The Woman Question

description here

Introduction

Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” introduces various themes about women’s sexuality and the sexual oppression of women. Her excellent storytelling and writing paint a world where goblins prey on young women in hopes of getting them to eat various fruits. The use of a mythical creates the extended metaphor for men’s mistreatment of women throughout the short story. Laura, one of the main characters who willingly eat the goblin’s fruits, demonstrates the sexual oppression of women through her attempts to get back to the goblins. She…

Introduction

Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” features a peculiar Duke who, in speaking to the representative of his potential wife’s family, is overwhelmingly fixated on a portrait of his deceased wife. Throughout the Duke’s dramatic monologue, his characteristics bring into question his morality. The Duke, for example, states, “Notice Neptune, though, / taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity” (Browning, lines 54-55), and “I gave commands; / then all smiles stopped together” (Browning, lines 45-46). These lines within the poem emphasize the…

     Introduction

Virginia Woolf’s “The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection” features the theme of the materialism of fashion and the oppression of women. Throughout the reflection, we see descriptive imagery that focuses on the furnishings of Isabella Tyson’s room  and attire questioning the oppression of women through the materialism of fashion. Woolf describes Isabella as having the “qualities one had discovered into this visible body. There were her grey-green dress, and her long shoes, her basket, and something sparkling at her throat” (Woolf). These…

Introduction 

“The Woman of England” by Sarah Stickney Ellis, written in response to Mary Wollstonecraft’s essay “On the Rights of Women” and the larger social discussion it prompted, takes a very strong stance on the topic at hand – a woman’s true and natural role in society. For Wollstonecraft, it was the belief that in order for women to ever be taken seriously, they must be better educated. They had no hope for a bright future if they were left in the dark academically. Ellis counters this argument in her own essay. Though she does not argue against a woman’s education…

Introduction

            WB Yeats’s Leda and the Swan (1924) serves as an interpretation of the ancient Greek myth in which Zeus transforms into a swan for the purpose of assaulting or seducing Leda. This exhibit will focus on artistic interpretations of the Greek myth and how it relates to or rejects Yeats’s depictions of sexual oppression and violence; this gallery will also connect to the morally gray area that Yeats creates with his poem. While Zeus’s character is vital to the story Yeats…

Introduction

The gallery series will consist of Sarah Ellis’s The Women of England, Their Social Duties, and Domestic Habits and of Ashley Fetters’ Turn-of-the-Century Thinkers Weren’t Sure If Women Could Vote and Be Mothers at the Same Time. from Throughout time, women have dealt with many forms of oppression and hurtful societal norms that left them at the bottom of gender hierarchical structure of men compared to women. Some of these consist of oppression from men, conceived notions that women could not work and be a mother for the…

Introduction

Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” allows readers to have a perspective on what one’s own room symbolizes when it comes to women who read and write. When it comes to this essay, there have been different opinions and perspectives on what Woolf tries to aim for. For some, the essay symbolizes the importance of women having their own privacy, time to write, financial independence, moreover, which at that time, prevented women from their creative potential to write. On the other hand, there are others that would merely say that this essay…