Skip to main content

Evolution of Women in Texts

By


Women have been represented in all sorts of ways throughout time, and it's fascinating thing to see how these representations have evolved with the changes in society
While some female archetypes are seen over and over again, in the form of the femme fatale or Mary Sue it is still interesting to see how different women in books have evolved over time.
As someone who reads - a lot - many different types of women have been portrayed to me in books I've read, and it's cool to see both how much the representations have changed and stayed the same.
For example, there have been women categorized as "feminist" in texts for quite some time. Characters ranging from Lizzie Bennet to Hermione Granger are called "feminists" because of both their actions and dialogue in their respective texts. It is a very positive thing, especially for young female readers, that women are being portrayed correctly and as whole characters.Image result for harry potter book coverImage result for pride and prejudice

However, it is longer still that women have been devalued and objectified in texts, especially regarding their position in the home and the representation of femininity.
Examples of this can be seen in movies such as Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937).
Image result for snow white and the seven dwarfs
Snow White's primary role in the film is as homemaker, which isn't necessarily the ideal representation of women for young audiences.
Progress has been made though, as seen in recent films such as Disney's Moana.

I look forward to seeing more examples of the evolution of women in text over time, and learning more about this in the course to come.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This sounds fun

By
My first thoughts when I read the course name was that this would be a very interesting course for me, since I'm a pretty big feminist ( I mean otherwise I probably wouldn't have picked this course so duh), and that we'd be looking through old texts and artworks, slowly building our way up to the present. However, from what you've showed us so far, we'll be looking at much more than that, and I'm excited to see what it teaches me about the representation of women in more than just modern day times. So far in my life, girls and women have been portrayed as (usually; there are some exceptions) two dimensional beings who are there either there only as the main character's love interest, as some faux attempt at equal representation (in which they don't speak a word), or as a villain. It has been getting much better but there are still many cases where the roles of females was severely lacking or two-dimensional, eg. the majority of women in media repre...
1 comment
Read more

Girl With A Pearl Earring

By
Girl With A Pearl Earring Johanne Vermeers' Girl with a Pearl Earring Painting In the novel "Girl with a Pearl Earring" the story rotates around the character "Griet" and her life as a maid for the painter Johannes Vermeers' family, and all the ups and downs of her life working for them, including when Vermeer paints her for his, now world famous, painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Griet comes from a protestant family with three children (Griet (15/16), her younger brother Frans (~14-15) and her younger sister Agnes (~12)) living in the dutch town of Deflt which is shown as a relatively small town. Griets' family falls to poverty after her father is blinded in an accident with a kiln explosion, taking his craft of tile-painting when he is blinded. This means Griet has to go and work for the Vermeers' where the painter needs a maid who can clean without moving anything and Griets parents volunteer her. There are a lot of small...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ideal Women

By
Representations of women have varied enormously throughout history and across cultures, but one thing remains constant, and that is usually a prominent representation of women are those of the ‘ideal woman’.   This is a representation of women that I find interesting as you can find almost anywhere as it can be found in nearly all media we consume today, such as social media platforms, television, websites and advertising from the fashion and cosmetic industry.  An idea of a ‘perfect’ female has been, and will continue to be a constant representation of women due to the fact that many societies function by having high-status figures that act as an ideal way of being, physically, socially and economically. ‘Ideal women’ can be found in many differing forms throughout many different eras and across a diverse range of cultures. These individuals are looked up to by societies usually due to possessing features, traits or characteristics that, in their context, are deemed d...
1 comment
Read more