State University of Moldova Faculty of

Foreign Languages and Literatures

English Philology Department

Theme: The Women's language translation

Plan:

Chapter I

Linguistic peculiarity of the women's language.

1.1.Diacronic analysis of women's language

1.2.Women's  language in various fields

Chapter II

Sociolinguistic aspects of women's language based on ''Jane Eyre'' Charlotte Bronte.

Women seeking men

'WOMEN SEEKING MEN' Classifieds



Adventurer means: Has had more partners than you ever will

Affectionate means: Possessive

Artist means: Unreliable

Average looking means: You figure this one out

Beautiful means: Pathological liar

Commitment-minded means: Pick out curtains, now!

Communication important means: Just try to get a word in edgewise

Contagious Smile means: Bring your penicillin

Educated means: College dropout

Emotionally Secure means: Medicated

Employed means: Has part-time job stuffing envelopes at home

Enjoys art and opera means: Snob

Enjoys Nature means: Bring your own granola

Exotic Beauty means: Would frighten a Martian

Financially Secure means: One paycheck from the street

Free spirit means: Substance abuser

Friendship first means: Trying to live down reputation as slut

Fun means: Annoying

Gentle means: Comatose

Good Listener means: Hard to pull a word from her

Humorous means: Caustic

Intuitive means: Your opinion doesn't count

In Transition means: Needs new sugar-daddy to pay the bills

Light drinker means: Lush

Looks younger means: If viewed from far away in bad light

Loves Travel means: If you're paying

Loves Animals means: Cat lady

Non-traditional means: Ex-husband lives in the basement

Open-minded means: Desperate

Outgoing means: Loud

Passionate means: Loud

Poet means: Depressive Schizophrenic

Redhead means: Shops on the Clairol aisle

Reliable means: Frumpy

Reubenesque means: You can figure this one out

Romantic means: Looks better by candle light

Self-employed means: Jobless

Smart means: Insipid

Special means: Rode the small schoolbus w/ tinted windows

Spiritual means: Involved with a cult

Stable means: Boring

Tall, thin means: Anorexic

Tan means: Wrinkled

Wants Soulmate means: One step away from stalking

Widow Nagged means: first husband to death

Writer means: Pompous

Young at heart means: How about the rest

Women's translations

WOMEN'S LANGUAGE TRANSLATED

Yes = No

No = Yes

Maybe = No

I?m sorry. = You?ll be sorry.

We need = I want

It?s your decision = The correct decision should be obvious by now. Do what you want = You?ll pay for this later. We need to talk = I need to complain Surego ahead = I don?t want you to.

I?m not upset = Of course I?m upset, you moron! You?re so manly = You need a shave and you sweat a lot. You?re certainly attentive tonight = Is sex all you ever think about? Be romantic, turn out the lights = I have flabby thighs. This kitchen is so inconvenient = I want a new house. I want new curtains = and carpeting, and furniture, and wallpaper.. Hang the picture there = NO, I mean hang it there! I heard a noise = I noticed you were almost asleep. Do you love me? = I?m going to ask for something expensive. How much do you love me? = I did something today you?re really not going to like.

I?ll be ready in a minute = Kick off your shoes and find a good game on TV.

Am I fat? = Tell me I?m beautiful.

You have to learn to communicate. = Just agree with me.

Are you listening to me!? = Too late, you?re dead.

Was that the baby? = Why don?t you get out of bed and walk him until he goes to sleep.

I'm not yelling! = Yes I am yelling because I think this is important.

In response to What?s wrong?:

The same old thing = Nothing

Nothing = Everything

Nothing, really = It?s just that you?re such an idiot!

Are we losing our written language skills?

Observing the way much of society has 'modified' the written language (English, anyway!) to adapt to new technologies (i.e., 'texting' messages over cell phones, IM's, chat-rooms, etc.), it is not difficult to speculate that one day (soon?), the written language may make 'evolutionary' steps, as has happened so many times in the past.
If we look back on the English language, we'll see that lots of changes have occurred to bring English to its present usage parameters. For example, in the 14th century, when 'middle English' was in vogue, 'sweet' was 'soote'; 'also' was 'eek'; 'wood' was 'holt'; 'run' was 'yronne', and so on.
Soit is very likely (even inevitable) that words will continue to undergo more spelling and pronunciation changes as time goes on. Indeed, I can think of a few words that have been undergoing such change for some time:
'Right' is becoming 'rite'
'Night' is becoming 'nite'
'Light' is becoming 'lite'
Then, we see changes in Scriptural language, from the 'old' (or is it 'olde'?) English (King James Bible) to the more modern English (New Revised Version, et al):
'Shalt' is 'shall'
'Doth' is 'does'
'Maketh' is 'makes'
'Thou' is 'you'
And so on.

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

One of the most striking characterizations in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is that of Rochester's first wife, Bertha Mason. Bronte's presentation of Bertha's madness, both in its nature and its symptoms, offers a unique window into the Victorian view of mental illness. Bronte's assessment, that Bertha's madness is related to her family heritage, while it borders on racist, anticipates genetic theories of madness. Further, in typical Victorian fashion, Bronte suggests a distinctively moral component to Bertha's madness. Perhaps most significant is the picture that Bronte presents of the state of mental health asylums, their effectiveness, and their practices. In many ways, an examination of madness in Jane Eyre supports the conclusions of Michel Foucault about the Victorian (and modern) view of madness proposed in Civilization and Madness.

Bronte presents Bertha as an almost soulless animal. Jane narrates, 'The maniac bellowed; she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors' Bertha embodies the 'other' as set against the 'self' of respectable society. Bertha is isolated from the community, hidden away like lepers of old. Michel Foucault describes this Victorian picture of madness, and suggests that, with the end of leprosy, the mad were relegated to the space outside of the community once occupied by lepers

Rochester describes his early experiences with Bertha's madness. He describes an incident in which,
'my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with such language! - no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word - the thin partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries'

Thus, the maniac cannot communicate at all with the community. When she does attempt to communicate, it comes across only as foul curses and wolfish cries. Here again, Foucault's Madness and Civilization comes to mind. Foucault proposed that, 'modern man no longer communicates with the madman,' and that there no longer exists a dialogue between reason and unreason

Rochester notes that, since physicians diagnosed Bertha's madness, 'she had, of course, been shut up' For the Victorian mind, according to Foucault, it was not enough to just separate the maniac from the community; no, this confinement must come in a very specific form, that of the asylum. The asylum further served to isolate the maniac, and to cut her off from the rest of the world

Rochester declares that, 'Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard' Bronte further proposes that Bertha inherited her family's mental illness. It would seem that Bronte suggests a connection between madness and Bertha's racial heritage as a white West-Indian woman; this is, of course, both troubling and characteristic of Bronte's age. However, Bronte's description of madness, which is passed down from generation to generation, also anticipates more modern ideas about the genetic causes of madness.

Through Rochester's declaration of the causes of Bertha's madness, Bronte makes an interesting juxtaposition. Not only was Bertha's mother mad; she was also an alcoholic Rochester further suggests that Bertha's family were deceptive, and purposely tried to hide their madness in order to lure Rochester into marrying Bertha. Here Bronte suggests that Bertha's madness was, like Bertha's mother's alcoholism, decidedly moral in its nature. A good woman or a good family would never go mad; only a wicked woman or family would be in danger of madness. Foucault suggests this moral tie as well, noting that the mad, while they do not specifically choose to be mad, have created their own dilemma through moral lapse

Clearly, Jane Eyre offers an interesting picture of madness. Further, Jane Eyre supports many of Foucault's ideas about the state of madness in the mid-nineteenth century. Jane Eyre presents other opportunities for understanding the Victorian view of mental illness as well, including Rochester's momentary contemplation of suicide brought on by his struggle to understand Bertha's actions and the seemingly codependent relationship between Grace Poole and Bertha. Further study could also be made of Bertha's symptoms in an attempt to classify her particular form of madness, with a diagnosis perhaps somewhere along the autism spectrum.

Battle of the sexes: Which gender is superior?

The battle for superiority between men and women has been an ongoing obstacle in what could otherwise be a relatively peaceful existence. For ages, both genders have claimed to be the better half. Over time, our prideful egos have gotten in the way and pushed us into a black hole, otherwise known as ignorance. We toot our own horns and blindly ignore what the other side can offer because we want to come out on top. The reality, I'm afraid, is still far from being recognized by the general population. There is no superior gender. There is no superior race. The problem is that there aren't that many people in the world willing to accept that. In my mind, it is a cold, hard fact. In yours, it may be nothing more than the random babbling of an inferior girl who doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut. Personally, I thought that the human race would have tired of this argument long ago but apparently everything still boils down to a matter of opinion.

I thought about this topic before sitting down to write and actually considered penning an article that argued for one side or the other, but decided against it. For someone who possesses the proper patience, there are hundreds of arguments that could be given about why one gender is superior over the other. Each of those arguments remains moot in my mind, however, because neither gender is one hundred percent perfect. They both have pros and cons attached to them. They both have strong points and weaknesses. The male and female genders create a perfect circle. The other makes up for a trait lacking in one gender. Neither gender reigns supreme. Each gender inherently compliments the other. As much as we may despise one gender or another at times, it is imperative to realize we cannot live without either of them. An all-male or all-female population would make for a very dull existence.

Gender superiority is just another thing that humans can argue over, despite the fact that we have enough discrimination among us to begin with. Sexism is still alive and well among the human race. It is just another prejudice to add to our growing list and, despite the efforts of the few, does not seem to be disappearing anytime soon. We still wish to separate ourselves into groups. Each gender group wants to argue that they are the greatest gift to the planet. Personally, I view each gender group as an imperfect creation. Neither gender is better than the other in any capacity.

An individual may be smarter than another or faster, but not an entire group over another. We are all the same yet, somehow, completely different. Each gender has some unique quality to offer the other. By combining them, we complete the circle. That makes genders equal. Some say that females are superior because they have the power of childbirth. However, without the power of the male sperm, there would be no procreation to begin with. I've heard many proclaim that males possess greater physical strength than females. Yet, some females I know can lift heavier objects than some males I know.

We are all individuals and we must look at each other as individuals instead of a giant group of people with the same abilities as everyone else. Apart, we are all imperfect. Together, we balance each other out. If we wish for progress and want to advance, is it not in our best interest to recognize the benefits of teamwork instead of trying to put each other down because of our genders just to reign supreme?

Unfortunately, the two genders ruling this world will not see the other as equal to their own. If that happens to occur, it is with a heavy heart that I realize it will not be in my lifetime. There seem to be too many other issues facing humankind that are more important to my generation. There will always be someone to point out the differences between the genders and others will follow. As long as we continue to be ruled by physical appearances and our belief that man and woman hold separate roles in the universe, I fear this is one argument we are all destined to lose.

In this modern day and age of technology and information, I find it deeply amusing that we are still debating whether or not women are superior to men, or vice versa.

Haven't we learned yet that each gender has superiority over different areas, and that one cannot blatantly state that men are better, or women are better without sparking a plethora of angry calls stating otherwise?

Each example of superiority is equally opposed by an 'except for'.

'Men are superior leaders, except for Queen Elizabeth, Catherine the Great and Cleopatra'
'Women are superior communicators, except for Edgar Allan Poe, Shakespeare and Gandhi'
'Men are superior warriors except for Joan of Arc, Athena Goddess of War, and the Amazons'
'Women are superior artists, except for Andy Warhol, Picasso and DaVinci'

Men and women are two halves of a whole. What is more superior? The pie crust, or the filling? Neither. Both come together to make something deliciously enjoyable. That is men and women. Without a wife, a man is a bachelor. Without a husband, a woman is a spinster. Which is superior? Both are at a disadvantage. Who is more important, Romeo or Juliette? There is no story about them individually. They are only important because they have each other.

Neither sex can claim superiority over the other. Men try to claim superiority by using brute force against women to dominate her. And women try to claim superiority by seduction. Each are enslaved by the other. Continuously seeking each other out.

However, if there were one woman left on Earth, the human race would become extinct. She cannot reproduce fast enough to keep up the human race. But if there were one man left on Earth, the human race would still flourish and grow and eventually repopulate.

Women of the Middle Ages in Literature

In 1929, Virginia Woolf, in her book 'A Room of One's Own', said, 'But almost without exception [women] are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women werenot only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex.' Although she wrote those words nine centuries or more after Old English poems like 'Beowulf' and 'Judith' and seven centuries after the lais of Marie de France, Woolf's words still ring true when held against medieval texts such as these. Women are rarely the focus of any story, true or fictional, and almost without exception they are defined by how they relate or interact with the male characters.

