AO5s (Interpretations) Flashcards
The Great Gatsby
Sara Rimer; “green light” symbolising aspirations of many young people to build successful career, but tole with a “level of honesty”, a “cautionary tale”.
Marxism; Gatsby and Myrtle cannot escape their origins.
Feminism; D, J, M all embody “New Woman”. But all suffer from society.
Fitzgerald in ‘This Side of Paradise’; “all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken”.
Othello
Caryl Phillips; D as “possession” and “prize”.
Coleridge; Iago with “malign (evil) motivations”.
Samuel Johnson; lesson = “not to make an unequal match” and “not to yield too readily to suspicion”.
William Hazlitt (Romanticist); celebrated play for “depth of the passion”.
Harold Bloom; O as “self-enchanter”.
Harold Bloom; O’s downfall due to “Iago knowing Othello more than Othello knows himself”.
A Streetcar Named Desire
Tynan (on 1951 film); Stanley played “with such poetic charm that you find yourself on his side”.
Susan Koprince; “submissive, self-depreciating wife who tolerates and excuses her husband’s behaviour”.
Bloom; “[Stella] feels helpless to change the way he treats her”.
Helene Deutsch (Freudian); victims of abuse are “masochists”.
Burkes (very Marxist); “social Darwinist struggle for survival between two species of human beings”.
Kolin; “Mitch is both Blanche’s victim and oppressor”.
Feminine Gospels
Helene Cixous; “women write in white ink”.
Laura Mulvey; “male gaze”, “bearer, not maker, of meaning”.
Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’; societal pressures to conform to being “ladylike”, conflict when unable to.
Marxism’s oppressor and oppressed. Fight.
CAD; “use the idea of gospel truth… trying to find truth about particularly female issues”.
CAD; “poetry and prayer are very similar”.
The Handmaid’s Tale
Angela Carter; “superlative exercise in science fiction and a profoundly felt moral story”.
Freud; “anatomy is destiny”, crossed over with ‘Pen is envy’.
Foucault; modern society creates “docile bodies”, surveillance - ‘Gilead is within you’.
Karl Marx; religion is the “opium of the people”.
Helene Cixous (‘The Laugh of the Medusa’); “female writing” about sexuality, breaking down linear logic of male discourse.
Beran; “Offred’s power is in language”.
Atwood; “science fiction… extrapolate imaginatively from current trends and events to a near-future that’s half prediction, half satire”.
Atwood hesitant to be termed ‘feminist’. Rather for “women are human beings”.
Who made “The Death of the Author”
Roland Barthes
The four waves of feminism
1) Freedom to suffrage (voting rights), work, have own money and property, read. Freedom from domestic abuse (alcohol).
2) Fight against objectification. Worth more than fertility.
3) Females unrestricted, free, outspoken. Often say that patriarchy hurts men, too.
4) 2010 onwards - empowerment over norms and marginalisation, and focus on intersectionality (inclusive).
