Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Strindberg's MISS JULIE and Chekhov's CHERRY ORCHARD

Gender conflict has been around ever since the beginning of time. Although many other conflicts emerged in human history--such as religion, class, and race--gender has always found its way through and prevailed like an unresolved issue that persists even if other conflicts are resolved. In the modern period, many personal and social defects prevent gender from receding as a contentious issue. Women persist in attempting to prove their personal and social worth, perhaps to themselves, perhaps to men, trying to reach men's status of power, control, and responsibility. Such efforts have become the basis for the work of philosophers, historians, poets, and artists, either explicitly or implicitly in their works. Two examples are Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and August Strindberg's Miss Julie. In these plays, the main characters are women who are on the brink of the modern era, a period when women started receiving access to social goods, including limited political and social power. But there were false starts along the way, and Chekhov and Strindberg portray their content. In the course of this paper and relying on the ideas of the plays, this essay will prove how women have less control and fail to achieve responsibility over their lives and futures than men.

In the decades of transition from the 19th to the 20th century, the social position of middle-class women was shifting owing to a host of forces--from increased education to the pressures of urbanization and industrialization. But the shifts were uneven, and social theorists understood that. That is captured by Veblen's analysis of the so-called leisure class of the period. According to Veblen, anyone who is not "of" the highest class class is fated to struggle for something akin to equality and dignity. Also, women in the highest class are not involved in "industrial occupations." Why? Because, ironically, their status as leisure dependents keeps them out of...

Page 1 of 9 Next >

More on Strindberg's MISS JULIE and Chekhov's CHERRY ORCHARD...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Strindberg's MISS JULIE and Chekhov's CHERRY ORCHARD. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 16:57, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/2000522.html