There are, of course, women who play major roles in some medieval pieces; most obviously, Judith in 'Judith' is a major character. But in the Biblical text, the reader is constantly reminded that she is a widow. It is also pointed out as something out of the ordinary that Judith never remarries and lives the rest of her life single. Though her husband is dead, she is still associated with him and her status is defined by him. In the Old English poem, the author is probably male and he makes constant reference to her beauty: 'the elf-fair lady,' 'the maiden of the Lord, with braided hair,' 'the fair-tressed one,' 'the lovely maid.' Even her maid is described as 'fair-faced' the one time she is mentioned in the poem.

Judith is the 'woman of the Lord,' and even though the poem is about her and named after her, she is not independent; she is under the direction and influence of God, who is usually characterized as male. She may appear to be her own independent woman, but she is still under his authority and in the end, 'Judith for all this / Ascribed the glory to the Lord of hosts / Who gave her fame and honour in the world'

But what is significant about Judith, besides God's favour, is not how she treats her servants or how wise she is, it is how she interacts with Holofernes. The poem revolves around that incident, disregarding her background and future entirely, not even touching on her feelings, only focusing on what she did to Holofernes, when she is present at all. Much of the poem, in fact, is dedicated to a retelling of the monstrous battle that ensues due to her actions; her presence is absent from the poem for quite some time.

Hildeburh, in the small digression devoted to her story (ll. 1070-1158), is first introduced as a mother and sister having lost her son and brother. Five lines later, we find out that she is 'Hoc's daughter' (l. 1076), then she disappears from her own story for over 30 lines! She makes a brief reappearance as a mourning mother and sister until she is gone again, not to resurface until the last two lines of the story where she is whisked away home.

Perhaps the most glaring example of female association with the males in their life is Grendel's mother. Sometimes she is called 'dame' or some other general female term, but she is widely regarded and referred to as 'Grendel's mother'. She does not have a name, though she is an 'other' just like Grendel, who is named. The poet gives names to women who pass around a few drinks, but not to a crucial character, one of the three 'monsters' that Beowulf fights.

Marie de France provides a slew of examples in her romantic lais of women and their lack of independent standing. In her very first, 'Guigemar', the noble knight's beloved is the wife of another man: 'The lord who ruled over that city [the one Guigemar sails to in the magical ship] / was a very aged man who had a wife, / a woman of high lineage, / noble courteous, beautiful, intelligent' (ll. 209-212). Likewise, her servant is '[her husband's] niece, the daughter of his sister' (l. 249). Interestingly enough, the only named woman in this lay is Guigemar's sister, Noguent (l. 36), mentioned once and never again.

In 'Bisclavret', the only woman mentioned is Biscalvret's wife and once she decides to betray him, she then becomes the knight's lover. Once again, though the story could not happen without her, she remains completely nameless and only identifiable through her relationships to men.

Lanval's fairy mistress, in 'Lanval', unusually, is not associated with any other males except for Lanval; but her first act in the story is to seek out Lanval, so thereafter she becomes 'Lanval's lover,' thus losing her independent state. Her servants that appear to Lanval in the woods and then in the king's court are, much like their mistress, not related to anyone except their lady, but the terms they are described in concern nothing but their appearance. All are beautiful and that is all the reader (according to Marie de France) needs to know about them, since that is all that is included. Either that, or her readers/listeners did not care about anything else; they did not want names, they wanted beauty.

It would seem that the authors of these pieces, some known, some anonymous, are sending the message that these women are not important to the story since so many do not stand alone. In fact, the majority of them do not even have names! But this cannot be true since the stories of the men they are connected with would not have happened without them.

Judith is obviously important: her people would have been crushed by the Assyrians without her timely intervention, and utter defeat does not make a good story. Guigemar would have died without his lover's healing touch and he would have never gotten off the magical ship without the king's niece's discovery. Bisclavret would never been bothered as a werewolf if not for his wife. And Lanval would have remained the depressed, overlooked knight if he had never met his fairy lover. Dead men, lone werewolves, and ignored, though handsome, knights simply do not make for captivating reading.

On the other hand, most of the women in 'Beowulf' do not drive the story, but merely add a new depth to it. More characters meant that more people, when the story was first told, could connect themselves to the story and gain status in their society. For modern readers, it gives us a more complete picture of the times, since obviously in reality, even people who are not important are still named. Besides, who would serve the men their drinks and make peace with the neighbouring lords?

Grendel's mother, in contrast, does move the story forward and adds another dimension to Grendel as a literary character. She allows for more action, more feasting, and more storytelling within the original narrative. In addition, her fight with Beowulf allows for the interchange with Beowulf and Unferth and the lending of the sword, Hrunting, as well as Hrothgar's sermon about giving in to pride, which provokes thought when the rest of Beowulf's life unfolds. And yet, still she is never named and is known only as 'Grendel's mother.'

Though what is known of medieval women is broad and varying, it is broadcast through predominantly male eyes. We very rarely catch a glimpse of women interacting with other women away from the men of their lives; and when we do, those women are probably connected by the males: two noble women married to two brothers, or some such.

'And how small a part of a woman's life is that; and how little can a man know even of that when he observes it through the black or rosy spectacles which sex puts upon his nose. Hence, perhaps, the peculiar nature of woman in [literature]; the astonishing extremes of her beauty and horror; her alternations between heavenly goodness and hellish depravity' In the literature of the Middle Ages, we see women only as men see them: in relationship to them and interacting with them. But as Woolf writes, '[How] small a part of a woman's life is that' How much more did women do when they were not around men? When they interacted with other women, away from the eyes of men, were they still as extreme as the men describe them? And did the men realise that the women they thought to be simple creatures were in fact complex and integral to their comfortable existence? If they did, they do a poor job of representing it in literature. Even Marie de France, a woman, caters to her royal, male-dominated audience, and thus gives a traditional view of women.

Woolf's words of the 20th century resonate throughout history: women are seen by, in relationship to, and interacting with the male sex. The medieval literature that has survived gives a narrow view of women, and although it is hard to say how accurate that picture is, it is probably not the only one that existed. Women are related to men and interact with them; it is an undeniable fact. But that is not all they are, no matter what the men of history may seem to say.

Charlotte and Emily Brontė - Imaginations Apart

A notable difference in imaginative quality separates the novels of Charlotte (1816-55) and Emily (1818-55) Brontė from those of the other great English novelists of the nineteenth century. The difference seems to be one of emotional intensity, the product of a unique concentration upon fundamental human passion in a state approaching essential purity. Whether this concentration is compatible with the nature of the novel as generally conceived - and there has been a tendency to regard the Brontės as something of a 'sport', a remarkable oddity in literary history - is no doubt open to discussion. Many of the great novelists of the period - Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot - showed moral and social preoccupations more explicit than those revealed in Wuthering Heights. We may agree that the range of these writers is wider, their points of contact with the human scene more variously projected; but when this has been allowed, there remains to be taken into account an astonishing mixture of romantic commonplace and personal inspiration, primitive feeling and spiritual exaltation, which corresponds to potentialities otherwise largely concealed during this period.

This statement, true of Wuthering Heights, is only partly applicable to the novels of Charlotte Brontė, which reflect the workings of an acute and intensely committed mind. In her position as elder sister and, to a large extent, the substitute for a dead mother, Charlotte's contacts with the outside world were more continuous and varied than those of her sisters. Her excursions into that world did not end as readily as those of Emily in deception and retreat; and this fact is reflected in work that corresponds more closely to the habitual features of the novel form. The earlier chapters of the immensely popular Jane Eyre (1847) rest largely upon the author's experiences of the Clergy's daughters' school at Cowan Bridge, and her life as a governess is also reflected there; and the two periods which she spent in Brussels at the pensionnat of M. and Mme Héger provided the material first for The Professor (1857), which remained unpublished in her lifetime, and, more forcibly, for Villette (1853). Finally, her father's recollections of the Luddite riots of the early years of the century, supported by her own reading in the period and her observation of the textile industry in her own time, provided in Shirley (1849) the background to her presentation of the relationship between the heiress, Shirley Keeldar, and the Rector's poor niece Caroline Helstone, in whom idealized pictures of herself and Emily are respectively conveyed.

Charlotte Brontė: A Modern Woman

Without a doubt, Charlotte Brontė was progressive in her beliefs. In a time when women were considered little more than social adornments and bearers of offspring, Charlotte Brontė bravely contradicted society through her writing. Her novels speak volumes for the oppressed woman; thus establishing Charlotte Brontė as one of the first modern women of her time. To refer to Charlotte Brontė as a feminist would, however, be an insufferable misrepresentation. Unlike George Sand, who by appearances and her standard of living epitomized the nineteenth-century feminist, Charlotte Brontė withdrew from a society that would not entirely accept her, and expressed her stifled ideals through her words. Slight in size, perpetually modest, it was Brontės suppressed spirit that gave way to her literary fantasies. She often likened herself to others in her oppressed situation; the ugly daughter or poor spinster, which she equated to slaves imprisoned by circumstances beyond their control.

The options for the proper yet impoverished woman during the time were limited a governess or teacher, roles Charlotte Brontė considered forms of bondage, as well. She believed that a governess had no existence, and was not considered a living or rational being except in connection with the wearisome duties she was forced to perform (Gilbert and Gubar, 347-51). Marriage was always a viable solution, yet Charlotte Brontė would only marry a man she respected, no matter his status or fortune. She resigned to live in the role society placed upon her, yet no one, not even a stringent society, could hamper her burgeoning emotions. It was through her words that Charlotte Brontė created a woman of free thought, intellect, and strong moral character; the same traits Charlotte herself possessed.

It was a dreary existence on the Yorkshire moors for the Brontė children. Charlotte was an intelligent youth, who took an early interest in politics. Her interest, solely on her own accord, was self-taught by reading the newspapers her father left lying about. By the age of nine, she knew more about politics than most grown men.

The Brontė children were all avid readers, and since they were isolated children, plagued often by illness, death, and desolation, they frequently retreated into a world of literary fantasy, spawned by the works of Sir Walter Scott, as well as other romantic authors of the time. Spurred by their vivid imaginations, the children invented role-playing games, at times with the aide of wooden toys, other times in provisional costumes. While many children of the time spent their leisure in such pursuits, it was the manner in which the girls specifically played that provides insight into the strength of their spirit, particularly Charlotte, who was mature beyond her years, and was perceived as a mother figure to her surviving siblings. It was during these imaginative dramas that the girls portrayed legendry figures, figures of strength throughout history: Bonaparte, Caesar, Hannibal, and the Duke of Wellington (Gaskell, Chap V). Such were no ordinary games of make believe, but elaborate, well-written dramas. It was the archetypical male hero who interested the girls, not weak or impressionable females. Even female historical figures who appeared strong, such as Cleopatra, did not interested Charlotte, for Cleopatra used her sexuality to attain greatness, instead of achieving it on her own. Charlotte rejected the use of sexuality to attract men in any form, and criticized women who resorted to this female characteristic as lacking self-respect, a fate she deemed worse than death.

It was Charlotte who provided the noms de plume that were deliberately ambiguous in gender for her and her sisters It is a fact that woman authors during the time were not received as seriously as men; however, as Currier Bell, Charlotte had the freedom to create her characters the way she wanted. Concealed by anonymity, she created heroines with genuine ideas and erudite views, who, above all, respected themselves, and werent afraid to declare it. For Charlotte Brontė, it was the ideal emotional outlet.

A woman who revealed an independent spirit was rare, if non-existence during Charlotte Brontės time. Such feelings were typically concealed beneath a stoic exterior, suppressing the creative, emotional, and spiritual self. Such suppression had dangerous consequences an unhappy, unfulfilled life. Charlotte Brontė wrote that imagination was a restless faculty which needed to be heard and exercised. 'Are we to be quite deaf to her cry and insensate to her struggles?'

Charlotte Brontė withdrew into the world she created. It was through her writing that she was allowed to breathe life into her suppressed self and dreams. Charlotte Brontė spoke of the evils of the condition of women, deep-rooted within the structure of the social system .Charlotte Brontė urged women not to linger on such problems; though the literary world must be grateful she did not heed her own advice. It was through her discontent that the characters of Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe were born.

Jane Eyre, arguably Charlotte Brontė's tour de forceintermibles autobiographical elements with romantic notions of the period. In the character Jane, Charlotte Brontė created a slight woman, in all respects plain, modest, morally strong and intelligent. Like the author, Jane's isolation created her persona, providing her with the necessary survival skills. Jane does not need a man to make her feel worthy; instead, she carries her self-worth in her mind and determination. Through Jane, Brontė exhibits resentment toward a society that has scorned her, while maintaining a detachment toward humanity as a whole .

