Birthday Letters Essay

In the ternary texts the references that be gratuityed as new wo manpower be in summariseition presented with a gloam, those who are presented as tralatitious wo workforce are seen to survive and do well. Within the ternion texts, genus genus genus Dracula, A Street Car Named want and Birthday Letters, the authors present the egg-producing(prenominal) point of references within certain ways which in allow us as the audience to disembodied spirit closely at the battle of friction matchity between hands and wowork force and the origin of feministic views.However the battle isnt incessantly apparent and well-nigh cleaning ladyish characters allow themselves to be the inferior characters compared to the male characters who take on preponderant roles within their relationships. Within the three texts a hurriedness of finale is presented, this is always presented to those women who are presented as bare-assed Woman. Feminism is a movement for social, cultural, governmental and economic equality of men and women. It is a campaign against g give the axeer inequalities and it strives for equal rights for women.1 Within the three texts we are presented with numerous distaff character types, A Street Car Named desire, allows its audience to compare and contrast its female characters. We are presented with Blanche who is on first appearances seen as a New cleaning lady ( A women of the of late 19th century actively resisting traditional controls and pursuance to fill a complete role in the world2) she lives by herself, has no male role controlling her animation and makes her own decisions, til now it isnt too a great deal later that we learn a different extinctlook of Blanche, she run lows a character that needs a man to keep a roof over her head and food in her m placeh.We are good able to compare Blanche with her sister Stella, who is a women that presents traditional roles ba commit some times does challenge these, Stella lives w ith Stanley and allow him to control her look, he tells her what to do and she takes on stereotypically traditional roles within the house. However we do see some New Woman actions within Stellas character such as when Stanley hurts her she runs past however this is then counter parted with Stella returning to Stanley. In the end it is Blanche that has the biggest downfall within the novel and we are left with the question of is this because she presents a post- feministic muliebrity?This question give the sack too be move when looking at Dracula, Lucy is presented to the audience as a in truth sexually aware female she is also shown to have slight traditional views on marriage why flush toilett they let a little young lady marry three men or as many as postulate her and save all this trouble3, Lucy is also homogeneous Blanche presented with the biggest downfall within the novel, she is controlled by Dracula and even exhausted more than once. Sylvia Plath like Lucy and Blanche also are presented with death within the novel, Sylvia could be seen to have the biggest downfall of all three of the characters, it is not save physical provided also a mental problem.Hughes talks of his and Sylvia Plath life journeys through his poetry and we come to run across the life style that they lived, Plaths death is central to Hughes poetry and we are able to understand the kind of women Sylvia is, she is shown as a weak women who take her married man by her side, when he fails to do so she becomes weaker and commits suicide. However we quite a little see the power that Plath had on Hughes due to the high impact that Sylvias suicide had on his poetry Years after your death4.Plaths downfall doesnt seem to be due to her position as a women it is presented within the opposite, she is a traditional women and this causes her problems. Dracula sees a downfall for its female characters in the way of death, Lucy is poped by a male character. Arthur Holmwood buries the post deep in Lucys heart in order to kill the demon she has become and to return her to the realm of purity and innocence he so values. The language with which fireman describes this violent act is unmistakably sexual, and the station is an unambiguous symbol for the penis. In this way, it is fitting that the blow comes from Lucys fianci, Arthur Holmwood. Lucy is not only being punished for being a vampire but also being available for seduction by Dracula himself, who we can recall has the power to only attack a willing victim. When Holmwood slays the diabolical Lucy, he returns her to the role of a legitimate, monogamous lover, which reinvests his fianci e with her initial squared-toe virtue, again degrading Lucys female role, needing a male character to take care of her to the end of her life. Lucy Westenra, is first presented to the audience as an out liberation, sexually aware, less traditional women.In many ways, Lucy is some(prenominal) like Mina Murry. She is a pa ragon of virtue and innocents, qualities that draw the attention of three men to her. However Lucy does differs from her friend in one key area, which makes her much of a New Women, Lucy is sexualised. Lucys physical beauty captures the attention of the three men, which is where she displays a comfort of playfulness close her desirability. This is displayed in an early earn to Mina when Lucy states why cant they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save her all this trouble.This presents the idea that Lucy has troubles that she cannot and will not meet, going against the New Women mould. stoker presents this simple, small idea of Lucys instability to a huge volume when he describes the undead Lucy as a creature of a ravenous sexual appetite. Lucy is presented as a dangerous threat to men and their self control, Lucys second death returns her to a harmless state presenting her again with purity, assuring the men that things are exactly how they are meditate to be. Lucy presents the idea of the new woman to the reader, she is also represented as a creature when she is a vampire.Dracula succeeds in transforming Lucy and becomes a vampire vixen, van Helsings men see no other option than to kill her, in order to return her to a purer, more socially good for you(p) state. After Lucys transformation, the men keep a careful middle on Mina, worried they will lose nevertheless another model of Victorian womanhood to the dark side. It is here seen that Lucy is a model female until she is turned into a vampire. Late in the novel, Dracula mocks Van Helsings crew, saying, Your girls that you all love are mine already and through them you and others shall yet be mine. Here, the count voices a male fantasy that has existed since Adam and eve were turned out of Eden that womens ungovernable desires leave men poised for a costly fall from grace. Women through out Dracula are shown as something that men own and something that can be utilize as a ba rgaining tool. Blanche like the female characters within Dracula is also presented as a object by Stanley when he attacks her, however when Blanche is with Mitch alone he treats her in a way that she expects as a New Woman Can I-uh-kiss you-good night? 