Multiple perspectives toward women in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: a feministic overview
Autor/in:
Fakhimi Anbaran, Farough
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2016) 66, S 129-134
Inhalt: Undoubtedly, in spite of all those efforts done during the years, the mentality towards the superiority of male over female is still being reflected in the works of art written by men. Joseph Conrad, the Polish author, who wrote great masterpieces in English, is not an exception. His great work of art, Heart of Darkness, reflects multiple perspectives towards women. By applying a Feminist approach towards this novel, this article tends to present an analytical overview of the mentality of men towards women in the written work of art, Heart of Darkness.
William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun": multiple views of oppression
Autor/in:
Fakhimi Anbaran, Farough
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2016) 69, S 1-4
Inhalt: People throughout the history have been subject to discrimination from three distinct perspectives of class, race, and gender. Those who were richer used the lower class as a tool in their service to have a comfortable life. The white oppressed the black as the other who was not similar to him in the color of skin. The male dominated the female as she was different in gender lacking the Phallus. The amalgamation of these ideas towards human being has masterly been presented in the story "That Evening Sun", by William Faulkner. The present study, by applying Marxist approach on this story, tends to analyze how human being may be oppressed from different aspects.
Das hässliche Entlein wird zum Schwan: Liebe, Schönheit und Selbstnarration in Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey und Jane Eyre
Titelübersetzung:From ugly duckling to (Bella) swan: love, beauty and self-narration in Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey and Jane Eyre
Autor/in:
Coffey, Judith
Quelle: GENDER - Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft, 8 (2016) 2, S 83-98
Inhalt: "Der Beitrag fokussiert auf die Protagonistinnen und zugleich Erzählerinnen von Stephenie Meyers Twilight-Saga und E. L. James' Fifty-Shades-Trilogie und vergleicht sie mit ihrem Prototyp, Jane Eyre aus dem gleichnamigen Roman von Charlotte Brontë. Im Zentrum steht eine Analyse der Selbstbeschreibung von Bella, Ana und Jane als gewöhnlich, unscheinbar und wenig attraktiv. Indem diese Selbstbeschreibung in den Kontext des Gesamttextes - und damit der Liebesgeschichte und ihrer seit dem 19. Jahrhundert etablierten Begehrensökonomie - gestellt wird, kann herausgearbeitet werden, wie die Sichtweise der Erzählerinnen im Text gewichtet und punktuell infrage gestellt wird und wie sich die Protagonistinnen im Laufe der Erzählung in feminine und begehrenswerte Frauen verwandeln. Dadurch kann in den Blick genommen werden, welche spezifische Form weißer bürgerlicher heterosexueller Weiblichkeit in heteronormativen Liebesgeschichten entworfen und bekräftigt wird." (Autorenreferat)
Inhalt: This article focuses on the heroines and firstperson narrators in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga and E. L. James's erotic retelling Fifty Shades of Grey. I undertake a comparison with what can be identified as the prototype for these heroines, namely Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in the eponymous novel. I use the fact that Bella, Ana and Jane describe themselves as ordinary, unremarkable and plain as my point of departure. By locating their selfnarration within the context of the love story, its long-established plot structure and its politics of desire, I aim to show how their view is weighted and questioned, and how the heroines’ transformation into feminine and desirable women is effected in the text. This reading enables me to analyse and criticise the specific form of white heterosexual bourgeois femininity that is produced and reinforced by heteronormative love stories." (author's abstract)
Cultural identity in Eugenia Kim's The Calligrapher's Daughter
Autor/in:
Ng, Wen Lee; Wan Yahya, Wan Roselezam; Mani, Manimangai
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2015) 62, S 131-139
Inhalt: Eugenia Kim’s The Calligrapher's Daughter (2009) is a well-received East Asian novel about a Korean Christian, Najin's encounter with western culture. As an aristocratic woman, she is expected to uphold Korean tradition. However, as Najin realises that she is culturally marginalised by her father and the Korean traditional society mainly due to her gender, she picks up a foreign culture introduced to her, western culture. This move is extremely significant because after Najin driven by cultural marginalisation to embrace western culture, her cultural practices are no longer the same with traditional Korean women. This important turn of the novel has not been explored by scholars extensively. Thus, this study aims to depart from the cultural marginalisation faced by Najin. Furthermore, due to the fact that cultural identity formation is highly influenced by culture, there is a need to look into the changes of Najin’s cultural identity as she incorporates western culture into her Korean traditional culture. By investigating the changes of Najin’s cultural identity throughout the novel, this study finds that Najin has transformed from a nameless girl without an identity into an independent woman with the help of western education.