Class Attitudes in The Westminster Review When and Jane Eyre

In Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontė, who expresses strong sympathy for the working class and the poor, forcefully condemns both upper-class exploitation and arrogance. Jane's own struggle makes clear the integral relationship between wealth and survival, though her experience is actually less precarious than other characters in the novel. However, the book also abounds with subtly condescending attitudes regarding the 'constitutional' limitations of society's neediest members. Ironically, then, in Jane Eyre Brontė simultaneously fosters democratic attitudes while perpetuating a rigidly class-based system of social relations. The tone of her work - inspiring in its compassion, disturbing in its traces of elitism - reflects a striking contradiction in the intellectual and moral sensibility of British society at mid-century.

An 1842 article entitled 'Industry and its Reward in Great Britain and Ireland,' published in the Westminster Review, demonstrates this contradiction. The authors argue on the behalf of the working classes, specifically agricultural laborers. They explore the relationship between subsistence wages and impoverishment in order to depict the arduous struggle for survival faced by the rural poor. Much like the majority of Jane Eyre, the tone of the prose is fervent and highly attuned to the suffering of the underprivileged. The unidentified authors emphasize the cruel indifference of those in power,

This article identifies and disparages self-congratulatory elitist rationalizations of the status quo. Apparently, many people in the ruling classes justified their apathy towards the poor by dwelling upon the absence of legal barriers (i.e., slavery) against improving one's situation. According to this line of reasoning, it is the fault of the poor themselves if they remain destitute; for, they have failed to lift themselves up. The article analyzes the economic well-being of agricultural laborers in France, Switzerland, and Belgium to emphasize the magnitude of the problem in Britain. This study claims that, although these other nations also had very modest living standards in the middle of the nineteenth-century, their workers fared far better than their British counterparts in fulfillment of such basic needs as food, clothing and shelter.

Such statistical analysis sheds light on Jane Eyre because it emphasizes the magnitude of the suffering in rural England endured during Brontė's day. With the exception of Jane's early days at Lowood, Brontė primarily limits herself to alluding to such stark social realities without depicting them, until briefly focusing on rural village life when Jane begins teaching at Morton. Here, the harsh realities of country living in northern England creep into the novel, even if very briefly. Jane's ambivalence about her career as a schoolteacher is clear; it undermines the social ethic of equality which she invokes throughout the novel. Her antipathy primarily stems from her own unfulfilled passions. Yet, in light of the hardship and deprivation she experiences, her mixed emotions towards these girls conveys a great deal about her own sense of obligation to those 'below' her. She reflects upon her new position, 'I felt-yes, idiot that I am-I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me.' The limits of her compassion alter Brontė's portrait of Jane's lifelong rally against injustice. Here Jane identifies the nature of her quest not as a struggle against injustice. She strives for the elevation of her own social standing.

Throughout Jane Eyre Brontė shows that two moral creeds exist: one for the lucky few and another for everyone else. What becomes apparent towards the end of the novel is that Jane herself endorses the social caste system. The tone of her words reveals this contradiction. This Westminster Review article speaks with an extraordinarily similar voice. 'It would neither harmonize with our tastes or opinions to make any long profession of our attachment to the working classes.' Unsurprisingly, the paradigm established at the outset of the article suggests a paternalistic, bourgeois sensibility rather than a genuinely democratic spirit. The authors continue by reassuring their readership that revolution is not their intention, 'The distinctions of society we acknowledge and respect. The rich man must have his mansion, the poor man, his cottage.'(217) Emphatically, it is not my intention to castigate the analysis provided in 'Industry and its Reward in Great Britain and Ireland'. Sincere concern for the suffering of the poor is evident in this work. Such is also the case in Jane Eyre. I admire these portraits of social and individual injustice. However, these same intellectuals constructed their arguments in such a way as to perpetuate the class-based system which they claimed to vilify. From reading the Westminster Review, it becomes immediately apparent that Jane Eyre is not the revolutionary text which many revisionist scholars - particularly feminist scholars - have recently claimed it to be. Jane Eyre is not a saint. She struggles and rebels and fails just like the rest of us.

Comparing the psychological strength of women and men

There are as many opinions on this topic as there are people in this world. Some would argue that men, being men, are stronger both physically and emotionally. Others would argue the point that women are better capable of handling emotionally charged issues, physical pain, and stress. Bottom line, women and men are just plain different. We are wired differently. Women think and react differently from men on various issues, not because we are any stronger or weaker than men, but we approach the issues differently. Men think in the now, the present-'how can I take charge? How can I handle this situation at this moment?' while women think more in the long term, big picture mode. When confronted with an emotional issue, women tend to look at how the resolution will affect those involved, whil men usually look at the resolution itself as the end result. This does not mean that either side is thinking wrong, but simply put, it takes both to reach a completely thought out resolution. Men and women together can think on the same subject, come up with their own ideas for resolution, and by working together can acheive a better resolution for all involved. While men are more concrete thinkers, and women think on the emotional level, both sides together create a whole. This does not mean that one sex is stronger psychlogically than the other, nor does it mean that one sex is 'better' at handling any given situation. There are times when each side respectively is better at handling the issue. I do feel, however, that due to differences in our thought processes, women are better equipped psychologically to handle emotional situations than men. I tend to think this is due to society's 'law' that tells men not to cry, or show any emotion. Men are programmed not to allow their emotions to enter into certain aspects of their lives, while women are 'expected' to be more emotional. I feel that as children, we are conditioned to take our 'roles' in society depending on our gender, and this is usually unfortunate-men and women could learn a lot from each other by being able to dicuss our differences in comfortable forums. There are differences between men and women, the way we think, react, and resolve issues, but isn't that what makes us human?

If a psychologist said to you: ''Women are psychologically stronger than men'', what would you say?

For one, I would ask, what do you mean by psychologically?
If he replied: ''With their ability to cope in social situations and even depression''. Then we'd be getting somewhere.

I've studied psychology and always had an interest in it. Especially in terms of looking at stress. It appears the women hold biological abilties to cope with stressors, at work, in the home and so on.

Firstly, the release of ''the female sex hormone oestradial'' has been examined by Dr Wolf in a study at the University of Dusseldorf (sounds made up, but do a search on it!). This is known as an anti-stress hormone. What does that mean?! Well it means, it supresses the release of cortisol a STRESS hormone. In his study, he found men had higher levels of this stress hormone and this reduced there ability to recall words.
This shows stress has an impact on memory and ability to function.

So that's great, women have an in-born ability to cope better with stress, just what men needed to hear, right?

Well it's not just biological factors that help fight stress, psychologist who are interested in social factors highlight the importance of social networks. Women have a greater ability to communicate. (well, jeez, that's obvious!) BUT, it's not just communication, it's the quality of communication. Women have a hierarchy of friends. They have their closest 'best' friends to whom they reveal all, and they have other friends with whom they can laugh and joke about work or family life.

Women tend to be better at listening. And this is the key. Coping with stress is not just you talking away to another person, although this helps ease the burden, it's important to: listen to advice and take it on board. Listen to other people's moans and groans, they are often facing similar difficulties. That's often nice to know and psychologically uplifting.

Finally the importance of control. Women will often feel their point of control is internal. They can control how the feel about a stressful situation. They will create steps to overcome problems and break down the problem.

It may seem large now, but take it step by step and you will be amazed how small problems manifest into large ones.

And on a positive note, coping is not always limited to a certain gender. If you remember to take time out regularly from work you will feel some benefits.

Desire, Class Position, and Gender in Jane Eyre and Pickwick Papers

Bronte's characterization of Jane Eyre suggests her protagonist's inner conflict between reason and desire, rationality and passion, restraint and emotion. 'Roused to something like passion' at the thought of Rochester marrying Blanche Ingram, 'Jane articulates fantasies not just of submission to Rochester but also of rebellion against him' (Elsie Michie, 'White Chimpanzees and Oriental Despots: Racial Stereotyping and Edward Rochester,' 595). Jane is more aware than Rochester thinks of his manipulation and surveillance of her emotions (for instance, the gypsy scene several pages earlier). After being censured for her impetuosity and youthful passions by Mrs. Reed and at Lowood, in this scene Jane instead rejects the opposite notion - that she is 'an automatonSa machine without feelings.' Brontė describes Jane 'poor, obscure, plain, and little,' and in so doing situates Jane's identity in terms of class and gender. Jane's feelings exceed her subordinate status - 'if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.' In other words, Jane's love for Rochester would exist regardless of 'customs' and 'conventionalities' which stand in the way of desire. Brontė juxtaposes material reality and consciousness, ultimately rejecting 'mortal flesh' for Jane's 'spirit.'

Whereas Jane's class and gender status perhaps limits her 'spirit' from arriving with Rochester 'at God's feet,' Sam Weller in The Pickwick Papers is little restrained from pursuing romantic interests.

'Mary,' said Mr. Muzzle to the pretty servant-girl, 'this is Mr. Weller, a gentleman as master has sent down, to be made as comfortable as possible.'

'And your master's a knowin' hand - and has just sent me to the right place,' said Mr. Weller, with a glance of admiration at Mary. 'If I was master o' this here house, I should alvays find the materials for comfort vere Mary vas.'

'Lor, Mr. Weller!' said Mary, blushing.

'Well, I never!' ejaculated the cook.

Dickens demonstrates that Sam's feelings outweigh his capacity for restraint. As opposed to Jane, Sam is concerned with substance and not spirit - corporeal reality rather than consciousness. 'I should alvays find the materials for comfort vere Mary vas' (my emphasis). Dickens hyperbolizes the libidinous eccentricities of the underclass much in the same way that Shakespeare's low scenes (such as in the Henriad) depict similarly licentious characters. Where Winkle's amorous designs on Arabella are kept in abeyance until the end of the book because the elder Winkle refuses his son a dowry, Sam freely pursues Mary perhaps because his servant-class status allows him to do so. Muzzle has 'just sent me to the right place,' Sam says, implying that the upper-classes are in fact complicit in the production of a lower-class ethos of unrestrained sexuality. Sam's gender also allows him sexual license. His 'glance of admiration' empowers him over the 'blushing' Mary; this is working-class sexual harassment! Anthony S. Wohl discusses the sexuality of the underclass, drawing upon Frederick William Harrar's 'Aptitudes of Race' to suggest the Victorian middle-class 'generalization that in the slums marriage was virtually unknown and that 'incest is common and no form of vice or sexuality causes surprise or attracts attention.'' Wohl goes on to suggest how the pathologizing of 'out groups' expresses middle-class sexual fastidiousness itself.

The 'Woman Question' of course involved a re-evaluation of prevailing conceptions of women as 'second-class' citizens subject to male scrutiny and agitation. The industrial revolution ironically limited women's alternatives in the labor force.

The only occupation at which an unmarried middle-class woman could earn a living and maintain some claim to gentility was that of a governess, but a governess could expect no security of employment, minimal wages, and an ambiguous status, somewhere between servant and family member, that isolated her within the household (Norton II 903).

In 'The Governess and Class Prejudice,' Erin Wells draws upon Bonnie Smith's historicization of the governess:

The governess in the nineteenth century personified a life of intense misery. She was also that most unfortunate individual; the single, middle-class woman who had to earn her own living. Although being a governess might be a degradation, employing one was a sign of culture and means. . . . The psychological situation of the governess made her position unenviable. Her presence created practical difficulties within the Victorian home because she was neither a servant nor a member of the family. She was from the social level of the family, but the fact that she was paid a salary put her at the economic level of the servants.

In both passages the identity of the governess inheres in a decentered subjectivity - the governess is 'neither a servant nor a member of a family.' The occupation by nature situated women in domestic settings which were to influence profoundly how that domestic space itself was to be gendered and valued. Nancy Armstrong has contextualized the woman's role in the production of middle class domesticity. Armstrong accords the woman a certain power which

established its hold over British culture through her dominance over all those objects and practices we associate with private life. To her went authority over the household, leisure time, courtship procedures, and kinship relations, and under her jurisdiction the most basic qualities of human identity were supposed to develop.

Beth Newman suggests the emergence of two ''separate spheres' of domesticity and paid labor' attendant upon the industrialization of labors formerly allotted to women such as 'spinning, weaving, dairy work'. Notice how Newman's gendering of these spheres corresponds to the passages above. Sam is an emblem of the masculine sphere of paid labor, whereas Jane embodies the values of the home. Consider how Rochester's employment of Jane colors their relationship. As Armstrong argues, 'only when she no longer needs his money can she become the mistress of his heart, and it is in this role, not as a governess, that she takes her rightful place of dominion over his home.' From the Marxist standpoint, then, both Jane's social ascent presupposes a change in the material reality; she only becomes empowered over Rochester upon receiving her inheritance, and upon Rochester's physical (or material) crippling.

