Role Of The Sexes

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

situation. Many authors illustrate this and portray some reasons and situations that are common in our society, such as Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, in her story “The Hand”, and James Joyce, in “Eveline”. These two authors both, even though each describes a woman in a very different, yet remarkably similar, situation, discuss one of the major reasons women succumb to males. Colette was a significant feminist in the early 1900’s when the women’s right movement was in full swing. She fought for equal opportunities for women and proved it was possible when she was the first woman to be admitted to the Goncourt Academy. As a novelist, she used her writing to illustrate the assumed roles society has developed. The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature remarks, “Her professional life and three marriages helped to shape her keen insights into modern love and women’s lives.” (Compact Bedford, 196). Colette understood the expected submission role because she had lived the role of the ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

up what she would rather in order to keep him content. Colette uses the description of the characters to emphasize the unbalance of power. Not only does the husband outweigh the wife in power in the relationship; he is physically dominant as well. The young wife is described as slim and adolescent. The husband, on the otherhand, is described as having physical, not only mental, prowess. He is handsome, athletic, and physically dominant. He has very big arms, hands larger than the wives whole head, and “powerful knuckles and the veins engorged by the pressure on his arm” (Colette, 197). By describing him such as big, powerful, and hair on his hands and arms, the author portrays him as ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: