...The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatizes the revenge Prince Hamlet exacts on his uncle Claudius for murdering King Hamlet, Claudius's brother and Prince Hamlet's father, and then succeeding to the throne and taking as his wife Gertrude, the old king's widow and Prince Hamlet's mother. The play vividly portrays both true and feigned madness – from overwhelming grief to seething rage – and explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption. Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play and among the most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others." The play was one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime It has inspired writers from Goethe and Dickens to Joyce and Murdoch, and has been described as "the world's most filmed story after Cinderella". Shakespeare based Hamlet on the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum as subsequently retold by 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest. He may also have drawn on or perhaps written an earlier Elizabethan play known today as the Ur-Hamlet. He almost certainly created the title role for Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian of Shakespeare's time. In the 400 years since, the role has been performed by highly acclaimed actors and actresses from each successive age. Three...
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...In the play Trifles by Susan Glaspell, we’re presented with a semi-witty gender battle during a murder case investigation. As usual, we get to witness the men flaring their egos up and about while belittling the women in the process; nonchalantly the two women proceed with the business with very little protest. While at the right house, the difference in gender agenda flowing casually through their dialogues helped the fluidity of the story. As the investigation went on, the dialogue among the men and the questions for the women carried with it an element of gender disparity. In one instance following a response to a question by Mrs. Hale, the sheriff exclaimed “They wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot it! (The men laugh, the...
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...In 1990, Butler published her book Gender Trouble, which challenged many assumptions made about heteronormative culture and gender identity. In this book she discussed how the existing feminist movement, of that time, was limited in how it defined gender. During the 1990s the feminist movement moved toward defending a concrete feminine identity because it was believed to be crucial for the societal advancement of women. This delineation of gender was, and still is, reflected in how the world treats gender as binary (male and female). By using poststructuralist theories about socially created identities, Butler makes the case for gender as being a “performative” act that is socially constructed. She points out that gender identity is complex in its relation to sex and that to appreciate these complexities, feminists must move further away from the traditional Western ideologies of what is “normal” gender...
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...In the article “Fluid and Shifting: Racialized, Gendered, and Sexual Identity in African American Children” by Denise Isom. Isom talks about how the researchers were studying African American Children, and racialized gender identity. There were several ways that the research was conducted they include: questionnaires, one-on-one interviews, and observation ethnography. The study was conducted from 2001-2002, in a “lower/ working class African American community near a large mid-western city” (Isom, 2012). The participants were children enrolled in a community based after-school program. To gain insight on early conceptions of one’s self and others as far as gender and race (focusing on how they intersect), children from grades five, six, and seven were the targets of this study (Isom, 2012). At the 5th, 6th, and 7th grade levels, there were 75 children enrolled in the program, these are the children who were the participants of the ethnographic observation part of the study (Isom, 2012). Of the 75 students participating in the study there was one 7th grader who was a white female; the other 74 students were African Americans. Breaking the down into gender, in the 5th grade room had 10 girls and 14 boys, in the 6th grade room there were 16 girls and 13 boys, and the 7th grade room had 11girls and 11 boys. On an average there were approximately 50 students in the three classrooms on a regular basis; this due to some children joining the program and others dropping out, thus...
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...Gender differences In today's society, people are becoming more aware of the problem of stereotypes. Although we are meant to live in a fluid society, the portrayal of rigid stereotypes by the media does not help to reduce this problem. Many issues involving sexual status and gender stereotypes have been disputed, including the ethical reasoning behind why stereotypes should be dismissed and avoided in advertising. Male and female stereotypes have always been present in our daily lives, but they were stronger in the early years before the fifties. These differences caused social problems such as forbidding women to use jeans instead of skirts or dresses, the famous stereotype in which the woman stays at home taking care of the children or housekeeping while the man goes to work. There is a lot of research regarding stereotypical views of men and women, and psychological testing has helped integrate and differentiate the documented "real" behavior. Even through the sexual revolution, there still exists gender-role stereotypes, although the stereotyping has decreased in recent years. However, times have changed, and now it’s becoming common to see both men and women work to sustain themselves, resulting in a new idea about marriage and stereotypes. I do not believe in stereotypes, as they are only based in what our education was before civilization: savages. I mean, people often judge using the nature as an example. Yes, it is commonly seen among the animals that the alpha male...