Disproving gender generalizations regarding women

I would like to say. That this article is aimed at both men and women.

I have to type this article just to get my feelings out of my system.

I am an individual woman. I am part of the female sex, but please do not judge me with regards how you think women behave in general.

Please do not think I like the same things that other women appear to like. Please do not think that I like the same things as you, because we are both women.

Please do not be condescending towards me and think that I should like this because I am a woman. I consider this to be very patronising.

Not all women are interested in make-up.

Not all women are interested in the latest fashion.

Not all women like to wear high heels.

Not all young women like the latest pop bands.

Not all young women are interested in how to pluck their eyebrows.

Not all women like to go out and pull a guy.

Not all women think that pulling a guy is the most important thing in life.

Some women like intelligent conversation.

Some women prefer to spend an extra time in bed before work. Instead of doing their make-up.

Some women prefer to participate in a sport than to watch it.

Some women prefer to wear baggy jeans and jumpers instead of tight uncomfortable clothes.

Some women refuse to wear the latest fashion. Because of the possibility that the store they will buy the item from. Purchased it from a factory using slave labour.

Some young women detest modern popular music.

Some women prefer to wear trainers instead of high heels.

Some women detest high heels.

Some women would prefer to talk about academic subjects instead of having conversations about this or that celebrity.

Some women actually prefer to watch action or drama films. Not because of the actors or actresses in them, but because they like the storyline, or are interested in the country or era in which the film is set.

Some women cannot stand dare I say chick flicks.

Some women cannot stand romance movies.

Some women find it condescending to be referred to as girls when they are over 18.

Some women find it extremely patronising to even hear jokes or remarks about other women because of their hair colour. I have to say that people cannot help the natural hair colour they are born with.

Some women think that (I have to say I would prefer this not to exist) if we have badges such as blond bimbo. Then it should apply to both blond haired men and women.

Some women who you do not know cannot stand to be referred to as luv or darling. Even through they recognise that you may be endearing.

Some women think that you are being condescending and degrading towards your sex as a whole if you buying an item with the playboy logo, a lads magazine, or supershort mini skirts, or low cut tops.

Some women think that certain men fear more the dare I say tom boy than I hate to say girly girl.

Do women really talk more than men?

A typical stereotype in language is that women talk too much. In fact, according to the Daily Mail '[they] talk three times as much as men'. This is a highly controversial topic and research has only begun since the 1970's. There are several key questions that are being asked in regards to women, men and language and these are being researched into. There are biological factors, social factors and even cultural factors that could explain if this typical stereotype is true. Other factors that could influence that way that men and women talk include status and class, occupation and settings. Even though men and women speak the same language, do they actually speak differently, and if they do, to what extent?

Women, it seems, have been scrutinised and ridiculed through language as early as 5000BC where there was a dialect which was only spoken by women and eunuchs. In the 16th century certain Indian tribes had two languages, one for the male members of the tribe and one for women. Women have been ridiculed for their use of language for many years sparking proverbs including 'many geese, many turds many women, many words'. Even in Scotland the proverb 'Nothing is so unnatural as a talkative man or a quiet woman' is still used. Women's use of language has also been referenced to in literature, 'Women are the decorative sex, they never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly'.

During the initial research in to women, men and language, Lakoff (1975) proposed six distinctive features of women's language. Lakoff said that women tend to use female flavoured words such as 'lovely' and 'divine', and also women tend to use empty adjectives such as 'nice'. Lakoff also stated that women use more collaborative tags than men and also use modifiers and hedges. Women also tend to overuse the word 'so', and have hypercorrect and polite grammar. Lakoff's work was later suggested as subjective and inaccurate, however her work still formed the base of later and current research into the topic of women, men and language.

Lakoff defines collaborative tags as 'a declarative statement without the assumption that the statement is to be believed by the addressee. [The] tag gives the addressee leeway, not forcing him to go along with the views of the speaker' .She also claims that using a collaborative tag shows a lack of confidence. Support for this comes from situations in which either confirmation of the subject can be made by a small inspection, 'John is here, isn't he?' Or where it reflects the opinion of the speaker, 'The weather is awful, isn't it?' It is clear that these sentences need not to be questioned and therefore demonstrate the speakers' insecurity. In addition to expressing uncertainty and insecurity, collaborative tags are used as a form of communication and conversation. 'Andrew, this is our neighbour Frank. Andrew has just changed jobs, haven't you?'. This enables the addressee to start a conversation with the named Frank. Further research by Holmes saw that men used more collaborative tags than women. According to his research it seems that although both women and men use collaborative tags, they use them for different reasons. Women tend to use the question tags largely to help conversation, while men tend to use them to express uncertainty.

Interruptions are generally considered to be violations of the rules that govern conversation; however research into the language usage of men and women, shows that interruptions are often made. Eakins (1978) reported that males initiated more interruptions than females. It is found that women normally have a lower rate of interruption compared to men, this is due to the importance of listening. Eakins argued that women are said to have a better and deeper understanding of the importance of listening and therefore are more unlikely to interrupt. Men, however, interrupt far more frequently than women with non-related topics, particularly in a mixed sex setting. Holmes (1992) studied the interruptions in a doctor patient setting and found that in a conversation between a female doctor and a patient, the doctor was far more likely to be interrupted by their patient. The male doctors, although interrupted by their patients were not done so as much.

'Women, it seems, are considerably more disposed than men to upgrade themselves into the middle class and less likely to allocate themselves to the working class, a finding which confirms the common observation that status consciousness is more pronounced among women.' By looking at the two language features, collaborative tags and interruptions, it cannot be proven that linguistic research supports the idea that women talk three times as much as men. It can however, show that men and women use language differently. There are other factors to be taken into account in order to fully evaluate if men and women's use of language are different.

Women and Politics

Politics is that certain societal glue which manifests itself the moment a man (or woman) opens his eyes in the morning and realizes he needs others to attain his goals or material possesions.

Politics is that certain slogan which becomes a cliche, which becomes a faddish way of life to ease the tension, as one man dances like a savior for the crowd. Many times, it smiles with a burning heat of anger. Or it grimaces with intense love for a higher ideal.

Politics is two faced. It has to be. That is the reality of politics. It points to that which 'looks' less than itself. What else is there? I mean comparitive logic rules.

I have seen politics move a fiber of destruction, so that the read c parts and 'oops there goes gravity'.

Aristotle said, 'all men are political animals'.

Animals. Busily thinking of ways to survive. Ways to 'get over'. Ways to get out of something. Ways to garner favors or preference. Ways to save their own asses.

Make it look like something it isn't.

Politics is never fresh or pure or straightforward honest.

I read a young, female, hispanic journalist every time she hits the Oklahoman. She spouts truth and honor and decency. She searches for accolades from the honorable. Her politics are less honorable than some naive hick wanting social justice, but her 'hope for something better in the world', shines through.

Politically savvy, she is not. But she makes up for it, simply by being as honest as she can be. Therefore, while I don't hang my hopes on her words, I read her ever now and then.

Politics does not require honesty. In fact, it belies honest. Kind of like the naked king.

Duplicity is politics. It isn't the other way around. For you see, long ago, some filthy dude climbing out of a river after a half-assed bath, explained to his friend that his proximity to the filthy bathing women could be seen in one of two ways. Either he was there to protect them, or he was there to take a look.

Who requires goodness in men? Who would defend a good man and do they even exist?

Duplicity is (and always has been-among men) prerequisite for moving among each other in the jungle.

Hell no, honesty doesn't save men. Politics save men.

Feminine Conduct and Responsibility in Gaskell and Brontė

Mrs. Hale's death brings out several subjects common to both North and South and Jane Eyre - responsibility, feminine strength of character, and masculine dependency on women, among others. An interesting, different nuance in the authors' points of view is revealed, however, in the way they present their respective heroines dealing with loss. Gaskell advocates self-control and at least a superficial attempt to subjugate emotions (perhaps reflecting her upbringing as a respectable middle-class woman.) Brontė definitely feels that one must have control of one's actions, but while Margaret tries to carry on with a stiff upper lip, Jane allows herself fits of passionate despair and heart-rending spasms of tormenting agony before setting off on the straight and narrow path.

After her mother dies, Margaret, though her eyes are 'continually blinded by tears,' knows that she must not break down, because she has 'no time for regular crying.' She must keep her chin up, for while the rest of the family is 'giving way to grief she must be working, planning, considering.' Gaskell shows here that a strong, admirable woman does not surrender to displays of feeling, but faces and meets immediately the challenges with which her difficult situation has presented her.

Jane, although she certainly faces and meets various challenges throughout her life, does so after deep reaction. The most glaring example of this conflict is her discovery that Rochester has been lying to her, already has a wife and therefore cannot marry Jane. Her love for him had been the best part of her life, but now

Jane examines at length all the damage her heart is suffering, even feeling physically her emotional pain - 'a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals.' She, like Margaret, is at first loath to cry - 'I had been struggling with tears for some time; I had taken great pains to repress them' but when Rochester annoys her she decides to forget about repression, and 'I considered it well to let (my tears) flow as freely and as long as they liked . . . So I gave way and cried heartily.' Brontė does enjoy exploring tempests of the heart, but in the end she agrees with Gaskell that the truly strong woman must know her duty and perform it, even when that means putting one's own feelings second. 'I do love you,' says Jane to Rochester, echoing Margaret, 'more than ever, but I must not show it or indulge the feeling: and this is the last time I must ever express it.'

The two authors reflect contemporary mores in their attitudes toward feminine conduct. In Hints on Etiquette (1843), Charles William Day states that

a true lady is . . . sweet and delicate and refined. . . her sphere is to cheer, to refine, to beautify, to bless. The opportunities and influence she may acquire (by behaving thus), she may turn to the noblest and holiest purposes.

A true lady certainly does not, according to Day, give free rein to her feelings - 'Though her heart may bound with happiness, she must no more show it than she can show the antipathies and disgusts excited by others.' Thus Jane is breaking from the expected standard when she storms at Rochester, and Margaret conforms to it when she tries to fulfill her supposedly proper role. Although their immediate actions are influenced by societal demands, both of the characters' adherence to a higher duty is a deeper and more personally moral choice than etiquette can address.

Gender differences: Evaluating how men and women communicate

There is some accuracy when people say, 'Men are from Mars and women are from Venus.' Men and women communicate differently; men communicate primarily by using verbal language and physicality, while women communicate using oral language.

For instance, some men say that women have their own 'language.' This language isn't easily identified, but they know that it involves certain movements, gestures, and words that most women seem to easily understand, and most men don't. Women will make a certain kind of eye contact with each other, and it might mean, 'I'm angry with you for doing so-and-so,' or it might mean, 'Are we both going to Ginny's party on Saturday?' Many women will also 'make' their 'own' language by creating opposites of what they mean to say, or by using metaphors which, to men, women can only understand. A good example of this is when a woman is angry, and says something tinged with sarcasm. A man might not catch the sarcasm readily, perhaps not even until the damage has been well done.

On the other hand, men's 'oral language' is quite easy to understand. Many of them do not bother to tinge their meanings with sarcasm or opposites; instead, most men will say what they mean to say. This does not mean that women cannot be blunt or assertive; it just means that the two sexes choose different modes of communication. Many men will choose to settle hardcore arguments by using their fists, while women may choose to talk about probable solutions. Men and women will choose different ways to say the same thing. Take Valentine's Day as an example. Women will perhaps do little things (or one big thing) to try to imply that she loves someone, but most men will think that a simple 'I love you' will suffice.

Of course, many of our understandings of the communication of men and women have been tinged by stereotyping. We think that women are more sensitive and men are more vulnerable to fist-fighting. However these may or may not be true, it is clear that men and women do have differences in their choice of communication. Why is this so? Is it genetically inclined, or has it been molded by society? I would suppose that it is the latter, since babies can be molded to express themselves in a certain way, but it can also be biological, though this may not have been proven.

But, it is clear that the differences of communication between men and women is never really concrete. Sometimes more women will be more susceptible to being physically violent, while some men will be more susceptible to being emotional and verbal. It is safe to say that each person communicates in a way that is special to that person, and that generalities would only contribute to the gap between the sexes.

