scholarly journals SHE, ROBOT: MALE CHARACTERS’ MECHANISATION OF OPHELIA IN SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-286
Author(s):  
Zanyar Faiq Saeed
Keyword(s):  
Male Characters ◽  
Male Dominated

This paper entitled “She, Robot: Male Characters’ Mechanisation of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet” is an attempt to explain how Ophelia is deprived of her subjectivity and objectified into a machine-like being that cannot think, speak, and act independently. The agents of this mechanisation are three male characters, namely, Laertes, Polonius and Hamlet respectively. The paper traces the mechanisation process by expounding how each one of the male characters, thinking himself superior, commanding and abusing Ophelia until she turns into a broken machine. This may be considered as one of the major reasons behind her mental breakdown and, ultimately, her supposed suicide. The organisation of the text is based on the successive roles of each of the above-mentioned male characters in the process of turning Ophelia into a machine, i.e., a robotic character. The paper delineates the situation of renaissance women under a male-dominated society and highlights the danger of exerting too much pressure on people to a degree that may lead to untoward consequences.

“I just want to feel something different”

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna F. Peppard
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
White Male ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Private Investigator ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Narrative Conventions ◽  
At Home

The last several decades have witnessed the publication of many revisionist and self-critical superhero comics, yet the most critically discussed of these focus on the straight white male characters who have always dominated the genre. In contrast, the ongoing series Alias (2001–4) stars Jessica Jones, a superhero turned private investigator who is empowered by a radioactive accident yet disempowered by her gender within a male-dominated superhero community that both excludes women and actively abuses them. This article argues that Alias redresses the superhero genre's marginalization and victimization of female characters by emphasizing Jessica's complex subjectivity and implicating male superheroes in her multifaceted abuse. It also considers Jessica's translation into more traditional comics series, wherein she becomes sidelined as a wife and stay-at-home mother; these series prove the difficulty of maintaining progressive politics within genres where the visual and narrative conventions are so steeped in gender stereotypes.

Instrumentality and Expressiveness at Work

2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 111-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Sobiraj ◽  
Sabine Korek ◽  
Thomas Rigotti
Keyword(s):  
Job Satisfaction ◽  
Work Roles ◽  
Professional Work ◽  
Gender Typicality ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Role Demands

Men’s professional work roles require different attributes according to the gender-typicality of their occupation (female- versus male-dominated). We predicted that levels of men’s strain and job satisfaction would be predicted by levels of self-ascribed instrumental and expressive attributes. Therefore, we tested for positive effects of instrumentality for men in general, and instrumentality in interaction with expressiveness for men in female-dominated occupations in particular. Data were based on a survey of 213 men working in female-dominated occupations and 99 men working in male-dominated occupations. We found instrumentality to be negatively related to men’s strain and positively related to their job satisfaction. We also found expressiveness of men in female-dominated occupations to be related to reduced strain when instrumentality was low. This suggests it is important for men to be able to identify highly with either instrumentality or expressiveness when regulating role demands in female-dominated occupations.

Mental health promotion in male-dominated workplaces: Perspectives of male employees and workplace representatives.

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherisse L. Seaton ◽  
Joan L. Bottorff ◽  
John L. Oliffe ◽  
Kerensa Medhurst ◽  
Damen DeLeenheer
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Mental Health Promotion ◽  
Male Dominated

Navigating the Gendered Math Path

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-174
Author(s):  
Christina D. Weber ◽  
Angie Hodge
Keyword(s):  
Gender Norms ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Doing Gender ◽  
Women In Stem ◽  
Stem Fields ◽  
Self Perception ◽  
Good Science ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Mathematics Coursework

Using dialogues with our informants, as well as with each other, we explore how the men and women in our research make it through their mathematics coursework and, in turn, pursue their intended majors. Our research focuses on how students navigate what we call the gendered math path and how that path conforms to and diverges from traditional gender norms. Common themes of women's lower than men's self-perception of their ability to do mathematics, along with the divergent processes of doing gender that emerged in men's and women's discussions of their application of mathematics, reminded us of the continued struggles that women have to succeed in male-dominated academic disciplines. Although self-perception helps us understand why there are fewer women in STEM fields, it is important to understand how different forms of application of ideas might add to the diversity of what it means to do good science.

