Gender Strategies Essay Example for Free

Gender Strategies Essay Gender strategies refer to a literary strategy and a manner of analyzing literary works. As a strategy, gender strategies pertain to the infusion of differing gender expectations and roles given a patriarchal social context. Men hold a higher position relative to women. This also extends to hints of feminism with literary works showing the efforts made by women to attain defy the patriarchal system and achieve equal status with men or women characters placed in positions of power. As an analytical tool, gender strategies refer to the differentiation between masculine and feminine character traits. The differences in the perspectives of men and women develop with the influence of culture. This also considers the way that the image of women in the literary work captures the difficulties in living in a patriarchal society and the challenges to attain equality. Another line of analysis is by expanding literary themes beyond the male and female to consider the homosexual perspective represented by literary works. (Meyer, 2002) Gender strategies worked in the play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (Shakespeare, 1997). Patriarchal belief and male dominance is one defining theme of the play. Egeus used the law compelling daughters to marry the man chosen by their fathers with refusal punishable by death to force Hermia, his daughter, to marry Demetrius, the man that Egeus wants his daughter to marry. There was also a hint of feminism, with Hermia defying her father and the law by eloping with Lysander. Titania, the queen of the fairies, also holds an equal position with Oberon, the king of fairies by refusing to agree to make her Indian changeling a knight of Oberon. In analyzing the play, the patriarchy experienced by the characters reflects on the Athenian culture that gives men higher status than women do. The male characters, Egeus and Oberon, make the decision and enforce these decisions on the women characters. The women characters, Hermia and even the fairy queen Titania, suffered difficulties in resisting the dominant male characters. References Meyer, M. (2002). The Bedford introduction to literature (6th ed. ). New York: St. Martins Press. Shakespeare, W. (1997). A midsummer nights dream. In G. Blakemore-Evans J. J. M. Tobin (Eds. ), The riverside Shakespeare (pp. 256-283). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Leonardo Da Vinci :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Leonardo Da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and naturalist. He was born in Vinci, Tuscany and was the son of a notary. He studied painting with Verrocchio in Florence. He worked at Ludovico Sforza’s court in Milan as an architect, military engineer, inventor, theatrical designer, sculptor, musician, scientist, art theorist, and painter.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Leonardo wanted his paintings to express the laws of light and space and of sciences like anatomy, botany, and geology. He often accompanied condemned criminals to their execution to study the expressions on their faces and he dissected thirty cadavers to perfect his knowledge of anatomy. He was fascinated with the dynamic movement to be found in nature. He was considered a genius and a very handsome man and is still thought of as on e of the most gifted men in the human race.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One of the things that fascinated everyone about him was the enticing smile he painted on the faces of some women. It was called â€Å"more divine than human† and seemed to move before our eyes. The mystery of the smile is most often associated with the Mona Lisa, one of the world’s most famous images, but it first appeared 20 years before in the angel from The Madonna of the Rocks.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are several theories as to whose smile cast such a spell on Leonardo. One of them is Cecilia Gallerani, who was celebrated for her beauty and was painted by Leonardo when she was seventeen. However, no one knows where that portrait is. It is said that he painted her again as Lady with an Ermine and then as the angel in The Madonna of the Rocks. He seems to have loved the painting of the angel so much that he kept it for himself and painted another one.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Another theory is that, previous to Leonardo, painters outlined their figures, so that they stood away from the background in stiff, immobile poses. He deliberately omitted outlines, blurred and softened the corners of the eyes and mouth, blending light into shadow, giving life to his figures.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Lastly, during the Renaissance, well-born maidens were carefully schooled to â€Å"charm†. Women were advised to close their mouths from time to time at the right corner with a suave movement, and open it slightly at the left as if you were smiling secretly and perhaps Leonardo was just painting the way a thousand well-born ladies smiled in his day.