How does Jane Austen use language to show the influence of wealth and status on love and marriage in Pride and Prejudice

In Austen's fiction, love and money are shown both to conflict and complement each other. The two novels in which I will examine this are Pride and Prejudice1 and Sense and Sensibility2. The definition of love is an important factor to consider in evaluating its relationship to money, for there appear many types in Austen's fiction. The main distinction is between phoney love for material purposes as in Charlotte and Mr Collins case, or love appearing genuine, existing despite social barriers, as with Darcy and Elizabeth. Money can have an equal influence over either, positively or negatively. Therefore, its affect on both types should be evaluated.
Money and power are the main motives for marriage without real affection. Charlotte's marriage to Mr Collins epitomises this. She marries Collins out of financial necessity; her dislike for him is abundantly clear in Elizabeth's observation: When Mr Collins could be forgotten, there wasa great air of comfort throughout, and by Charlotte's evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often forgotten'1 pg192. Mr Collins remarks: My dear Charlotte and I have but one mind and one way of thinkingthere isa most remarkable resemblance of character and ideas between us'1 pg244 seeming farcical in the circumstances. It could be interpreted either as his recognition of the power he holds over her through his money or, as he wants it to be, a declaration of their shared affection. The reader knows the latter is not the case, as indicated above. This demonstrates a concept central to the relationship between love and money in Austen's fiction: that the implication of power can be construed, rightly or wrongly, as either love or money. From misinterpretation, conflict between them arises, obvious in Pride and Prejudice. Therefore, there is a strong connection between them not necessarily of a complementary nature. The critic Rachel M. Brownstein's comment that pride and prejudice: reflected the concerns of a culture in change, which debated the nature of authority and personal distinction, and the value of sentiment and the sentient self'3 pg35 clearly relates to this connection between love, money and power.

Wealth prejudices people's opinions of themselves and others in Pride and Prejudice, evident in the remark: Lady Catherine will not think the worse of you for being simply dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank preserved'1 pg196. This implies she encourages discrimination about personal value based on income. Lady Catherine is shown to use the Bennet family purely to flatter her pride, most likely a consequence of her wealth, illustrated in the quotation: Her ladyship received them civilly, but it was plain that their company was by no means so acceptable as when she could get nobody else'1 pg206. She merely appreciates them objectively, without regarding them subjectively, so is exploiting them. This demonstrates a conflict between emotions and money, as Lady Catherine shows disdain to those less well off. Her remark: I question whether Marianne now will marry a man worth more than five or six hundred' shows her association of superficial love with money. Edward Copeland acknowledges this link: specific incomes also operate as shorthandto express social rank, social aspirations, and consumer power'3 pg134.
Money divides real love and incites false love initially in Pride and Prejudice. Love is shown to demolish the seeming impossibility of Darcy and Elizabeth's marriage, created by her inferior financial assets and status. In this respect, money is portrayed as antagonistic towards real love, as it is connected strongly with the pride of both, which leads to Elizabeth refusing his first proposal. This invokes the point that insults have power over somebody only if they wound pride, demonstrated clearly by Darcy's remark these offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt'1.. In a similar way, money is purely material, but becomes linked to emotional impulses, evident in Pride and Prejudice when Darcy saves Lydia from disgrace, paying a large sum to Wickham so he will marry her. Elizabeth says of this: her heart did whisper, that he had done it for her'1,, showing again the tendency of emotion to perceive only what it wants. Elizabeth's point that gratitude inspires affection, in the quotation: gratitude for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed'1 clearly relates to her feelings about Darcy's kindness towards Lydia. In this case, a positive connection between love and money is evident, as money inspires Elizabeth's gratitude. Darcy's generosity also suggests he felt grateful to her, he says: I thought only of you'1.. Therefore, money appears a force that can be highly emotionally symbolic.
In the letter he writes to Elizabeth, Darcy undoes what appeared when he proposed as the domination of money over love, turning it into the influence of love over money. The former is illustrated by the remark: he had no doubt of a favourable answer'1 and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiorityof its being a degradation'1 .The latter is portrayed by his attempt in the letter to show Elizabeth that he can change and that she has affected him to do this. The quotation I have not yet learned to condemn them'1 , shows a humility lacking before, and a restoration of her pride evident in the quotation: Detection could not be in your power, and suspicion certainly not in your inclination'1 pg232. He ingeniously illustrates his positive, moral nature, therefore the superficiality of his sense of her as inferior, stating: disguise of every sort is my abhorrence.
There is much in Austen's fiction showing how superficiality and ignorance lead to unhappiness. This is often portrayed by unhappy marriages, a prime example being Mr and Mrs Bennet's. It is said that Mr Bennet was at first captivated by his wife's: appearance of good humour, which youth and beauty generally give'1 , implying that they acted as a faade to reality. Lydia's marriage to Wickham leaves her in poverty, expressed in the desperate letter she writes to Elizabeth at the end: I do not think we will have money enough to live upon. John Dashwood takes the house
It is indicated by Elizabeth's first visit to Pemberly that material possessions, therefore money, can help deepen or correct our perception of people, as most of the time it is all that. Elizabeth's remark that Pemberly's : banks were neither formal nor falsely adorned can be seen to represent a correction of her misconceptions about Darcy, that he stuck by rigid social convention and the artifice shown by many of his status. Thus, Pemberly's significance lies not in its man made attributes, but in its harmony with the nature surrounding it. Elizabeth Acknowledges his material worth when asked if she thinks him handsome, replying: yes, very handsome. There is no denying she is impressed by his power, however this seems more connected to emotions than material assets How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow! How much of good or evil must be done by him!'.Describes Lizzie's elation at Darcy's relinquishing of prejudiced attitudes
Austen appears extremely cynical about the existence of love as it is generally defined. It is suggested that circumstances manipulate emotions, that they are fickle. A good example being Elizabeth's discovery of Lydia's elopement: It wasexactly calculated to make her understand her own wishes; and never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved him, as now, when all love must be vain' . She also portrays love as obstinacy and contrariness, through Lydia's fluctuation between men: as their attentions raised them in her opinion'1 pg297. It is also evinced as obsession and akin to illness, as in the statement that Lydia had: been doing every thing in her power by thinking and talking on the subject, to give greatersusceptibility to her feelings'1pg300 and use of the phrase: symptom of affection. Elizabeth demonstrates how easy it is to confuse love with vanity: the desire for admiration and therefore power, in her remark: vanity, not love has been my folly. pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other'. Edward Copeland also remarks on Austen's cynicism, saying: moneyis the love tipped arrow aimed at the hearts of Jane Austen's heroines' and the heartbeat of romance lies in a good income' suggesting a complimentary relationship between them.
Love and money therefore are clearly connected so the reader will see the association. Money is highly emotionally symbolic, and as such retains some of its mystery, as it is hard to identify the motive of emotions. This unsolvable didactic is characteristic of Jane Austen's fiction, backed up by Johnson's statement: Austen orchestrates opposites and analogues, not to clarify but rather to embarrass judgments'.

How French lost its stature as the international French may be declining as an international language because of world changes, attitudes towards France, politics, and the increase in popularity of the English language. People get complacent and lazy towards language, and working on misconceptions about French society, saw French as a secondary language to Spanish.

Over the last twenty years here in Europe, Spain has flourished, and whilst many see the staid influence of the French government towards its language and its fierce protection of correctness, what they fail to see is the ability of the French to learn other languages, based on their solid foundation of learning a language that certainly has its complexity. Thus, the French learned to communicate in other languages, and were so good at it in fact that their education methods were perhaps their downfall.

People visiting France can communicate in English in most large cities with people of moderate education, and in fact the quality of the learning in France and the staid adherence to tradition failed to stimulate learners of language as much as its counterpart English, German and Spanish. There are those that say that the effects of wars and the decline of French territories are the reason for the downfall, although I would argue this, having lived and worked in France for more than 17 years. What lead to the decline was the willingness of the French to learn other languages, to encompass within their system of education such skillful language instruction that most pupils begin to learn language at the age of 4.

When you compare this with education in the UK, where junior school children barely touch on language learning until the age of secondary school, many English speakers do not have the language skills, or ability to construct sentences from knowledge of grammar from early childhood, and thus prefer to opt for the language skills that are simpler to the British tongue and pronunciation such as Spanish, and for Northern British people, the more guttural German.

French is a beautiful language, and I am fortunate enough to see it every day in my world, where it has not and will not decline, because of the fierce pride of the French people to demonstrate that indeed the vocabulary and variations of written possibility in French is as beautiful a language as you can get, though I do wonder if the influence of immigration will change the original language over the coming generations.

No one can tell the future, though no-one should forget that the roots of the English language lie solidly within the roots of not only Latin, but French influence.

French used to be the language of diplomats and cultivated people throughout the world. Russians, Englishmen, and even Americans and Argentines would be more likely to be able to converse in French than in any other tongue. How French lost its stature as the international language is an intriguing question.

And that it has lost its stature as the international language is certain. English is now the language most spoken throughout the world. English has become the language of business, science, and yes, even diplomacy. French, while still spoken in many parts of the globe, now only rarely finds itself as the common language between two speakers of different nationalities.

Whether you are in Singapore, or Shanghai, Berlin or Barcelona, if you're conducting international business you'll likely be speaking English. Even diplomats are no longer assumed to have an understanding of French.

Why? How did French lose its position? The answer is simple. English usurped its place because English is not afraid to grow, to add coined words and foreign expressions, to adapt to changing times.

The reason that English was able to elbow French aside is that so many of the new words used in business and science are English words. It's natural for native speakers to wish to learn to use the language that their own language is inevitably peppered with.

Business and science are concerned with practicalities. A language which wishes to serve the needs of business and science must be ready to be continually augmented by new words, and new usages for old ones. It must not be afraid to incorporate foreign words, or coined ones. It must be flexible, and adaptable, and ready for a bit of rough handling. Because, in business and science, the need to be understood is paramount.

Sentiment, or fondness for an elegant language that is capable of precision and beauty at the same time - and French is arguably without peer in this regard - does not carry the day. English is able to adapt and grow. French is not. English gets the job done. And that's why English has become the international language in place of French.

So the French remain proud of their language, and protective of it, even as English continues to evolve and mutate into the world's language workhorse. French may have lost its stature as the international language, but it has lost none of its charm; only much of its utility.

Important women in medieval history

Born in the period with theological leaders like Peter Abelard and Bernard of Claivaux, Hildegard of Bingen is one of the most important women in medieval history. Born as the tenth child to a wealthy family she was dedicated to God's service at age eight and sent to study in Disibodenberg under the anchoress, Jutta. The anchoress lived in a small room attached to the cathedral and never left the room. As students Hildegard and two other anchorites were the only people allowed to enter Jutta's room and then only for instruction. Hildegard became a nun when she was eighteen and had been having visions she did not write down but began discussion with a fellow monk who encouraged her to speak with the bishop of her visions.

After thirty years of study and Jutta's death, Hildegard was elected as head of the women's Benedictine community of Disibodenberg. During this time Hildegard committed herself to writing down her visions in music, books and painting. Each work of art or writing expressed her interpretation of the meaning of the visions. Pope Eugenious III sent a commission to review her works and the commission found them orthodox and authentic. She traveled through Germany, Switzerland and as far away as Paris and gained much such respect from the power of her sermons that others requested copies.

Through the years Hildegard became renowned for her visions, art, music and sound advice. During a period of history where women were not educated or valued, Hildegard of Bingen became confidante to bishops, popes, abbots and kings. We have hundreds of letters from her exchanges. Literary scholars know her for her seventy poems, nine books and her morality play Ordo Vertutum. Mystics know her for her books and paintings of visions, and musicians her seventy-two ethereal chants. Medical historians and botanists know her for her two books on natural and medical history both of which have information that is acceptable in modern medical and herbal history. Hildegard of Bingen was an important woman leader in her time and as a renaissance of her work occurs continues to be an important figure in modern history.

In What Sense is Jane Eyre a Feminist Novel?

