Theme Of Larisa Shepitko's Wings

Stalin’s early promises compromised of socialism and a life free from exploitation in regards to his social policies. However, he soon realised his error and reverted to a more conservative form of rule, whereby the interest of the state was given priority. Many describe his soviet social policy during the 1930s as a ‘Great Retreat’, it was named this as his policies saw a return to earlier social policies under the Tsar and former leaders. It is debatable as to how far his actions were a retraction of previous decisions…and the areas impacted were women, family, and education. A common theme of the great retreat was the gender role in society.

The author agrees with the idea of women as victims through the characterisation of women in the short story. The women are portrayed as helpless to the torment inflicted upon them by the boy in the story. This positions readers to feel sympathy for the women but also think of the world outside the text in which women are also seen as inferior to men. “Each season provided him new ways of frightening the little girls who sat in front of him or behind him”. This statement shows that the boy’s primary target were the girls who sat next to him. This supports the tradition idea of women as the victims and compels readers to see that the women in the text are treated more or less the same as the women in the outside world. Characterisation has been used by the author to reinforce the traditional idea of women as the helpless victims.

My initial observation of Dashkova is her ability to be extraordinary despite her difficult upbringing. Her intelligence was compelling to the Empress Catherine and the men that she had encountered during her traveling. Dashkova portrayed herself as a strong, versatile woman, who’s not only different from most of the women during the time period, but can also outperform her male counterparts in various tasks (e.g. surgery, debate, carpenting, etc.) (pg. 144). She surprised the readers at the first moment when she met Prince Dashkov, a Moscow man. She fell in love with him and got married at the age of 16. The proposal was informal and emotional unlike the traditional arrangement with its strict regulations. Just 5 years after, Prince Dashkov passed away, leaving Dashkova 2 children and his mountainous gambling debt. In the most hopeless scenario, Dashkova managed to raise her 2 children and provided her son a wonderful education while still remaining faithful to the Empress Catherine II. She declared, “My own poverty affected me not at all” (pg. 149).

In the book Sofia Petrovna, the author Lydia Chukovskaya writes about Sofia Petrovna and her dreadful experiences as a widowed mother during the Russian Stalinist Terror of the 1930s. There were four basic results of the Russian Stalinist Terror: first, it was a way of keeping people in order; second, it kept Stalin in power and stopped revolutions from forming, made people work harder to increase the output of the economy, and separated families as well as caused deaths of many innocent people due to false charges.

Finally with her freedom came responsibility. She was responsible for taking in two young men. “My squadron commander got the fantastic notion of sending the youngest men to be orderlies, and under this disposition the choice fell on me” (93). Another responsibility Nadezhda Durova had taken place after she had transferred regiments. She and her group of men were responsible for getting hay. While out she decided to wander off to find her horse so she told the sergeant to lead the men to find the hay. “Stackelberg sent me for hay for the regimental horses…I charged the sergeant to lead the detachment at a walk to the forest nearby, and myself did not so much gallop as jolt my way as fast as I could to the village where I hoped to find our reserve horses”(149). The responsibility that young girls had in the eighteenth century was bobbin lace. “From morning to night I sat over worked which, I must confess, was the vilest imaginable because, unlike other girls, I could not, would not, and did not want to acquire the skill…my bobbin lace” (7). Even though she had more freedom her responsibility became more challenging.

Sohn, Anne-Marie. "Between the Wars in France and England." A History of Women in the West, Volume V Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century (History of Women in the West). By Georges Duby. Vol. 5. New York: Belkn

1984 is a classic piece of British literature that serves as the most prominent example of the dystopia genre. In this nover George Orwell tells the precautionary tale of what might happen if the society goes totalitarian. In this essay I would like to talk about the role of women in the novel.