The Vampire Diaries: Dark Reunion Chapter One

â€Å"Things can be just like they were before,† said Caroline warmly, reaching out to squeeze Bonnie's hand. But it wasn't true. Nothing could ever be the way it had been before Elena died. Nothing. And Bonnie had serious misgivings about this party Caroline was trying to set up. A vague nagging in the pit of her stomach told her that for some reason it was a very, very bad idea. â€Å"Meredith's birthday is already over,† she pointed out. â€Å"It was last Saturday.† â€Å"But she didn't have a party, not a real party like this one. We've got all night; my parents won't be back until Sunday morning. Come on, Bonnie-just think how surprised she'll be.† Oh, she'll be surprised, all right, thought Bonnie. So surprised she just might kill me afterward. â€Å"Look, Caroline, the reason Meredith didn't have a big party is that she still doesn't feel much like celebrating. It seems-disrespectful, somehow-â€Å" â€Å"But that's wrong. Elena would want us to have a good time, you know she would. She loved parties. And she'd hate to see us sitting around and crying over her six months after she's gone.† Caroline leaned forward, her normally feline green eyes earnest and compelling. There was no artifice in them now, none of Caroline's usual nasty manipulation. Bonnie could tell she really meant it. â€Å"I want us to be friends again the way we used to be,† Caroline said. â€Å"We always used to celebrate our birthdays together, just the four of us, remember? And remember how the guys would always try to crash our parties? I wonder if they'll try this year.† Bonnie felt control of the situation slipping away from her. This is a bad idea, this is a very bad idea, she thought. But Caroline was going on, looking dreamy and almost romantic as she talked about the good old days. Bonnie didn't have the heart to tell her that the good old days were as dead as disco. â€Å"But there aren't even four of us anymore. Three doesn't make much of a party,† she protested feebly when she could get a word in. â€Å"I'm going to invite Sue Carson, too. Meredith gets along with her, doesn't she?† Bonnie had to admit Meredith did; everyone got along with Sue. But even so, Caroline had to understand that things couldn't be the way they had been before. You couldn't just substitute Sue Carson for Elena and say, There, everything is fixed now. But how do I explain that to Caroline? Bonnie thought. Suddenly she knew. â€Å"Let's invite Vickie Bennett,† she said. Caroline stared. â€Å"Vickie Bennett? You must be joking. Invite that bizarre little drip who undressed in front of half the school? After everything that happened?† Caroline stared. â€Å"Vickie Bennett? You must be joking. Invite that bizarre little drip who undressed in front of half the school? After everything that happened?† For a moment Caroline looked helplessly frustrated. Bonnie thrust her chin out, put her hands on her hips, and waited. Finally Caroline sighed. â€Å"All right; you win. I'll invite her. But you have to take care of getting Meredith to my house Saturday night. And Bonnie-make sure she doesn't have any idea what's going on. I really want this to be a surprise.† â€Å"Oh, it will be,† Bonnie said grimly. She was unprepared for the sudden light in Caroline's face or the impulsive warmth of Caroline's hug. â€Å"I'm so glad you're seeing things my way,† Caroline said. â€Å"And it'll be so good for us all to be together again.† She doesn't understand a thing, Bonnie realized, dazed, as Caroline walked off. What do I have to do to explain to her? Sock her? And then: Oh, God, now I have to tell Meredith. But by the end of the day she decided that maybe Meredith didn't need to be told. Caroline wanted Meredith surprised; well, maybe Bonnie should deliver Meredith surprised. That way at least Meredith wouldn't have to worry about it beforehand. Yes, Bonnie concluded, it was probably kindest to not tell Meredith anything. And who knows, she wrote in her journal Friday night. Maybe I'm being too hard on Caroline. Maybe she's really sorry about all the things she did to us, like trying to humiliate Elena in front of the whole town and trying to get Stefan put away for murder. Maybe Caroline's matured since then and learned to think about somebody besides herself. Maybe we'll actually have a good time at her party. And maybe aliens will kidnap me before tomorrow afternoon, she thought as she closed the diary. She could only hope. The diary was an inexpensive drugstore blank book, with a pattern of tiny flowers on the cover. She'd only started keeping it since Elena had died, but she'd already become slightly addicted to it. It was the one place she could say anything she wanted without people looking shocked and saying, â€Å"Bonnie McCullough!† or â€Å"Oh, Bonnie.† She was still thinking about Elena as she turned off the light and crawled under the covers. She was sitting on lush, manicured grass that spread as far as she could see in all directions. The sky was a flawless blue, the air was warm and scented. Birds were singing. â€Å"I'm so glad you could come,† Elena said. â€Å"Oh-yes,† said Bonnie. â€Å"Well, naturally, so am I. Of course.† She looked around again, then hastily back at Elena. â€Å"More tea?† There was a teacup in Bonnie's hand, thin and fragile as eggshell. â€Å"Oh-sure. Thanks.† Elena was wearing an eighteenth-century dress of gauzy white muslin, which clung to her, showing how slender she was. She poured the tea precisely, without spilling a drop. â€Å"Would you like a mouse?† â€Å"A what?† â€Å"I said, would you like a sandwich with your tea?† â€Å"Oh. A sandwich. Yeah. Great.