The novel is frequently cited as the earliest major feminist novel, although there is not a hint in the book of any desire for political, legal, educational, or even intellectual equality between the sexes. Miss Bronte asks only for the simple - or is it the most complex? - recognition that the same heart and the same spirit animate both men and women, and that love is the pairing of equals in these spheres. . . . The famous plea that women ought not to be confined 'to making pudding and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags' [Chap. 12] is not propaganda for equal employment but for a recognition of woman's emotional nature. The condemnation of women to a place apart results in the creation of empty, capricious women like Blanche Ingram, who tyrannize over men whenever possible, indulge in dreams of Corsair lovers, and can communicate only in the Byronic language of outdated romantic fiction. Only equals like Jane and Rochester dare to speak truth couched in language of unadorned directness. [pp. 93-94]

Jane Eyre and Fanny Price

Comparing Brontė's Jane Eyre to Jane Austen's Fanny Price reveals the extent to which she is not the conventional woman. Before Fanny is brought to live at Mansfield Park, Mrs Norris worries that, if pretty, she will tempt Tom or Edmund to marry her. Fanny proves not to be the siren her aunt has feared but her self effacement, timidity and frailty are exactly the qualities Mrs Linton says are required to attract male attention, and Austen does not prove her wrong. From childhood Fanny inspires Edmund to protect and care for her and she grows to provide a moral base from which he can act. That he is wrong to disregard this is illustrated in the incident of the play; Fanny confirms Edmund's inner conviction that it is wrong to take part but he disregards her advice, partly due to his flirtation with Mary Crawford, and has to endure the consequences. When he rejects Mary's sexual allure for Fanny's strong morality, their happy marriage reinforces the rightness of his choice.

Where Fanny from childhood is modest and restrained, Jane struggles with an overly passionate nature, and despite the efforts of Mr Brocklehurst to 'render [his pupils] hardy, patient and self denying' becomes a passionate woman. Her patience and submission are not internalised as Fanny's are, but a facade kept in place by acts of self punishment (the portraits of herself and Blanche Ingram) as harsh as any contrived by her aunt or Brocklehurst. When Rochester finally declares his love for her the scene is one of overwhelming emotion and the facade is removed. Mrs Fairfax correctly identifies the sexual tension between them when she advises 'Try and keep Mr Rochester at a distance: distrust yourself as well as him.' and although Jane achieves this she says 'I could not, in those days, see God for his creature of whom I had made an idol.'

In allowing her sexual feelings to take precedence over her love for God, Jane has failed to provide the moral centre required for a happy union and secure family life. She realises something of this - the interruption of the marriage service forces her to recognise the inadequacy of passion alone as a basis for happiness and to acknowledge the vital role of society and the Church. She rejects her passion in favour of self respect and leaves Thornfield Hall.

At Moor House the sexual/moral conundrum is explored again through St John's relationship with Rosamond. Rosamond is innocent and childlike, but her effect on St John is clearly a sensual one. He describes her as a temptation, and says 'When I colour and when I shake before Miss Oliver I do not pity myself. I scorn the weakness. I know it is ignoble; a mere fever of the flesh.' St John recognises the nature of the temptation Rosamond represents, and can see that even her inadvertent sexual allure threatens his commitment to become a missionary, and therefore his moral well being.

He chooses instead to offer marriage to Jane whom he does not love and who he knows does not love him. Superficially this would appear to be an ideal match, offering St John the role of teacher and provider, and Jane an opportunity to absolve her rejection of God in self effacement and obedience. However, Jane has shown in her refurbishment of Moor House and her pleasure in her new found cousins that through her sufferings her passions have matured to a traditional feminine desire for home and family. St John's religious fervour will never allow him to offer this since

'he was of the material from which nature hews her heroes . a steadfast bulwark for great interests to rest upon; but at the fireside, too often a cold cumbrous column, gloomy and out of place.'

His morality comes from his inner convictions and he would usurp Jane's place at the moral centre of the family. He offers great deeds in the world but he would deny her a true woman's role. Now that Jane has fully accepted that role she is free to return to Rochester, who has bowed to her moral guidance by remaining at Thornfield Hall rather than returning to his life of reckless sensuality. His taking responsibility for Bertha in trying to rescue her from the fire at the risk of his own life is both his salvation and his punishment for past transgressions. He is freed of his wife but at the price of his hand and sight, and through them, his pride. Jane and Rochester's second courtship lacks the all consuming passion of the first, it is of the spirit not the senses, and gives due gratitude and humility to God. Their marriage, like Fanny and Edmund's, is dealt with by the author in an understated way, since it serves only to confirm the rightness of their reformed relationship.

While authors reward virtue with marriage, women who do not conform to the ideal tend to be dealt with more summarily. Blanche Ingram, like Mary Crawford, attempts to meet the ideal but fails. Their outward vivacity and good manners are the result of a superficial education designed only to help them to attract husbands. They offer not moral guidance but flirtatious manipulation, and indulge in overly romantic day-dreams of a 'wild, fierce bandit hero,' elopements and affairs. Without the innate moral strength to fulfil their place at the centre of a home they are unable to make the idealised marriages allotted to Jane and Fanny.

Bertha Mason is a more extreme case, providing the antithesis of the Angel at the hearth and a warning of what Jane might become if she allows her passions too free a rein. She is described as an animal but is more than that; animals are prey to their sexual impulses without fault but Bertha retains enough humanity for her behaviour to inspire horror. Bertha's madness manifests itself as inappropriate sexual behaviour; she is 'unchaste . gross, impure, depraved.' This leads to her being confined out of sight, an embodiment of the treatment meted out to all female sensuality. Her attacks are physical, but Brontė links them to a moral threat when Rochester calls her a 'demon' and her room 'the mouth of Hell.' To Jane she is 'the foul German spectre - the Vampyre,' echoing Mason's cry that 'she sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart'.

Jane Eyre, Proto-Feminist vs. 'The Third Person Man

The Victorian period saw the emerging idea of feminism -- or rather, to avoid all connotations which that word has taken on - the equality of men and women. This simple proto-feminism surfaced quite slowly, mostly through literature and other forms of public discussion. The Quakers were the most active group purporting equality, however they were a small group and, for the most part, not influential, except as a novelty to the greater population.

In 1966, R.B. Martin stated that Jane Eyre was the first major feminist novel, 'although there is not a hint in the book of any desire for political, legal, educational, or even intellectual equality between the sexes.' Rather, Martin supports the idea that Jane (Brontė) merely wants recognition that both sexes are similar in 'heart and spirit.' Nowhere in the novel is this sentiment more obvious than in the passage in chapter 23, when Jane responds to Rochester's callous and indirect proposal:

What makes Jane's speech so easy to sympathize with is Brontė's adept use of the first person point of view. Often, when an author wishes to further his or her own cause, the identity of the speaker can either be lost in the course of an ideological tirade, or never even be established outside of the plot. What sustains the believability and emotion of Jane's speech is that it is continually being referenced back to the character who we have grown to love through the course of the novel thus far. In the middle of her monologue, Jane refers to herself as 'poor, obscure, plain, and little,' reminding us of the characteristics of the girl being hurt here. Another section of the monologue, which I omitted in the above excerpt, serves the same function, 'And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth' The final aspect of the discourse which anchors the view of equality to the character of Jane Eyre is that, philosophically and spiritually, the view has an experiential origin in Jane's life, in that much of what she says can actually be traced back to her conversations with Helen Burns, the wise young girl who died in Lowood.

Charles Dickens, in writing Pickwick Papers, heavily relied upon common opinions of the time regarding the feminine function of society ­ that the woman is the passive, domestic, energy-storing vessel, as opposed to the masculine active, worldly, energy-expending vessel. The most favorably portrayed women in the story are those who receive little mention, save for descriptions of their beauty and their meekness, such as Emily and Isabella Wardle, Arabella Allen, and the servant Mary (perhaps not coincidentally, three out of the four young ladies marry Pickwickians, and all four end up married). By contrast, those women who are talkative, active, and not necessarily pretty and youthful are, almost as a rule, manipulative, domineering, and occasionally given to lust.

Mrs. Bardell, perhaps the focal, or at least most influential female character, is presented in direct opposition to our hero, the benevolent Mr. Pickwick. She is portrayed to be not only stupid, in misunderstanding Mr. Pickwick's proposal to employ Sam, but at the same time manipulative, in that she brings the suit against Mr. Pickwick.

For further evidence of her manipulative tendencies, and those of her entire sex, witness chapter 46, which takes place at Goswell Street and the Spanish tea-house with herself, Mrs. Cluppins, Sanders, Rogers, and Raddle, accompanied by Tommy Bardell and the hapless Mr. Raddle. The chapter begins with the culmination of an argument between Mr. and Mrs. Raddle being Mrs. Raddle exclaiming, 'Oh If ever a woman was troubled with a ruffinly creetur, that takes pride and pleasure in disgracing his wife on every possible occasion afore strangers, I am that woman' What Dickens finds so amusing in this is that in the argument, whether the Bardell residence has a yellow or a green door when it turns out that the door in question is red, both parties were incorrect, but the woman takes a tone of victimization. Because she was wrong, she tries to blame her husband and use her own supposed subordinate station as an excuse. Throughout the entire chapter, all possible variations on this theme are played, from the solidarity of the women against Mr. Raddle's inconsequential (to us) or devastating (to the women) remarks, to the use and overuse of fainting fits. And all instances are at least as ridiculous as the first.

Dickens uses his privilege as storyteller to promote these views. The dryly sarcastic third-person point-of-view of the narrator easily relates the story without using any terms of partiality, yet Dickens has so skillfully created the situations, so that the readers know 'the real story,' without the real story ever needing to be explained. We know that both husband and wife were wrong about the doors, and that the wife unjustly blamed the husband, yet the narrator ever refrained from commenting on the implicating factors, leaving Dickens's expertly crafted story to account for itself.

Understanding linguistic structuralism

The field of objects for the human sciences is always difficult to define. Unlike the objects of the natural sciences, the fields in the human sciences manifest only through social interaction. Whereas the natural sciences can account for the laws and interaction of objects minus human subjectivity, it is only in the interstices of human interaction (inter-subjective space) that the objects of the human sciences emerge. Whether it is economics, sociology, psychology, history, or literature, not only the analysis but even the constituting factors of the objects in the human sciences themselves are continually being revised and called into question. One such field that has proved especially resistant to analysis is linguistics. Not only for the most obvious reasons, i.e. using language to describe language, but also because of the linguistically suffused nature of reality. It seems that the first problem of the linguist is to determine how deep the rabbit hole goes. For example, if one conceives of language as a tool distinct from the independently existing subject, similar to a hammer, used to shape and mold the world then their analysis will look very different from the linguist that presupposes language as a constituting factor for subjectivity in the first place. Whatever school of linguistics one adheres to, no one can deny the influential (but not necessarily positive) contribution to the dialogue made by the structuralists.

A recognized father of linguistic structuralism, Ferdinand De Saussure, in an attempt to formalize linguistics, set down clear categorical distinctions in Course in General Linguistics to be used in the study and analysis of language. Initially, he distinguishes speech and language. Speech is the individual enunciative act that embodies the specific spatiotemporal utterance of a given individual. Every time a unique speaker utters an isolable verbalization their series of sentences or simple utterances will be over-laden with meaning specific to their historical, cultural, economic, psychological, or modal context. In such a case, the utterance would remain subject to constantly revised speculation as to its various connotative influences. So speech (language in its actual application) appears, to Saussure, as too amorphous and slippery of an object for a formalized linguistics. Before he sets down the road of defining the concepts and methodologies of linguistics he wants to clearly define the object of his investigation. In order to remedy this problem Saussure suggests that linguistics disregard the ambiguities of speech in its diachronic dimension and instead focus on language (or the lexicon and the grammatical rules of combination) in its synchronic dimension as the object of linguistics. 'In allocating to a science of linguistic structure its essential role within the study of language in general, we have at the same time mapped out linguistics in its entirety. The other elements of language, which go to make up speech, are automatically subordinated to this first science. In this way all the parts of linguistics fall into their proper place.' For example, 'I hate you.' has a specific grammatical structure when analyzed from a a-contextual, a-temporal perspective. The subject, I, is followed by the verb, hate, followed by the object of the sentence, you. This type of sentence is even labeled SVO or subject-verb-object. One can add parts of speech to make the sentence more dynamic, 'I really hate you.' or add punctuation for emphasis, 'I really hate you!' but the basic SVO structure remains intact. These descriptions all contribute to meaning and can be analyzed from the perspective of the linguist. What is difficult however, from the perspective of Saussure, is how to systematically analyze the specific instance of Patty Anderson yelling across the courtroom to her ex-husband 'I hate you!' Factors outside of the knowledge of the analyst (i.e., the historical setting, her physical gesticulations while she uttered those words, the cadence of the utterance, how she used inflexion to emphasize or enervate a specific word in the sentence, etc.) would forever bar the analyst from a total understanding of the utterance. In order to eliminate these ambiguities Saussure insists that the study of speech be subverted to the study of language. Any linguistic system, artificial or natural, big or small, can be analyzed according to the internal relations of signifiers dictated by the combinatory rules specific to the language without regard for the specific instances in which that language is employed through speech.