Performing Masculinity and the Crisis of Transclass Man in August Wilson’s Drama

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khatija Bibi Khan ◽  
Owen Seda
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Great Cost ◽  
Social Milieu ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
North End

Feminist critics have identified the social constructedness of masculinity and have explored how male characters often find themselves caught up in a ceaseless quest to propagate and live up to an acceptable image of manliness. These critics have also explored how the effort to live up to the dictates of this social construct has often come at great cost to male protagonists. In this paper, we argue that August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone present the reader with a coterie of male characters who face the dual crisis of living up to a performed masculinity and the pitfalls that come with it, and what Mazrui has referred to as the phenomenon of “transclass man.” Mazrui uses the term transclass man to refer to characters whose socio-economic and socio-cultural experience displays a fluid degree of transitionality. We argue that the phenomenon of transclass man works together with the challenges of performed masculinity to create characters who, in an effort to adjust to and fit in with a new and patriarchal urban social milieu in America’s newly industrialised north, end up destroying themselves or failing to realise other possibilities that may be available to them. Using these two plays as illustrative examples, we further argue that staged masculinity and the crisis of transclass man in August Wilson’s plays create male protagonists who break ranks with the social values of a collectively shared destiny to pursue an individualistic personal trajectory, which only exacerbates their loss of social identity and a true sense of who they are.

From Culturazing Nature to Naturalizing Culture: The Differing Function of Animal Imagery in Defining Bodies from Homer’s Odysseus to Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Begüm Tuğlu
Keyword(s):  
Primary Sources ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Male Voice ◽  
Women Authors ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Animal Imagery ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
History Of

Feminist authors have long been trying to alter the patriarchal structure of the Western society through different aspects. One of these aspects, if not the strongest, is the struggle to overcome centuries long dominance of male authors who have created a masculine history, culture and literature. As recent works of women authors reveal, the strongest possibility of actually achieving an equalitarian society lies beneath the chance of rewriting the history of Western literature. Since the history of Western literature relies on dichotomies that are reminiscences of modernity, the solution to overcome the inequality between the two sexes seems to be to rewrite the primary sources that have influenced the cultural heritage of literature itself. The most dominant dichotomies that shape this literary heritage are represented through the bonds between the concepts of women/man and nature/culture. As one of the most influential epics that depict these dichotomies, Homer's Odysseus reveals how poetry strengthens the authority of the male voice. In order to define the ideal "man", Homer uses a wide scope of animal imagery while forming the identities of male characters. Margaret Atwood, on the other hand, is not contended with Homer's poem in that it never narrates the story from the side of women. As a revisionist mythmaker, Atwood takes the famous story of Odysseus, yet this time presents it from the perspective of Penelope, simultaneously playing on the animal imagery. Within this frame, I intend to explore in this paper how the animal imagery in Homer's most renowned Odysseus functions as a reinforcing tool in the creation of masculine identities and how Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad defies this formation of identities with the aim of narrating the story from the unheard side, that of the women who are eminently present yet never heard.

Mummified Fragments: Characters and Themes in Hariharan’s Novel The Ghosts of Vasu Master

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 827-835
Author(s):  
R. Ramakrishnan
Keyword(s):  
School Teacher ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Male Characters

Hariharan’s versatility as an author with a mission to subvert the entire tradition can be recognized in every work of fiction she has created. For this purpose in her second novel, The Ghosts of Vasu Master she experiments with a male protagonist and a host of other male characters. Vasu is the protagonist of the novel. He is a retired school teacher from P.G. Boys’ school, Ellipettai. He leads a lonely widower’s life with two of his sons employed and settled away from home. This article scrutinizes the life of an idower is all aspects.

A New Kind of Monster, Cowboy, and Crusader?

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-63
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Al-Jbouri ◽  
Shauna Pomerantz
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
New Man ◽  
Gender Neutrality

Representations of boys and men in Disney films often escape notice due to presumed gender neutrality. Considering this omission, we explore masculinities in films from Disney’s lucrative subsidiary Pixar to determine how masculinities are represented and have and/or have not disrupted dominant gender norms as constructed for young boys’ viewership. Using Raewyn Connell’s theory of gender hegemony and related critiques, we suggest that while Pixar films strive to provide their male characters with a feminist spin, they also continue to reify hegemonic masculinities through sharp contrasts to femininities and by privileging heterosexuality. Using a feminist textual analysis that includes the Toy Story franchise, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Coco, we suggest that Pixar films, while offering audiences a “new man,” continue to reinforce hegemonic masculinities in subtle ways that require critical examination to move from presumed gender neutrality to an understanding of continued, though shifting, gender hegemony.

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