† It was thinly sliced cucumber with mayonnaise on a dainty square of white bread. Without the crust. The whole scene was as sparkly and beautiful as a picture by Seurat. Warm Springs, that's where we are. The old picnic place, Bonnie thought. But surely we've got more important things to discuss than tea. â€Å"Who does your hair these days?† she asked. Elena never had been able to do it herself. â€Å"Do you like it?† Elena put a hand up to the silky, pale gold mass piled at the back of her neck. â€Å"It's perfect,† said Bonnie, sounding for all the world like her mother at a Daughters of the American Revolution dinner party. â€Å"Well, hair is important, you know,† Elena said. Her eyes glowed a deeper blue than the sky, lapis lazuli blue. Bonnie touched her own springy red curls self-consciously. â€Å"Of course, blood is important too,† Elena said. â€Å"Blood? Oh-yes, of course,† said Bonnie, flustered. She had no idea what Elena was talking about, and she felt as if she were walking on a tightrope over alligators. â€Å"Yes, blood's important, all right,† she agreed weakly. â€Å"Another sandwich?† â€Å"Thanks.† It was cheese and tomato. Elena selected one for herself and bit into it delicately. Bonnie watched her, feeling uneasiness grow by the minute inside her, and then- And then she saw the mud oozing out of the edges of the sandwich. â€Å"What-what's that?† Terror made her voice shrill. For the first time, the dream seemed like a dream, and she found that she couldn't move, could only gasp and stare. A thick glob of the brown stuff fell off Elena's sandwich onto the checkered tablecloth. It was mud, all right. â€Å"Elena†¦ Elena, what-â€Å" The air was no longer warm and scented; it was hot and sickly sweet with the odor of rotting garbage. There were black pits in the green grass, which wasn't manicured after all but wild and overgrown. This wasn't Warm Springs. She was in the old graveyard; how could she not have realized that? Only these graves were fresh. â€Å"Another mouse?† Elena said, and giggled obscenely. Bonnie looked down at the half-eaten sandwich she was holding and screamed. Dangling from one end was a ropy brown tail. She threw it as hard as she could against a headstone, where it hit with a wet slap. Then she stood, stomach heaving, scrubbing her fingers frantically against her jeans. â€Å"You can't leave yet. The company is just arriving.† Elena's face was changing; she had already lost her hair, and her skin was turning gray and leathery. Things were moving in the plate of sandwiches and the freshly dug pits. Bonnie didn't want to see any of them; she thought she would go mad if she did. â€Å"You're not Elena!† she screamed, and ran. The wind blew her hair into her eyes and she couldn't see. Her pursuer was behind her; she could feel it right behind her. Get to the bridge, she thought, and then she ran into something. â€Å"I've been waiting for you,† said the thing in Elena's dress, the gray skeletal thing with long, twisted teeth. â€Å"Listen to me, Bonnie.† It held her with terrible strength. â€Å"You're not Elena! You're not Elena!† â€Å"Listen to me, Bonnie!† It was Elena's voice, Elena's real voice, not obscenely amused nor thick and ugly, but urgent. It came from somewhere behind Bonnie and it swept through the dream like a fresh, cold wind. â€Å"Bonnie, listen quickly-â€Å" Things were melting. The bony hands on Bonnie's arms, the crawling graveyard, the rancid hot air. For a moment Elena's voice was clear, but it was broken up like a bad long-dis-tance connection. â€Å"†¦ He's twisting things, changing them. I'm not as strong as he is†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Bonnie missed some words. â€Å"†¦ but this is important. You have to find†¦ right now.† Her voice was fading. â€Å"Elena, I can't hear you! Elena!† â€Å"†¦ an easy spell, only two ingredients, the ones I told you already†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Elena!† Bonnie was still shouting as she sat bolt upright in bed.

Mary Shelley s Frankenstein A Modern Prometheus

Allusions in Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus Mary Shelley’s cautionary horror tale, Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus, portrays the deadly consequences of callous indifference to life. Throughout the novel, Shelley employs allusions to the Prometheus myth, Paradise Lost, and â€Å"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.† Through these allusions, Shelley illustrates the creature’s yearning for love and acceptance, and Victors lack of love and compassion which leads to his ultimate destruction. In the first place, Shelley alludes to Greek mythology, the Prometheus myth, to demonstrate Victor’s creation of life and feelings for his creature. Shelley writes, â€Å"Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay?† (Shelley, 45). Victor gathered parts of human anatomy taken from graves for his creation, but Shelley reminds us of Prometheus by pointing out the words â€Å"lifeless clay.† Hence, Prometheus created humans out of clay, shaping them into small figures. Once again, Shelley resorts to an allusion to the myth by saying, â€Å"I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet†(Shelley, 48), referring to how Victor infused life into his creation through galvanism. In a like manner in the myth, the Greek goddess Athena, Zeus’s daughter, venerated the figures that Prometheus had created and breathed on themShow MoreRelatedMary Shelley s Frankenstein And The Modern Prometheus912 Words   |  4 Pagesrefer to Mary Shelley s masterpiece Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus as a starting point to drive the question: what it means to be human. Mary Shelley s Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus suggests the possibility of reconstructing a broader approach towards scientific discovery by portraying