In order for internal analysis to have meaning however the significance of each signifier has to be stabilized. Achieving the stabilization of signifiers in an artificial language is relatively easy; simply set down a set of axioms for defining each signifier in a certain system. Axioms for an artificial language are always described in terms of a natural language. For example, upon opening a mathematics textbook, one is not confronted simply with a listing of formulas, y=mx+b, 2r, etc., and expected to know how to employ and use them. Rather, people are trained, within the context of their natural language, the rules for combination and employment of mathematical terms (i.e., a list of natural numbers, a list of whole numbers, a list of rational numbers, the interpretation of mathematical symbols such as +,*,=, etc.) An artificial language and a natural language exist in a hierarchy; the natural language sets out and describes the axioms of the artificial or object language. As long as multiple natural languages similarly define the axioms of an artificial language the artificial language can remain stable across the multiple natural languages regardless of cultural and geographical differences. Mathematics remains constant across French, English, Chinese, Russian, etc., because they describe the rules for mathematical operations, say +, similarly. Mathematics would remain equally as translatable if the rules of operations were simply attached to different symbols (viz., if + in English was % in French). Complications would arise in translatability if the descriptive explanations of the mathematical operators were changed. So, if the United States employed the function of addition consistently in some cases, but exceptionally, say as synonymous to subtraction when the number to the right of the operator was even, translation between natural languages would become more difficult (subtraction, as well as every other operation, would be effected resulting in a restructuring of the system of mathematics for English speakers; their would be no mutual translatability into French).

A difficulty arises when one attempts to stabilize the meaning of signifiers in a natural language; for there is no higher language to which one can ascend and articulate a natural language's axioms. Saussure, rather then attempt to define the axioms of a natural language in order to stabilize meaning (grammarians have attempted this feat by conflating the grammatical rules of usage with the axioms of a natural language), he founds the stabilization of the signifier in the mental life of humanity. The signifier is defined as 'the acoustic image' and the corollary of the 'thought' occurring in the individual during speech. At this point Saussure evokes his now famous image of a piece of paper. On one side of the paper resides the signifier, or 'acoustic image', and on its other side exists the signified, or 'thought' of the given speaker. The two are inextricably linked for Saussure in a one-to-one relation. This postulate is not an attempt to identify the meaning of the thought attached to the signifier, but rather to establish a consistency in the relationship between signifiers. 'The signal, in relation to the idea it represents, may seem to be freely chosen. However, from the point of view of the linguistic community, the signal is imposed rather than freely chosen. Speakers are not consulted about its choice. Once the language has selected a signal, it cannot be freely replaced by any other.' This is a tenet, Saussure claims, for the functioning of language in a community. A single member cannot one day arbitrarily decide to say up in place of down regardless of the meaning of up and down within that community. In other words, Saussure recognizes that the connotative meaning of signifiers evolve with time and the other contingencies of language usage. But, by founding the signifier in direct correlation with human thought, Saussure hopes to stabilize, if not define, meaning in a natural language in its synchronic dimension. 'Linguistics, then, operates along this margin, where sound and thought meet. The contact between them gives rise to a form, not a substance.' The question of linguistics, in this case, is not, 'What does above mean? What are the historical, cultural, geographical, etc. contours that define that notion?' but rather 'In Greek mythology in what instances does the coupling above: below occur? Where is it used, how often, and in relation to what else? That there is meaning to both above and below is assumed, but speculation as to what that meaning is in the specific instance of the utterance remains in the ambiguous realm of speech. Analysis at the level of language, remains for Saussure, the analysis of the relationship between signifiers with a presupposed signified. What results is structural analysis.

Structuralism, in its most puritanical form, stays at the absolute surface of a text. A text is identified, to use the above example of Greek Mythology, and its internal structure is analyzed according internal relationships of its signifiers. Analysis results, therefore in a topography of the utilization of above:below, infinite:finite, temporal:eternal, good:bad, etc. Speculation about what above means is not proffered, only where above appears in contradistinction to below in the text of Greek Mythology. Structuralism describes this as the differential meaning of binary signifiers. In other words, the meaning of the concept above is defined by being not below. Since the meaning of a singular concept cannot be analyzed without treading the murky waters of connotation, structural analysis has to analyze a signifier against another signifier termed its binary opposite or corollary signifier. Structuralism is always the analysis of internal relations within defined contours. Analysis of the connotations of cure as a common word will never occur in a structural analysis but rather cure/poison or cure/pathogen within the contours of Greek Mythology or within the contours of poetry in the 20th century. What defines the contours of the 'text' to be analyzed only sets the parameter of the analysis (20th century poetry, the poetry of Romanticism, the book The Da Vinci Code), while the methodology of the analysis remains the same (mapping the internal relations of binary signifiers within the circumscribed text).

Structuralism's weakness lies in its inability to pronounce value judgments on the worth or purpose of a text because its methodology, in order to remain consistent, seeks only to analyze meaning according to a text's internal relations and cannot inject connotative judgments into the boundaries set by the text under analysis. Namely, formal structural analysis will never state, 'Antigone was a better play then Oedipus at Colonus', or 'Kafka was more interesting then Dostoyevsky', or 'Fascism is a worse political ideology then Democracy'.

A field that has found structural analysis quite useful however, has been cultural anthropology. Claude Levi-Strauss and his book Structural Anthropology is often connected with the beginning of cultural anthropology's utilization of structural analysis. As observers in the field of other culture's customs, habits, familial organizations, religious rituals, language, mating customs, diet, etc. anthropologists are in a constant struggle to observe while attempting to remain objective (i.e. reserve judgment and refrain from interfering with the continuation of everyday life). By circumscribing the culture under observation as the 'text' for analysis, anthropologists can then proceed to map the relations between words, behaviors, groupings, rituals, etc. Judging the aforementioned structures within one's own culture is a natural part of participation within society while transposing those same criteria of judgment onto a foreign culture distorts the culture under observation and clouds the observations. Anthropology, for Levi-Strauss, must go further then even attempting to repress ethnocentric judgments. It must even use a methodology that refrains from categorizing the observed culture according to ones own symbolic matrix. 'The first aim of anthropology is to be objective, to inculcate objective habits and to teach objective methods. Not simply an objectivity enabling the observer to place himself above his own personal beliefs, preferences, and prejudicesThe objectivity aimed at by anthropology is on a higher level: The observer must not only place himself above the values accepted by his own society or group, but must adopt certain methods of thought; he must reason on the basis of concepts which are valid not merely for an honest and objective observer, but for all possible observers.' I.E., structuralism. While structural analysis may not be helpful when attempting to espouse the superiority of a governmentally regulated capitalism over an unregulated free market, it can be useful in an attempt to observe and record the data during anthropological field work without condemning or praising (consciously or unconsciously) the customs of the society under observation.

Links between thought and language

The argument surrounding the concept of language and thought has occupied philosophers and linguists for centuries. From the age of Plato, in which he described the idea of thought and language being ultimately based on reality, meaning that our language and thoughts are determined by our surroundings and what is going on around us. This view seemed to be correct until the 18th century when a German scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt, suggested that language and thought were inseparable. He suggested that language completely determined thought. His hypothesis is known as Weltanshaung (world view).

Benjamin Whorf studies Native American languages alongside Edward Sapir. Their hypothesis (later known as the Sapir - Whorf Hypothesis) supported the view that thought is strongly influenced by language. In view of his hypothesis he set out to study the Hopi language. According to Whorf, the Hopi language does not contain any words, grammatical constructions or expressions that refer to the concept of time. He found that it was possible in the Hopi language to express the view of time in other ways. In this example, Whorf supports his hypothesis in that language strongly influences thought.

The Sapir Whorf hypothesis, that language and thought are inseparable, has remained a complicated topic for many years, as many researchers felt that Whorf's examples failed to show a real relationship between language and thought, whilst others agree with Whorf that thought is truly dependant on language.

However, although many researchers insist that the Sapir Whorf hypothesis is correct, there are others who disagree. There are several points that researchers use to dispute the Sapir Whorf hypothesis. The idea of translatability, although languages may differ considerably in the way that they express certain details, it is still quite possible to translate them from one language to another. Another point is that there is no way to define language as influencing thought when the evidence that supports language as influencing thought is purely based on linguistic differences.

Women's breasts in literature

This was a little thought that hit me today. Usually I don't make corolations between little things in literature unless I read more than one book in a single day. Today was one of those days though, so here's a good thought. The description of a woman's breasts constantly comes up. It's bound to happen. Most of the authors and protagonists are men. The lion's share of decent books written by women don't get stuck up on something so basic to the human anatomy. Women tend to focus more specifically on the emotional development of a novel and not necessarily glaze over the physical, but they sure as hell don't dwell on the unnecessary physical 'endowment'. Anyways back to how men describe women's breasts.

There are some factors as to how the breasts are described. It depends on the nationality of the author, his age, and his genre of writing. It makes sense if you think about it; Pynchon isn't going to describe anatomy the same way as Cory Doctorow. Completely different methods. I omit classic literature not because authors in those times never wrote of a woman's breasts, but because they tended to gloss over the issue and most descriptions were the same. And if you've read an old classic novel that is sensual enough to offer up these sorts of descriptions, please pass it along. Can't imagine a whole lot of 'classics' going the down and dirty route.

The shape seems to come up a lot. It seems a bit odd to me personally, but 9 times out of 10 a writer will take the easy route here and simply utilize the basics of geometry to describe a woman's breasts. We don't read things about the gentle curves or such as much as say the hips or neck, but get things like conical, sharp angles, comparisons to round fruits (i.e. melons, grapefruits, etc.) and an occasional allusion to geographical structures like mountains and their subsequent slopes. Then of course, these break down into whether the author is writing a love scene, how much the narrator wants to touch said breasts, and to what degree the narrator is even interested (younger narrations tend towards the motherly view of the breasts, using similar descriptions but lacking the lecherous or amorous tone of the older descriptions.) I find this all very humorous, because I haven't read a book recently from a male perspective that doesn't describe the breasts of some female character for no reason. I understand when a character is involved romantically, or even carries feelings toward said character, but do we really need commentary on the woman walking across the street and her swollen breasts pulling at her yellow sweater from a homosexual character eating his lunch, or even a female protagonist commenting on other women's breasts. While I can see why this would come up, and I don't really have a problem with it, most of the time these descriptions just pop up for the simple reason that the writer wants to write about breasts because he's a guy and that's what guys do. I do the same thing. I am however going to try to figure out a way to minimize unnecessary sexual descriptions when they are completely out of context. It's fun to write, but honestly do we need to turn every simple piece of prose into moderate pornography for the gratification of our base male imaginations.hmmm, now that I think about it.

Plot summary: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre is a wonderful novel of deceit, romance, and pain. The novel starts out with Jane as a young orphan girl being raised by her aunt who was abusive, as was Jane's cousins. Jane's parents were killed in an accident of some sorts. Jane's dying uncle made his wife: Aunt Reed: promise to care for Jane after he died. Aunt Reed abused Jane and kept her locked in the room where Uncle Reed had died. Aunt Reed had thought she constantly lied and much more so she sent her to Lowood: an academy for girls.

The headmaster told the teachers and other children that Jane Eyre was a liar and not believe the things she said. The school didn't provide much from the young children, many of the died including Jane's best friend. Jane ended up living at the school for eight years; six as a student and then she stayed for two more as a teacher. She heard of a governess position with Mr. Rochester which she then takes. She moves in with him to teach his daughter, as time goes on Jane falls in love with him. Throughout her time at Rochester's home strange things occurred including his bedroom being caught on fire.

After several years Mr. Rochester asks Jane to marry him, to which she agrees. On the day of the wedding a man came and stopped the marriage. It was on that day that she found out Mr. Rochester had a horrible secret: He is already married to a mad woman named Bertha. Bertha in fact tricked Mr. Rochester into marring her, before he knew of her insanity. After that he kept her locked up in the attic, and she was in fact the one who caught his room on fire.

Jane then runs off away from the deceitful man she loved. Through her journey she gets horribly sick and is taken in by a pastor and his sisters. They soon find out that Jane had other relatives who leave her some money which she shares with the pastor and his sisters for taking care of her. The pastor and his sisters were amazed at Jane's amazing artistic talent. Not long after meeting the pastor asks Jane to marry him. As she considers his question she hers Mr. Rochesters voice on the wind calling out to her.

She returns to his home and finds out it has been burnt down by Bertha, who threw herself off the towers in a fit of insanity, which she always gets. She finds him once more and finds out he is now blind from the fire. She takes care of him and his eyesight slowly comes back.

