intersectionality essay

“Kate Chopin, a wise and worldly woman, had refined the craft of fiction... to the point where it could face her strong inner theme of the female rebellion and see it through to a superb female work” (Ziff 24). In Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour,” a recurring theme is the oppressive nature of relationships in the nineteenth century. Upon the death of her husband Louise Mallard has an epiphany that brings her to realize that the loss of her husband is actually quite freeing. This contradicts

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The famous opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina sets the philosophical tone of his novel and asks us to theorise on happiness and how we achieve it. The same question is posed in Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour. Set in the late 19th Century, the story begins when Mrs. Mallard learns of her husband’s death. Upon hearing this news, she knows she should mourn his death and fear for her own future, but the joy of

Although theory may have a reputation for being disconnected from reality, it is grounded in everyday thinking that helps us plan and understand the actions we take in our everyday social lives (Sears, 2010, pp. 16-17). Accordingly, theories like poststructuralism attempt to explain these aspects of human society. In this paper, after explaining the origins and major tenets of poststructuralism, I will argue that a poststructural lens is most conducive to a critical analysis of the causes and effects

During the 1960’s, many young people believed in uncensored expression and that society had a very provincial image of how a person should behave. The image instilled upon the Counterculture had a defined sense of implicit standards of normality and society believed everyone should act, look, and behave in a specified way. People were expected to obey authority and to never question that power; however, the Counterculture was the antithesis of these standards. The Counterculture strived to break

The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about a woman’s journey of self-discovery. The main character, Janie, believes she will achieve fulfillment if she can find her idea of a perfect love. Only Janie’s final marriage provides her with the love she craves, her first two marriages are unfulfilling and oppressive. Hurston uses the mule symbolically to represent women and their oppression. The oppression of women is evident in Janie’s treatment from her husbands as well as

Oppression of a Couple The short story “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin was published in the year 1894. Chopin tries to recreate in the story about the live in the late nineteenth century, and how this affected couples. The believes in this years is that the women must stayed home and serve to her husband. During the story, the author catch the reader attention by mention the conflict of emotions that occurred in the story. Beside this, there are a couple of several elements that the author

Beauvoir: Dear Nietzsche, I want so much to question you on your understandings of ressentiment, as I am writing on my approach to a similar concept, one I call “bad faith”. Tis a good name for it, no? Nietzsche: That is a truth, I do proclaim, however - on which aspect do you find similarities? I must confess, I know little of your writings. I do not often defect from this mountainside. If we are to come to a thorough understanding of the views that we hold, we must first lay out the question at

During the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war, Adrienne Rich has played a role of social activist and feminist. Adrienne Rich grew up in Baltimore and married Alfred Conrad who soon after started a family, had three children. Rich “struggled with the traditional expectations of being a wife and mother”[1], thus deciding to work as a poet who challenged society’s expectation and the inequality of power between men and women. Her husband later committed suicide after she distanced herself from

Cléo aligns in the first half of the film with Beauvoir’s claims that “the average Western male’s ideal is a woman who freely submits to his domination” (Beauvoir 201). Similarly, in Fat Girl, Elena represents another type of ideal woman that men seek, which is one that will give herself to him, therefore relinquishing a part of her and her control. Elena like Cléo in the first part of the film has virtually no control. Elena cannot control what happens after giving her virginity to Fernando because

Oppression is defined as, “the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner”(dictionary.com), and is found all around the world. There is essentially two parts to oppression: the oppressor, who is demonstrating his power by displaying cruelty towards the second part of oppression, the oppressed. The oppressed take part in offenses made by the oppressor, that usually contain a cruel, and unfair burden towards them. The world has demonstrated this profound relationship since