the dangers of blindly pursuing scientific knowledge done so by the modern Prometheus that is Victor Frankenstein. Thomas Vargish in Technology and Impotence in Mary Shelley s Frankenstein statesRead MoreMary Shelley s Frankenstein And The Modern Prometheus1342 Words   |  6 Pagesthere is no doubt in the connection of the Greek God Prometheus and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as the title of the book states: Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus. Shelley made sure that the readers knew that Frankenstein is to be seen as the mod ern Prometheus, and all things in her book connect Frankenstein to the Greek God that shaped Humanity. In this essay is stated that Frankenstein is indeed as Shelley meant, the modern Prometheus. Reasoning behind this is of how Frankenstein’s and Prometheus’sRead MoreMary Shelley s Frankenstein And The Modern Prometheus871 Words   |  4 PagesThe title of Mary Shelley s novel is Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus. So it shouldn t come as a shock that Mary Shelley was actually influenced by this tale. Her husband Percy Shelley had actually begun composing his own tale of Prometheus in the form of poetry entitled, Prometheus Unbound. He began composing this piece around the same time that his wife was publishing Frankenstein. Mary Shelley included The Modern Prometheus as part of her title for the novel and she attempts to compareRead MoreMary Shelley s Frankenstein, And The Modern Prometheus3901 Words   |  16 Pages â€Å"Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus †, by Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley Mary Shelley s novel Frankenstein is best known for its influence in popular culture through many film adaptations. It is in fact, however, one of the great novels of ideas. Write an essay that discusses in what sense you think it is a novel of ideas. What are its claims about human reason and human nature? Shelley explores some aspects of human nature, specifically human lust for power and the unfortunate way weRead MoreFrankenstein, By Mary Shelley s Frankenstein And The Modern Prometheus1316 Words   |  6 Pages Monstrosity in Marry Shelley s â€Å"Frankenstein† Mary Shelley s â€Å"Frankenstein† or â€Å"The Modern Prometheus† is an examination of monstrosity in all of its forms. Written during a time in which scientific, political and economical upheaval, the novel depicts mans desire to uncover every secret in the universe, while confirming the importance of the emotions that make us human, instead of monsters. But, what is considered to be a monster? When one thinks of a monster the first thing that comes to mindRead MoreMary Shelley ´s Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus, an Analysis of the Subtitle1219 Words   |  5 Pagesof creation.† (Shelley 37). Ab initio Victor Frankenstein, the main protagonist, is being put on a level with Prometheus through the subtitle. An indication that Mary Shelley did indeed have the myth in mind as she wrote the novel, is not only her subtitle, but moreover the parallels between the Prometheus myth and Frankenstein, which are undeniable. The title itself gives a lot away of th e story which follows. It links the modern world with the ancient Greek myth. Victor Frankenstein â€Å"steals† theRead MoreMary Shelley s Frankenstein And The Modern Prometheus1141 Words   |  5 Pagessomeone, do you think that you would take that chance? Prometheus is a Greek God who gave mankind fire, which had been stolen from Mount Olympus. â€Å"Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus,† by Mary Shelley is about a man name Victor Frankenstein who creates a â€Å"monster† and tells the story of the lives of each character, and the conflict between Frankenstein and his creation. Victor Frankenstein tried to play God in â€Å"Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus,† by creating a his own specimen, giving his creationRead MoreMary Shelley s Frankenstein And The Modern Prometheus1470 Words   |  6 PagesIn Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus: The Original 1818 Text Third Edition she presents the story of a man named Victor Franke nstein and his creation. The story is told through Robert Walton, a man at sea who meets the estranged Victor Frankenstein and shares Victor’s story to his sister, Margaret Saville through a series of letters. Through these letters we get an insight into the life of the Frankenstein family as well as the relationship Victor has built with his creatureRead MoreMary Shelley s Frankenstein And The Modern Prometheus1291 Words   |  6 Pages Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, also known as The Modern Prometheus, is a gothic science fiction novel set in the eighteenth century. Though the story starts off with letters narrated by Robert Walton, who hopes to find a new passage from Russia to the Pacific Ocean, the main protagonist in the story is Victor Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein was a swiss boy, born in Geneva, who grew up with a passion to find the â€Å"secret of life.† After attended the university at Ingolstadt and learning everythingRead MoreMary Shelley s Frankenstein - The Modern Prometheus946 Words   |  4 PagesFrankenstein by Mary Shelley is a Gothic novel which revolves around the concept of men overtaking the role of God by attempting to create life, which is successfully depicted through the character of Victor Frankenstein who creates and brings life to the â€Å"monster†, unaware of its consequences and responsibility. Similarly, the mythological story of â€Å"Prometheus† re volves around the young Titan who in attempts to help mankind, wages war with Jupiter by providing men with fire and how to utilize it