First of all, Lenina’s physical characteristics help distinguish her type of character. Lenina is a typical woman in the new world, and she has all the characteristics that describe her as pneumatic. Lenina is a particularly attractive female since many men in the society seem to be attracted to her. Even the Arch-Community-Songster of

Were it a testimony to the rigors and cruelness of human nature, it would be crushing. As it is, it shatters our perception of man and ourselves as no other book, besides perhaps Anne Franke`s diary and the testimony of Elie Wiesl, could ever have done. The prisoners of the labor camp, as in Shukhov?s predicament, were required to behave as Soviets or face severe punishment. In an almost satirical tone Buinovsky exclaims to the squadron that ?You?re not behaving like Soviet People,? and went on saying, ?You?re not behaving like communist.? (28) This type of internal monologue clearly persuades a tone of aggravation and sarcasm directly associated to the oppression?s of communism.

Both the Bolsheviks and the Nazis shared a fundamental commitment to create a creating a higher human type. However, the ideals and approaches of both regimes towards this mission differed substantially. While the Nazis sought to create a master race above all in European hierarchy, the Bolsheviks sought a system of liberation of their entire race and complete equality. Within both ideologies, the role of women was a hotbed of debate and instigated a period of change. In Germany, women confined to roles that were ‘natural’ or intended by nature, while in Russia, although women ‘received’ previously inaccessible rights and freedoms, it became more of a burden rather than a boon, The creation of “new men and women,” became more about the removal of undesirable classes or nationalities and the integration of the rest of the population with particular characteristics. Women were expected to accept state-propagated guidelines for conduct and appearance, and conform to certain gender roles that were defined by the state. In Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union ideology, the rebirth of the nation, its prosperity and survival depended directly on women’s conformity to the propagated feminine ideal and thus, their participation was severely influenced by the regime’s economic, social and political policies. In this essay, I

Few postwar films depict an armed conflict's far-reaching impact on a community more accurately than Alain Resnais's Muriel ou le Temps d'un retour (1963), which testifies about the relationship between past and present by concentrating on two seemingly different individuals with a shared inability to move beyond the past. Following in the footsteps of Resnais's debut feature Hiroshima mon amour (1959), a film that also revolves around the vagaries of memory and time, Muriel does not look back on the past with fond nostalgia but with a crushing self-delusion that

From Stalin’s Cult of Personality to Khrushchev’s period of De-Stalinization, the nation of the Soviet Union was in endless disarray of what to regard as true in the sense of a socialist direction. The short story, This is Moscow Speaking, written by Yuli Daniel (Nikolai Arzhak) represents the ideology that the citizens of the USSR were constantly living in fear of the alternations of their nation’s political policies. Even more, the novella gives an explanation for the people’s desire to conform to the principles around them.

In George Orwell’s ‘1984’ he patronises the women he creates as we see an insight into the weaker sex who are often degraded with humiliating names and vulnerability. Orwell stereotypes the female characters, which reflects his somewhat limited view of women and their important role ion society. He creates a problem in the way that masculinity and femininity lose all value in the totalitarian state. As the misogynist Orwell is, it is not surprising he has portrayed women in such silent, sad and solitary ways.

“Days of a Russian Noblewoman” is a translated memoir originally written by a Russian noblewoman named Anna Labzina. Anna’s memoir gives a unique perspective of the private life and gender roles of noble families in Russia. Anna sees the male and female gender as similar in nature, but not in morality and religiosity. She sees men as fundamentally different in morality and religiosity because of their capability to be freely dogmatic, outspoken, and libertine. Anna implies throughout her memoir that woman in this society have the capacity to shape and control their lives through exuding a modest, submissive, and virtuous behavior in times of torment. Through her marriage, Labzina discovers that her society is highly male centered.

The stories of Anton Chekhov mark a focal moment in European fiction. This is the point where 19th realist caucus of the short stories started their transformation into modern form. As such, his work straddles two traditions. The first is that of the anti-romantic realism which has a sharp observation of external social detail. It has human behavior conveyed within tight plot. The second is the modern psychological realism in which the action in typically internal and expressed in associative narrative that is built on epiphanic moments. In consideration of the two sides, Chekhov developed powerful personal styles that presage modernism without losing traditional frills of the form. This essay will discuss the Chekhov's portrayal of women.