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Critique of Marriage in 19th Century English Literature


But how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture. (Austen, 50) The irony here is that if much of the Victorian critique of marriage hinged upon its suppression of female autonomy, Elizabeth Bennett's (and by extension Jane Austen's) critique of the union of Wickham and Lydia Bennett seems to indicate it was due to an excess of female autonomy, where "their passions were stronger than their virtue

Critique of Marriage in 19th Century English Literature


.] the wife is regarded as the property of her husband" (Besant

Critique of Marriage in 19th Century English Literature


In Browning's poem, the title itself -- "My Last Duchess" -- is perfectly ambiguous: it refers either to the Duke of Ferrara's first wife, or the portrait of his first wife that hangs in his art gallery. The chilling revelation of the verse monologue is that, of course, the Duke's complete control over the portrait is intended to compensate for a certain lack of control he had over the actual wife, whom eventually he had killed: the Duke tells his guest that "none puts by / the curtain I have drawn for you, but I" (Browning 9-10), demonstrating that access to the late wife's portrait is entirely controlled by the husband

Critique of Marriage in 19th Century English Literature


Marriage is a state of higher duties. I never thought of it as mere personal ease" (Eliot, IV)

Critique of Marriage in 19th Century English Literature


If Dorothea is, as Leavis claims, Eliot's 'day-dream ideal self' her perfection lies in the kind of high womanliness which her creator herself was anxious to represent." (Foster 219)

Critique of Marriage in 19th Century English Literature


But overall, Besant's argument focuses on the state of the actual laws in England in the Victorian period, arguing that "by marriage a woman loses her legal existence…the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage" (Besant 8). Again this is traced back to the religious notion that husband and wife are "one flesh," but it is -- as Shanley notes, an accurate assessment of the state of English law at the time, which was still heavily influenced by "the notion that a husband in some manner owned his wife's affection and sexual services, that she was his property, but a wife did not have a similar legal claim on her husband" (Shanley 24)

English Literature Martin Luther King:


Well known examples of the use of a non-violence approach by great leaders are Mahatma Gandhi leading a decades-long nonviolent struggle against British rule in India, which eventually helped India win its independence in 1947. Cesar Chavez campaigns of nonviolence in the 1960s to protest the treatment of farm workers in California (Burstein and Shek, 2005)

English Literature Martin Luther King:


Martin Luther King Jr. successfully crafted his counter argument by first directly addressing his audience, the clergymen, and then using logos, pathos, and ethos to disprove his opponent's statements and present his own viewpoint (Jones, 2008)

English Literature Martin Luther King:


It is obvious that there is substantial debate about the exact meaning of nonviolence. For some, nonviolent feats are an expedient technique for dealing with conflict or bringing about social change; for others, nonviolence is a moral imperative or even a way of life (Weber and Burrowes, n

English Literature the Book of


This argument by Alter seems to have merit if one believes that God represents ultimate, and equal justice. If equal justice is the case in fact, then it is clear that Jacob, perhaps in preparation for a higher purpose, is held to a different standard than his contemporaries (Alter)

English Literature Feminism Humanities


For instance, the dryness of the woman's mother in her soul and sexual life is contrasted with the fluid rushing of the Mekong River nearby, and of the home being cleaned with the waters of river. (Duras 60-2)

English Literature Feminism Humanities


reverse of an essence or nature; it is a name for that which provokes crisis in the realm of representation by producing irreducible difference." (Hill 30)

English Literature Feminism Humanities


" (Duras 45-46) Her lover is like an emotional mother to her, because of his male ability to touch her in a life-generating fashion, unlike the girl's biological mother Carol Hoffman's Forgetting and Marguerite Duras stresses, "the repetition of situations, events, memories, and words abounds in Duras' texts." (Hoffman 35) The contrast between dryness and wet fertility runs through the text, true

English Literature Canterbury Tales


Chaucer's "Retraction" and Its Meaning within the Context of the Canterbury Tales The "Retraction," a fragment that follows the last of the Tales in Chaucer's masterpiece, has attracted much critical attention, as students of Chaucer attempt to divine whether it implies a renunciation on the author's part of his work, or is intended ironically. Benson comments that "the authenticity of the Retraction has been challenged" (Benson

English Literature Canterbury Tales


(Wurtele, 1980) Thus, Chaucer's recounting of the Wife of Bath's Tale is the word of fallen man for the fallen act of sexual love. By repenting of it, Chaucer subtly calls our attention to the Word of God, that is, the only means of redemption of fallen man by a merciful God (Knapp, 1983) Boenig mentions that tales such as the story of Melibee showed up anonymously in various "compendia of devotional treatises "of the time (Boenig, 1995)

English Literature Canterbury Tales


" The damage had been done, and "he could not revoke the act nor remedy its evil consequences." (Wurtele, 1980) Chaucer himself does put similar words in the mouth of the Manciple, who laments, "Thyng that is seyd, and forth it gooth, / Though hym repente, or be hym nevere so looth" (Chaucer, Manciple's Tale IX, lines 354-355)

English Literature Canterbury Tales


Haines compares it to the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight postcript, "Hony soyt qui mal pense." (Haines, 1983) Thus the intention of the writing is a responsibility shared by both the writer and the reader

English Literature Canterbury Tales


Above all, Chaucer was an acute student of human nature, both in the day-to-day actions of all classes of people in his society, and also in how they had been portrayed by the writers who preceded him. His experiences as a scholar and as a diplomat would have exposed him to a wide spectrum of the cruelties, mercies, conceits and foibles of universal man (Persall, 1992)

English Literature Canterbury Tales


"The Retraction has been read as a real confession by Chaucer the poet in the face of imminent death; as a realistic confession by Chaucer the pilgrim in response to the Parson's sermon; and as an ironic parody of both confession and retraction in keeping with the Manciple's cynical counsel to silence." (Portnoy,1994) Therefore, all the foregoing experts to some extent support the sincerity of the first Chaucer, the genuinely devout Christian, praying that his book of Tales might be accepted as "writen for our doctrine

English Literature Canterbury Tales


He stresses that it is up to the reader to either take "any thynge that liketh hem" as such things proceed from God, or "any thyng that displese hem," as such things are created by the writer's own ignorance (Ibid). Sayce identifies numerous examples of analogous rhetorical endings in Latin, French and German writings, in which the convention of apologizing or distancing the writer from the possible negative effects of the writing may be traced, along with some sentiments crediting God for any positive results (Sayce, 1971)