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...What is the Difference Between ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender’? To start this essay I will clearly state definitions of ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender’ respectively. ‘Sex’ is described as ‘the biological properties that distinguish organisms on the basis of their reproductive roles.’(Princeton University – 2010). Whereas gender is listed as ‘the state of being male or female, typically with reference to social or cultural differences rather than biological.’(Michigan University – 2010). In this essay I will explore and investigate both sex and gender, whilst identifying the differences between the two. I will start by elaborating on the given definitions. Sex is defined on the Princeton University website as ‘biological’. This is a word that has recurred in many other definitions that I have researched for the word ‘sex’. This would suggest that sex is able to be categorized in a straight forward manner. However, there are several high profile cases in the media, when the issue of ‘sex’ has come into question. Perhaps most recently is the case of South African athlete, Caster Semanya. Semanya won the 800m race during the African Junior Championship, with the fastest time of the year. This lead to some spectators questioning her sex. When looking at the athlete she has an incredibly muscular and angular frame, and this coupled with her record breaking run made the International Athletic Association ask for a sex test. This case brought the issue of ‘sex’ into much disrepute. Now, we are...
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...Early and Middle Adulthood Paper Morgaine Smith PSY280 April 17, 2012 Early to middle adulthood is a time of independence, identity seeking, and lifestyle forming. During this time people strike out on their own, building relationships and establishing social and health-affecting habits. Middle adulthood differs from young adulthood in social needs (although the basic need for socialization remains the same), and represents a shift in attitude about relationships and vocations that moves from fluidity to stability. Health practices are also at work here, with factors such as diet, exercise, and drug use in young adulthood impacting middle adulthood later on. Erikson believed that people need constant contact with others throughout their lives, from birth to death, whether that contact is romantic intimacy or a relationship with friends and family. In romantic relationships, young adults tend to be “serially monogamous” [ (Berger, 2010) ], or remaining emotionally or sexually involved with only one person for a period of time, though the relationship is rarely permanent, and the young adult may have many of these relationships during this stage of his or her life. This is typical for the age group, which is characterized by an unwillingness to commit permanently to a job, a spouse, or even an educational program. Young adults today are markedly different from young adults in the previous generation, in that they marry later and may not start families or enter a permanent...
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...The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in 1930 and lasted until the late 1930s or middle 1940s. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the world's economy can decline. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by approximately 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as cash cropping, mining and logging suffered the most. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. In many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until after the end of World War II. Start Economic historians usually attribute the start of the Great Depression to the sudden devastating collapse of US stock market prices on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday; some dispute this conclusion, and see the stock crash as a symptom, rather than a cause, of the Great Depression. Even after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, optimism persisted for some time; John D. Rockefeller said that "These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come and...
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...a Struggle from Gender Identity to Political Balance Long before Song Liling made her debut as M. Butterfly on stage, there was a woman called Cho-cho-san, playing Madama Butterfly with the fullest of her life. M. Butterfly’s counterpart Madama Butterfly presents readers Cho-cho-san, a pitiful and submissive Oriental Butterfly. Cho-cho-san’s character traits fit in almost every single aspect of the ideal of Oriental women, for instance, Cho-cho-san is a geisha, an exotic representation of Japanese women in the eyes of westerners, Cho-cho-san eventually dies of seppuku, which is the Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment, and her ultimate sacrifice of her everything from her religion to her very life. The attributes of Cho-cho-san are not exclusive to this character only but imposed on all Asian women. The western presupposition of some certain fixed and bounded Asian attributes defines the identity of Asian women and thus, creates an image of the sacrificial and submissive Oriental women. Moreover, the historical backgrounds of Hwang’s Butterfly and Puccini’s Butterfly are, in fact, the extension of gender tension to international power struggle. Cho-cho-san’s love story happens in the Meiji Period in which Japan first opened its door to foreigners; while Gallimard and Song Liling begins having an affair in the 1960s, in the midst of Cold War. Hwang’s M. Butterfly parodies Puccini’s Madama Butterfly by reversing the conventional narrative on the gender identities and the...
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...psychiatry, the prison system, and the human sciences in general. Specifically he focused on how these institutions relate to power interactions. For a time he was associated with structuralism, which is an intellectual movement in which the culture of humanity is semiotically analyzed. However he distanced himself from the structuralism movement after the 60s. He wrote on a wide array of topics from knowledge to power and discourse. He considered himself "Nietzschean" (Fox 169). In viewing his own system of philosophy this way, he rejected the postmodernist label attributed to him. In fact, he held that his work was in line with the modernity of the philosophies of Kant. In The History of Sexuality Foucault examined the role of sex and gender in power relations. This three volume series was published in 1984. In the first volume, Foucault explores the functioning of sexuality as a way to analyze the relationship between power and the science of sexuality. Foucault's History defined sexuality as "the set of effects produced in bodies, behaviors, and...
