Through means of reversal, Chaucer leads his main female character down the road of maleness. ... The reader first meets the pilgrims in the General Prologue (GP), where Chaucer provides subtle indications to the type of character he describes. ... Chaucer has come under critical disapproval for not adhering to socially prescribed gender roles for feminity in his character WB. ... How she chooses to travel is a minor aspect of crossing the lines of cultural gender expectations. ... The one weakness that comes forward in the WB character is when she steps out of the male role back into the fema...

• Word Count: 2959
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography

Despite being a fictionalized character, Esperanza's life greatly resembles Cisneros' upbringing. ... As the author, Cisneros, "sits inside the mind of the hero[ine] . . . and looks at the other characters from the outside," while the heroine, Esperanza "plays a very small active part; [s]he sees the actions and suffering of other people pass before [her] like a spectator" (Freud, Day-Dreaming 149-150). ... Both Cisneros and Esperanza's mother wanted their daughters to be something more in life than just adopting their position in the kitchen so they placed a great importance on...

• Word Count: 2834
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

She offers that female characters add nothing or very little to actual elements of plot and character but rather are subjected to male scopophilia, the fetishistic and voyeuristic, due to phallocentricism and psychoanalytic fear of castration. ... From a tertiary level the female characters seem to gain more respect and authority as the years progress, but these scopophilic elements still persist through all the narratives. ... At the end of her essay Mulvey establishes three 'looks' in which this scopophilic dialectic can take place: between the camera and what is being shot, betwe...

• Word Count: 4301
• Approx Pages: 17
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

the heat of Nature and the heat/stress/pressure imposed upon them by the male-dominated culture, social expectations and lifestyle. ... Lessing reveals the character of the woman here. ... I believe these men could not accept the fact that a woman should not be the way she was, all hard and cold in her character, somewhat like a man. ...

• Word Count: 4111
• Approx Pages: 16
• Grade Level: High School