Schlagwörter:Christentum; Literatur; Tradition; Ostasien; Roman; Emanzipation; Marginalität; Western world; culture; woman; kulturelle Identität; emancipation; westliche Welt; cultural identity; literature; Kultur; Christianity; tradition; marginality; Far East; novel; Korea
SSOAR Kategorie:Kultursoziologie, Kunstsoziologie, Literatursoziologie, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
The role of culture and society in the development of plot in Tanushree Podder's Escape from Harem and Gita Mehta's A River Sutra: a feminist reading
Autor/in:
Khandhar, Diren Ashok; Mani, Manimangai
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2015) 56, S 44-49
Inhalt: Culture and Society are often the main gist of most novels. These two factors often influence and control the characters, thus helping in the development of the plot. A plot, as defined by Egan (1978), is used to indicate an outline of events and serves as a skeleton in a literary piece. In other words, it is a tool in making sure the main incidents or scenarios are presented in a particular order to establish a clear understanding of what is being written. Culture and society plays the essence in a novel as it constructs these main ideas in engaging the interest of a reader and also extends the intended message of the particular writer. This paper looks into how culture and society helps in developing the plots of the selected novels using the feminist approach. Tanushree Podder's, Escape from Harem (2013) and Gita Mehta's A River Sutra (1993) amazingly are both set in India. Podder and Mehta have inserted the perception society had over women and how male supremacy was glorified in many aspects. The essence of feminist approach was very much present in these two novels. According to Tyson (2006), feminism concerns the ways in which literature undermines the economic, political, social and psychological oppression on women. Though the setting of both novels fall in different eras but the theme of female oppression remains the same. The patriarchal society uses culture and religion as a tool to control women and oppress them. Both authors have shown how the women in the 17th century and in the 20th century face the same kind of judgment from the society and men in general.
Unblinding history through literature in Tanushree Podder's, escape from harem
Autor/in:
Mani, Manimangai
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2015) 53, S 60-67
Inhalt: The history of India had been coloured by series of brutal invasion, torture, bloodshed and massacre in the name of religion and conquest. One of the most remembered invasions is by the Mughals in the beginning of 16th. century where Babar successfully established the Mughal dynasty in 1526. The Mughal dynasty, from the eyes of the historians is one of the most dynamic dynasty which possessed splendour, wealth, bravery, artistic architecture and conquerors who fought to glorify Islam. While historians and history were limited to the study of chronological events, the historical novel Escape from Harem took the liberty to peep into the human and humanity of this dynasty; a scope which is deep irrelevant in the study of history. This paper intends to show how Tanushree Podder exposes some unknown episodes from the history of these great conquerors and builders through her novel, Escape from Harem. Strings of episodes and secrets which may not be deemed important by historians are revealed as the readers follow the journey of the girl who is taken into the harem. These episodes will be seen in the light of new historicism. This research reveals the dark side of the dynasty which are as intriguing as the magnitude of splendours which are identified with this kingdom and its rulers. The untold stories from the darkest chamber of the harem, massacre, filicide, fratricide, animalistic behaviour of emperors and the oppressive treatment cast upon women that was carried from one generation to another in the name of power and conquest will be brought to light through this research.
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2015) 50, S 86-90
Inhalt: Canadian novels have witnessed a movement from description to more different analytical and interpretative directions. Margaret Atwood's oeuvres are belonged to the postmodern literary field of feminist writing. Her fictions show a severe alertness of the relationship between chains and slavery, i.e. between women's requirement for relationships with others and her requirements for freedom and autonomy. In this paper, The Handmaid's Tale, Bodily Harm, Surfacing, and The Edible Woman will be surveyed in a direct relationship between politics, violence and victimization of female protagonists. An examination on Margaret Atwood's novels demonstrates that she is pioneer in the dimension of time by being a revolter against the patriarchal society.
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2015) 51, S 158-167
Inhalt: Masculine crisis has always been with men and presented in masculine studies, but it becomes popular in the post modern era after crucial events such as feminism, the world wars, economical problems, etc. The issue of masculinity and masculine crisis exists in works of Ian McEwan and this study applies masculine crisis on his Enduring Love (1994). Most of McEwan’s characters are men who seek to find their places in post modern era. Thus this paper focuses on masculine crisis which emerges in Joe Rose, the male protagonist of this novel, when the shattering moments in the beginning of the novel threaten his power and authority which is very important in masculinity of men. There is another factor (homophobia) in the novel that leads him toward masculine crisis as well. All through the novel the male character tries to regain his lost authority and power. At the end of the novel, he somehow overcomes masculine crisis. This paper uses Butler's theory of gender and other critics of masculine studies.