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...Sexual identities that are clearly defined in terms of object choice and/or who people are attracted to, play both an enabling and constraining role in society because there are clear benefits and consequences. With the emergence of new gender identities and sexual fluidities, the traditional thought of sexual and gender binaries are becoming increasingly challenged, remodeled and broken. The effects of growing assimilationist politics, is signaling a change in gay inclusive politics and culture, in which the continued existence of the LGBT movement comes into question. For years our society has constructed identities, especially sexual identities, based solely on object choice and who someone is attracted to. This creates a very interesting...
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...Introduction Gender identity disorders in children and adolescents are rare and complex conditions. They are often associated with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Intense distress is often experienced, particularly in adolescence. Gender identity disorders can be seen as states in which, in the course of the young person’s psychosexual development, there is an atypical gender identity organisation. The young person experiences their phenotypic sex as incongruous with his or her own sense of gender identity. This predicament, which is commoner in boys, is characterised by: • A desire to be of the other sex • Cross-dressing • Play with games, toys and objects usually associated with the other sex and avoidance of play normally associated with their sex • Preference for playmates or friends of the sex with which the child identifies • Dislike of bodily sexual characteristics and functions It is important to consider these states as different from those seen in adults because: (a) A developmental process is involved (physical, psychological and sexual). (b) There is greater fluidity and variability in the outcome, with only a small proportion becoming transsexuals or transvestites, the majority of affected children eventually developing a homosexual orientation and some a heterosexual orientation without transvestism or transsexualism. Similarly, pre-pubertal and post-pubertal groups need to be differentiated. There is greater fluidity and likelihood...
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...Project Proposal This paper aims to explore how humor, a site of construction of gender identity and power relation, is employed by both males and females to negotiate their power relations and either subvert or confirm their gender roles. I believe this topic is of particular interest because though a number of studies have been conducted to examine the relation between gender practice and occupational practice, and ways of constructing gender roles via humor. Concentration is rarely deployed on humor use by males and females at workplace. This review is important because there is a growing number of female practitioners participating in different sectors and industries. They are frequently confronted with paradoxical situations of their gender role of feminity and their professional competence and leadership, usually tagged with masculinity. This paper will offer some insights to professional females about how they can resolve such paradoxes at their workplace through the employment of humor. Besides, this topic is of particular interest because it can be seen through the review of the body of literature, that the meaning and effect of humor, as a linguistic means can never be captured nicely. It can have different functions in different context, which is in accordance with the “ambiguity” and “polysemy”put forward by Tannen (1993), so this paper will probes into the fluidity and ambivalency of this linguistic means. Moreover, one big context in this review is...
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...The Representation of Gender in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex by Marte Rognstad A Thesis Presented to The Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages University of Oslo In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the MA Degree Spring Term 2012 Marte Rognstad The Representation of Gender in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex Marte Rognstad http://www.duo.uio.no Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo Abstract This thesis presents an exploration of the representation of gender in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex mainly in light of the theories of Judith Butler. The focus will be on how the two novels challenge the traditional concept of gender and gender categories, and in what ways the novels can give us new perspectives on the concept of gender. The theoretical focus will be on Judith Butler, more precisely her idea of gender as performance, and her deconstructionist approach to identity categories. I will present Butler’s proposal for a “new feminist genealogy,” and through my investigation of the representation of gender in Orlando and Middlesex I will show how both novels take on a “Butlerian” understanding of the concept of gender. By looking at various issues related to gender explored in the two novels, and pointing to similarities and differences between the two works, I hope to show how the protagonists, Orlando and Cal/lie, break down and transcend the fraught...
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...The concepts encapsulated within the term ‘queer’, according to Corber and Valocchi, are those which define the “identities and practices that foreground the instability inherent in the supposedly stable relationship between anatomical sex, gender, and sexual desire” (2003: 1). In other words, Queer Theory attempts to illustrate that these things do not always align in predetermined and/or normative ways, and it is perhaps misguided to assume that they should. Corber and Valocchi refer to this notion in their suggestion that Queer Theory focuses on forms of sexuality which fall ‘outside’ of the typical binaries (2003:1). Queer writer Annemarie Jagose states the Queer Theory works to destabilise the belief in ‘natural’ sexuality by exposing the incoherencies that occur within the varying relationships of sex, gender, and sexuality (1996: 3). By having an analytical framework which includes numerous modes of sex/gender/sexuality combinations, such as cross-dressing, sadomasochism, and androgyny, Queer Theory acts in critical relation to the hegemonic social norms through which traditional sexual identities are governed and accepted (Weed and Schor, 1997: vii). Theorist David Halperin (1997) suggests that numerous varying degrees of difference and interpretation exist within any given from of sexuality - for example, there exist both feminine male homosexuals and masculine male homosexuals, and so on. Related to this is one Queer Theory’s central claims, which wishes to state...
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