5 with dignity and respect, this isnt however carried through out the whole novel.Blanche doesnt accept males function through out the play and tries to hide the things that she has done before, this adds to her downfall which allows her to become more and more de forceed and pushing towards her downfall. Which we can also necessitate this happens to Plath, Hughes talks of their past and their lives together, this allows us as the audience to come what events happened to add to Plaths depression and her death. Looking at other sources we find out that Ted Hughes, had left her for another woman6which then pushes Plath to her suicide.This goes against the idea that the Downfall of woman is due to woman being post feminist woman. The three texts all see big punishment for its three leading ladies, this influences them in many ways and pushes them all towards their deaths. In the 1880s and the 1890s saw the issue of many studies in psychology and sexology. For example, Dr. Krafft-Ebing, a German sexologists medico-legal study Phychopahia Sexualis, documented hundreds of skids of divergent, deviant sexuality, listing, cataloguing and typing each individual.Under Sadism in Women, he describes case 42, a womens who sexual score prefigures that of Stokers Lucy A married man presented himself with numerous scars of cuts on his arms. He told their origins as follows When he wishes to approach his wife, who was young and somewhat nervous, he first had to make a cut in his arm. Then she would suck the wound, and during the act become violently excited sexually. Most critics agree that Dracula is, as much as anything else, a novel that feeds on the Victorian male imagination, oddly concerning the topic of female sex uality.In Victorian England, womens sexual behaviour was dictated by societys extremely rigid expectations. A Victorian woman effectively had only two options either she was a virgin or she was a wife and mother. If she was neither of these, she was considered a whore. A women never had the right to shoot which kind of life style she wanted to have, she was simply labeled if she didnt conform, we can see this with Lucy when she must choose who she wants to marry she simple states that in her ideal world Why cant they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble.7 This is very degrading, Lucy, is stating that she wishes she didnt have to make a choice and she wishes that her life was all laid out for her, however it could be argued that she wants this because of her personality quite a than her fate. By the time Dracula lands in England and begins to work his abomination invocation on Lucy Westenra, we understand that the impending battle betwee n good and evil will await upon female sexuality, both Lucy and Mina are less like real people than two-dimensional embodiments of virtues that have, over the ages, been coded as female. both(prenominal) women are chaste, pure, innocent of the worlds evils, and devoted to their men. But Dracula threatens to turn the two women into their opposites, into women noted for their voluptuousness-a word Stoker turns to again and again-and unapologetically apply sexual desire. Blanche within A Street Car Named Desire is also presented as a sexual desire from Mitch and even Stanley. Mitch likes her not only for her looks but who she is I like you to be exactly the way that you are8 Mitch doesnt think of Blanche in a sexual way until later on in the play.Blanches fear of death presents itself in the fear of her senescent and loosing her beauty. She refuses to tell anyone her own age why do you want to know9 Blanche seems to believe that by continually asserting her sexuality towards men es pecially those who are younger, she will be able to avoid death and return to the world of teenage bliss that she experienced before her husband committed suicide. However, beginning in video One, Williams suggests that Blanches sexual history is in fact a cause of her downfall.When she first arrives at the Kowalskis, Blanche says she rode a streetcar named Desire, then transferred to a streetcar named Cemeteries, which brought her to a street named divine Fields. This journey, the precursor to the play, allegorically represents the trajectory of Blanches life. The Elysian Fields are the land of the dead in Greek mythology. Blanches lifelong hunting of her sexual desires has led to her eviction from Belle Reve, her ostracism from Laurel, and, at the end of the play, her excommunication from society at large.Sex and death are intricately and fatally linked within Blanches experiences through out the novel. In Scene One, Stanley throws a package of meat at his adoring Stella for her to catch. The action sends Eunice and the pitch blackness woman into peals of laughter. Presumably, theyve picked up on the sexual innuendo behind Stanleys gesture. In hurling the meat at Stella, Stanley states the sexual proprietorship he holds over her. Stellas delight in catching Stanleys meat signifies her sexual infatuation with him.This also shows Stella in light of the new woman, however Stanley is the one initiating the sexual activity again pushing Stella back into her traditional role. Stella tries on many occasions pushing herself into the role of the new woman however Stanley always fails to allow her to do so. A Streetcar Named Desire presents a sharp critique of the way the institutions and attitudes of postwar America placed restrictions on womens lives. Williams uses Blanches and Stellas dependence on men to expose and critique the treatment of women during the transition from the old to the new South. both(prenominal) Blanche and Stella see male companions as t heir only means to achieve happiness, and they depend on men for both their sustenance and their self-image. Blanche recognizes that Stella could be happier without her physically ignominious husband, Stanley. Yet, the alternative Blanche proposes-contacting Shep Huntleigh for financial support-still involves complete dependence on men. When Stella chooses to remain with Stanley, she chooses to rely on, love, and believe in a man instead of her sister.Williams does not inevitably criticize Stella-he makes it quite clear that Stanley represents a much more salutary future than Blanche does. Five contextual information linking to the authors and the characters. The decade in which Stoker wrote and published Dracula was one of the unprecedented anxiety and uncertainty about the social roles, sexual nature and natural spheres of activity of men and women. As many women fought for a larger role in public life and a bigger challenge towards the traditions that define women as being, pa ssive, domestic and naturally submissive, the debate opened to men and the males natural role.While Victorian feminists advanced(a) on previous male preserves, crossing boarders and redefining categories, the more conservative press reacted by reiterating gender normalities, insisting that the essential differences between the sexes and their separate duties. Stoker deliberately located the gothic horror of Dracula in the late nineteenth century world of technological advances, gender instability and the rapid increase in conversation. Mina Travels with a portable typewriter which presents her with power and cognition of a skill such as writing, which today we take for granted.