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2015) 49, S 83-91
Inhalt: Louis Althusser (1918-1990) builds on the work of Jacques Lacan to understand the way ideology functions in society. He thus moves away from the earlier Marxist understanding of ideology. In the earlier model, ideology was believed to create what was termed "false consciousness", a false understanding of the way the world functioned. Althusser explains that for Marx "Ideology is [...] thought as an imaginary construction whose status is exactly like the theoretical status of the dream among writers before Freud. For those writers, the dream was the purely imaginary, i.e. null, result of the 'day's residues" (1971:108). Althusser, by contrast, approximates ideology to Lacan's understanding of reality, the world we construct around us after our entrance into the symbolic order. For Althusser, as for Lacan, it is impossible to access the real conditions of existence due to our reliance on language. This could be seen throughout the novel by Margaret Atwood who writes The Handmaid's Tale (1985) based on the concept of ideology. This is about how the heroine of the story and other women in the society are manipulated by the ideology of ruling class through a communist society. In such a world nothing is real and everything is just an illusion that is made by ruling class. The subjects trapped or forced to believe such misconceptions and unreality through different techniques that are employed by the rulers. The dominant forces and ideology are so strong that the subject at the end gets a new identity since she is required unconsciously without her knowing. The other aspect shown by this novel is the failure of revolution and communism in this society and persistence of capitalism that it never disappears.
Schlagwörter:Kapitalismus; capitalism; Ideologie; ideology; Gesellschaft; society; Kommunismus; communism; Fehlertheorie; statistical theory of errors; Manipulation; manipulation; Literatur; literature; Roman; novel; Philosophie; philosophy; Althusser, L.; Lacan, J.
SSOAR Kategorie:Soziologie von Gesamtgesellschaften, Philosophie, Theologie, Kultursoziologie, Kunstsoziologie, Literatursoziologie
Das Profil der Täterin: neue Monsterheldinnen im Horrorgenre
Titelübersetzung:The female culprit's profile: new female monster-heroes in the horrorgenre
Autor/in:
Miess, Julia
Quelle: GENDER - Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft, 3 (2011) 2, S 25-43
Inhalt: "Die Vorstellung der passiv-friedfertigen Frau und des aktiv-aggressiven Mannes findet nicht nur in den traditionellen Bildern des männlichen Schurken und der Opferheldin Ausdruck, sondern wird implizit selbst in den wegweisenden kulturkritischen Werken Klaus Theweleits und Elisabeth Bronfens sichtbar, die ihr Erkenntnisinteresse zuerst auf männliche Subjektpositionen - Männerfantasien -richten. Sie führt in Gattungstheorien zu Ausblendungen und drückt sich in Klischees von Mütterlichkeit und weiblicher Zurückhaltung im Arbeitsleben mit realer Wirkung aus. Ausgehend von Figuren wie der Täterin Nike im Roman Die Hirnkönigin der deutschsprachigen Autorin Thea Dorn zeichne ich die kulturelle Wandlung von der Opferheldin zur Monsterheldin nach - zu einer Figuration, die auf neue Möglichkeiten der Identifikation und auf die Notwendigkeit verweist, die Zusammenhänge von Gender, Genre und Gewaltdarstellung neu zu diskutieren." (Autorenreferat)
Inhalt: "The idea of passive-placid femininity and active-aggressive masculinity does not only become evident in traditional representations of male Gothic villains and female victim-heroes; it is also implicitly evident in works of cultural criticism that have become classics. Klaus Theweleit and Elisabeth Bronfen first of all focus on male subject positions, 'male fantasies'. Until today, the idea of women being less aggressive has led to their exclusion from genre theories and affects everyday life, from cliches of devoted motherhood to inequalities in employment. By analyzing characters such as the female serial killer Nike in Thea Dorn's novel Die Hirnkönigin ['the brain queen'], I would like to Show a cultural shift from female victim-hero to female monsterhero. In representations of the female monster-hero, new possibilities of identification become exemplary, as well as the need to rediscuss the relation between gender, genre and Images of violence." (author's abstract)