Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein were both noted authors in their lifetimes: the acceptance of Angela Weld-Grimke has taken considerably longer. However, they all demonstrated lesbian feelings in their lives, and this is reflected, some believe, in their literature also."
Abstract This is a literary analysis between women and literature itself. It compares three different female characters from three different stories. The stories chosen for the paper are from Henrik Ibsen's text: "Hedda Gabler", the character is Hedda Gabler, the second story is "A doll house", and the character is Nora, and the last story is in the story "Medea" and the character is Medea herself.
