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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Gender As A Socially Constructed Phenomenon, Jamie Smith
Gender As A Socially Constructed Phenomenon, Jamie Smith
SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society
In the historical and social landscape that currently exists in America, the concept of gender, and especially the concept of women, has been created and enforced through societal expectations. From essentialism in the past, social and psychological theory has evolved to consider the social impact on gender construction. Foucault’s prison theory, Berger’s theory of surveying, and Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze can be used to show that gender, though it used to be viewed as inherent to a person’s identity, is actually a process of social conditioning. Women are shaped by society but continue to follow their roles because …
Masks And Performance As Representations Of Gender Oppression And Repression In Edith Wharton’S The House Of Mirth And Nella Larsen’S Passing, Carrie A. Wilson
Masks And Performance As Representations Of Gender Oppression And Repression In Edith Wharton’S The House Of Mirth And Nella Larsen’S Passing, Carrie A. Wilson
SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society
Edith Wharton and Nella Larsen’s literature focus on metaphorically representing gender oppression and repression as masked social performances that result in death being the ultimate release from the drama. Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth depicts the heroine Lily Bart who, in the public social realm, attempts to mask herself as a disturbingly superficial character. Wharton’s masquerade imagery demonstrates the extent to which Lily socially capitalizes her beauty. Lily fixates on "clearness" and "lucidity" in events leading up to her death, which shows how dying releases her from the dishonest social masquerade (260). Nella Larsen’s heroine Irene Redfield similarly uses …
"Silence Laps Smooth Over Sound': Sound, Gender, And War, In Jacob's Room", Betsy Lawson
"Silence Laps Smooth Over Sound': Sound, Gender, And War, In Jacob's Room", Betsy Lawson
SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society
In A Room of One’s Own, as well as in Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf contends that the devaluing of women and the perpetuating of women’s inferiority facilitate all heroic and violent action (A Room of One’s Own, 36). In this paper, I’ve applied Woolf’s argument to her 1922 novel, Jacob’s Room, and focused on the ways in which certain sounds become gendered as masculine or feminine and devalued accordingly, leading to a masculine society that operates on masculine ideals. In Jacob’s Room, women’s voices are characterized as chatty and empty, where men’s voices exude authority and …