The work of the Neapolitan writer Elena Ferrante has received much attention in recent years, becoming the subject of countless articles, not only in the Italian press, but also in many of the world’s most prestigious publications. Paolo di Paolo, writing for La Stampa, provides us with a succinct description of the “caso Ferrante”: “Merita perciò di essere studiato il fenomeno-Ferrante: un’autrice di cui tuttora si ignora l’identità salutata qualche settimana fa dal New Yorker come una grande artista
The 20th century was marked by vast amounts of social change. It was a time that men walked on the moon, women entered the workforce, and new technological advancements altered the culture of America forever. One of the most impactful bringers of change were the ladies behind the Women's Rights Movement. Additionally, in the counterculture movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, youth culture was marked with a period that championed the principles of liberation and forming a community of “the people”: all
In the introduction of her book, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir attempts to define the concept of “woman”, or “femininity” and arrives to the conclusion that woman has been defined as an “other” in relation to men. In this essay I will attempt to explain what de Beauvoir means by defining woman in terms of “other” and will provide some examples as to how this “otherness” is unique in the case of women. De Beauvoir begins her book by asking “what is a woman?” In page 1 she asserts that there
Vincent Chow Biomedical Ethics MED 30000 9/27/15 Cosmetic Surgery and the Oppression of Women in Patriarchal Society For thousands of years, women have been oppressed by the bureaucratic, patriarchal societies of monarchism and now capitalism. Women have been systematically denied ownership of land, denied the right to vote, prevented from having leading positions, forced to submit to males in the household, subjected to unequal pay, denied abortion, forced into prostitution, forced to abide by
One day over the weekend, I was flipping through the pages of one of my textbooks when something caught my attention. I turned back a few pages, and read a title that said, “Women Don’t Ask”by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever. The article dates back to the year of 2003. The article had interesting title, written by a woman so I automatically began to read the article thinking it was going to be feministic. The author, Linda Babcock, is the director of the Ph.D program at Carnegie Mellon University
Anne Bradstreet In this paper I will discuss Anne Bradstreet and the many challenges she faced being a Puritan female poet of the 17th century. I will discuss the following what it means for her to be a female poet in her Puritan society, what personal problems and anxieties she must work through during this time, and was her work sincere or did she have a shrewd strategy to her behind her writings. What does it mean for her to be a female poet in her Puritan society? The best way to answer the
The story of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” explores ideas of female freedom and identity, and more specifically, female liberation. Gilman presents her female characters as self-assertive in a positive manner; however, they also acknowledge that the journey for ideal feminine freedom, liberation, and selfhood in the oppressive environment of a patriarchal society is extremely difficult due to societal scrutiny, self-scrutiny, the entrapment of the convention of marriage, and
During a time where postpartum depression was characterized as just a nervous disorder, Charlotte Gilman wrote a short story about her experience with the unsuccessful rest cure doctors prescribed their female patients. Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is fictional autobiography that she had hoped would expose the ineffectiveness of the rest cure her neurologist, S. Weir Mitchell, prescribed her after the birth of her daughter. The Yellow Wallpaper is a filled with many elements the female gothic genre
Growing up as a female in a third-world country where traditional gender roles still prevail, it is always exciting to find women who push the boundaries of what females are capable of. As a young girl, I always wondered why the heroes in my comic books were always male, why the princesses in my story books were always in dire need of help, and why females were subtly connoted to be weaker. As much as I realize that this essay is not about female rights or feminist movements, I must mention the silent
Arguably, one of the most significant problems within women’s movements has been the one of intersectionality. Groups are often marginalized and silenced in a movement that is supposed to be fighting for the equality and justice for all women. An analysis of “The Social Basis of the Woman Question” by Alexndra Kollontai and “Across the Kitchen Table: A Sister-to-Sister Dialoge” by Barbara and Beverly Smith brings forth a couple of common themes: the role upper class women play in women’s movements