Possibility of modern women losing their 'feminine grace'

Competition can be a double edged sword. Women have struggled to be treated as equals and prove that they can do just as good in this world as any man. It goes without saying that women should not have had to struggle to prove this at all but the fact is that we live in an unfair and imperfect society and still have much room for change. For years women have fought for equal rights and treatment in this world. In that struggle they have earned the right to vote, equal wages, among other things over the years. They have even proved that they can be mother and father in the household due to holding the position as a single parent. Many sacrifices have been made for the sake of fair treatment. Women have fought long and hard to be acknowledged and they certainly deserve it. It has been a war for them. However, as in all wars, there have been casualties.

By proving to the world that women can do just as good, if not better, than men something was lost. Women at times had to adapt and utilize the tactics of their enemies. In doing so they have had to go against the grain so to speak. Women have attempted to play on the same grounds as a man and in turn have picked up 'man-like' qualities. The feminine grace that was once exclusive to women has diminished. An attitude of 'I don't need a man for anything.' has spread like wildfire. It has become taboo to extend chivalry to a women in the smallest way such a holding the door open for them. Young ladies are no longer trying to be ladies. They are misled and trying to be just like the boys they see. They dress like boys, fight like boys, curse and drink like boys, at times some of them even become promiscuous like boys. The reason for all this? 'Men have been doing these things for years. Why shouldn't I?' As these young ladies grow up they are unclear how to be true ladies. They view everything as a fight and have a hard time submitting to anyone or anything especially not a man. Why should they submit? Because in life we all must submit at some point in our lives. Life is give and take. With women taking up a role of just take, the world is missing that wonderful charity that only a woman can give. The tenderness is gone and looking at how the world goes today, we need that tenderness.

It is true that women need to fight for what is due to them. It should be theirs regardless. Over the years they have certainly earned it. Men have been bullheaded and unappreciative in our dealings but we don't need women to take on our mistakes. Fight, struggle, succeed, and win but do it with all the dignity, poise and grace of a woman. In all wars there are casualties but no one wants to or can afford to lose our women.

The best profession a woman can achieve in her life Translation

I am no bra-burning feminist, but I find it absurd to state that the best profession a woman can achieve in her life is that of a house-wife, or stay at home mum. This is simply not true! A woman can do anything she wants. As good as a man, and why not - better than a man. Obviously there are still enormous trials to go through in achieving career success compared to those of a man, but unless we strive through them they will never be fully overcome. Having said this, I am not stating that being a stay at home mum is not just as important as a career choice, but it is not more important. House-wives or stay at home mums are doing an incredibly hard job, that people very rarely see. They face so many emotional and mental challenges more personal than many careers would throw up. My mum was a stay at home mum and wife. She put all her time into this, and did a wonderful job. But I have seen how it's taken her confidence away. She doesn't have the social skills that my Father had, and she was bored. I would rather she had followed her dreams as well. Being a parent isn't a life sentence, and it isn't as limiting as it once was. There are more options now. There can be shared responsibility with the Father and Mother. Both play just as important a role in the child's life, it is not solely the woman's 'duty' or 'responsibility' anymore. It never was, but now women have more freedom we are able to challenge the patriarchal values that place women in the home as their 'place'. Women are just as capable of bringing in the income and supporting the family, and men are just as capable of being a stay at home dad, or a house-husband. I think it is backward to assume that in order for children to have a safe, happy and nurturing childhood - the mother has to stay at home. This can be achieved by sharing the responsibility. It is not a chore, it should be a cherished time that is shared between parents. I realise this is not always possible. But there are so many more options now, that means exploring the idea is well worth it.

The best profession a woman can achieve in her life is that which fulfills and satisfies her. What would the answer be if it was addressed at men? This answer is the same for women. A profession that brings in adequate money, that supports the family, that makes her feel good. The very question is wrong, as it places women on a different standing from men. It is an individual choice, and should be addressed to the individual - not their gender.

The Fated Modernist Heroine: Female Protagonists in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is a modernist revision of Charlotte Brontė's Jane Eyre. The female protagonists of both novels share many traits of character and circumstance, most notable of which being a marriage to Mr. Rochester. Jane can assert notions of female individuality and self-respect because she operates in a society based on Christian virtues of justice and fairness. The modernist revision by Rhys, however, defines the world as a rotting paradise, literally a place where the values of Jane's world fail to exist. Antoinette Cosway, the fated heroine of Wide Sargasso Sea, is culturally divided between worlds of hating races. This racial tension not only undermines any feelings of security she might possess but fatally marks Antoinette as a character unable to survive in an immoral universe. Good and evil become indistinguishable as races mix; misfortune becomes obvious as a paradise based on merciless slavery attempts to right itself. The blacks of Jamaica have been emancipated, yet justice exists nowhere for the female hero. Whereas Jane Eyre details a woman's relentless struggle for emotional and spiritual satisfaction, Wide Sargasso Sea depicts a woman unable to find security because of the burdens of her society. An incompatible marriage, a familial history of madness - these are simply struggles that Antoinette attempts to endure. But the proverbial garden has already fallen, and as a woman she is banished to a world of pain and frustration where she has no control.

Antoinette's problems are deeply rooted in colonialism. The violence of both her family's and country's pasts have hindered her ability to live a full, happy life. Antoinette becomes obsessed with security and protection, looking for comfort with the victims of slavery. Rhys's postcolonial lens characterizes Antoinette as existing between the harshly divided worlds of blacks and whites, between formers slaves and former slave owners. As a Creole woman, Antoinette's relationship to the black population combines hatred and pity, wants of acceptance and desires for separation. During such an ebb and flow of emotions Antoinette first forms a relationship with Tia, a black girl of approximately the same age. After blacks set fire to Coulibri, the family escapes from ther burning mansion, and Antoinette runs toward Tia. She is unable to hate the blacks despite their violent reactions to her presence: 'As I ran I thought, I will live with Tia and I will be like her. Not to leave Coulibri. Not to go. Not' (Rhys, p. 45). Antoinette identifies with a different racial group, at the same time that she flees from the result of its violent actions. She cannot fully come to terms with her own guilt and its resulting isolation.

Antoinette's life becomes a continuous struggle to find a place where she may be happy and peaceful. She exists in a society in which actions have no redemptive value. Antoinette's notion that she could in fact live and thrive among a different race deteriorates after her interaction with Tia. Tia literally shatters the idea when she throws a rock that pierces Antoinette's face, causing her to bleed: 'When I was close I saw the jagged stone in her hand but did not see her throw it. I did not feel it either, only something wet, running down my face. I looked at her and I saw her face crumple up as she began to cry. We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was if I saw myself. Like in a looking glass' .This act confirms that Antoinette is not wanted by the black population; she must remain separate and isolated from them, despite her intense desire to gain safety and security tamong them. Her reference to a looking glass is at once absurd and at the same time crucial to understanding the roots of her fate. Her connection to a crying Tia symbolizes her connection to both pain and suffering. Antoinette's face bleeds, demonstrating a physical pain. Yet, she internalizes Tia's tears and makes them her own as she realizes that she can no longer be

The Position of Middle-class Women as Context for Brontė's Jane Eyre

Jane has more problems than just controlling her passions. She has trouble settling into society, not just because her over-zealous passions, but also because of her gender. Like Rochester, English society proved a 'buoyant but unquiet sea' for Jane. Even though the Industrial Revolution opened up new venues for lower-class women, offering them new factory jobs in place of household work, it did not do much good for the middle class. A single woman at this economic level still had only one option for respectable employment: working as a governess. Although a woman could maintain a decent living with this job, she could also anticipate 'no security of employment, minimal wages, and an ambiguous status, somewhere between servant and family member, that isolated her within the household' (Norton Anthology of English Literature, 2: 903). If she did not marry and had no relatives to care for her, a governess would have to remain a governess all her life, which of course would mean moving from house to house. Even a woman as intelligent as Jane Eyre could not hope to leave the life of governess behind her, take a university degree, and pursue a better job. First of all, before 1848, no women's colleges existed, and even if they had, a woman could not have improved her professional prospects by attending one. The precarious lifestyle of the governess remained all that a middle-class, single woman like Jane Eyre could strive for. And it does not seem too appropriate for someone as passionate as Jane.

The Renaissance: Part of the Middle Ages, or a new era?

As the Renaissance occurred, the old ways of medieval Europe began to change. The way space and self were understood took a new shape. A certain beneficiary of this new understanding was Benvenuto Cellini. In his autobiography, he experiences popes, nobles, prison, murder, and art. Cellini's world exemplifies some of the great freedoms that times prior to the Renaissance did not provide. He reaped the harvest of the artists and thinkers that came before him and that lived during his life. Cellini and those he interacts with experience the freedom of space, politics, and self because of the understandings present in the Renaissance.

Pre-Renaissance Europe's economy was feudal. Peasants, civilians, and nobles were attached to their land. They worked their land, protected their land, and made their livelihood from their land. Feudalism anchored people in a way that barred them from excessive travel if they traveled at all; this changing system was still present during the 15th and 16th centuries. Cellini, for instance, was no longer tied to the land. Throughout his life, he worked and traveled across Italy and abroad including: Rome, Florence, Pisa, Naples, Monte Cassino and France. The reason for mobility such as this came from an appreciation and understanding of the arts that did not exist in the centuries prior to the Renaissance. Medieval European art was primarily religious in nature and commissions for imagination, creativity, and perfection were not in as high of a demand. By the time

The role of women in classical literature

Women play many roles in life: from mother to leader and from caretaker to deceiver, women are named many of these terms. In historical literature such as: Gilgamesh, The Old Testament, Medea, Lysistrata, and The Koran, females played a large part, either as the lead character or having a significant role in religion and the society. Comparing the themes from these readings, it is easy to see most women played many roles, how the roles give insight to the audience about the society in which the women lived, and that the women are able to diversify themselves to fit their situation and cull prestige within their societies.

The women of the historical texts played different roles, but they all have one common characteristic: determination. From Gilgamesh comes Ishtar, the role of the gilted lover. She is the goddess who proclaims her love in hopes to win Gilgamesh's heart. When he turns her down, she strives to kill him, even though she fails to do so, she tries everything she knows. In The Old Testament is Eve, companion to Adam. She knows she wants the apple and eats it. Medea is the exile, who has betrayed her family for Jason, yet when he betrays her, she does everything in her power to watch him suffer. Lysistrata has the unending will power to resist her husband's demands for sex, and the leadership skills to convince all the women of her civilization to say no to their husbands until the war stops. The women of the Koran, however do not fit into this determination category. These women play the role of the wife, the submissive, and hoping to garner the love from their husband. Even though women play many different roles in the texts, they are still women, hoping to achieve something, whether for good or bad.

Each of the texts show how the society of that time period looked upon women, by the way the men of the story treated the female characters. In all of the stories, the women were not looked upon as high standing citizens, like their male counterparts. The women had to answer to men and obey their laws. Women of these societies were expected to stay at home, be nice little wives and submit to their husband's wishes. Mainly, this is recognized in the religious texts, however in the literary works, the women fought back, showing women to be deceivers of men.

The women who garnered power in the societies were the women who fought against the traditional laws the men had laid down. Ishtar would not accept the metaphorical slap in the face from Gilgamesh and sent the Bull of Heaven to kill him. Medea would not stand for her husband's infidelity and showed him how the pain of loss can be by murdering everyone dear to him. Lysistrata, sick of not having her husband at home because of the war, gathered her own troops of women and fought back by not having sex with the men. These women gained power over the men, by using whatever vice they could against the men to get their way.

Women are portrayed in these literary texts as either meek and gentle, or rabid dogs from hell seeking revenge against men. This binary opposition shows that societies of their time see women's extreme emotions, not the middle ground, giving the audience a perception that women are not trustworthy. Women play many roles and have many emotions, and the stories have some truth in them about women, but the whole truth of women is not shown. Comparing these works it is easy to see that the male authors of these stories have written exaggerated versions of women; whether it is about the meek and gentle woman they desire, or the intolerant woman they abhor. Even today, where women have less boundaries and rules than long ago, women are still not equal to men, and many men still believe a woman's place is in the kitchen.

Understanding the role of society in forming gender identities

The Social Construction of Gender

The term 'social construction of gender' refers to the idea that the very term 'woman' and all the behaviors, attributes, and expectations related to that term are devised and constructed by society. A particularly radical view of this construction is in Monique Wittig's article 'One is Not Born a Woman.' Wittig maintains that the 'myth of woman was crated by men' as a device to oppress women. Wittig defines this oppression in terms of the sociological conflict theory, where the categories 'woman' and 'man' are political and economical 'not eternals ones.'

Wittig advocates thoroughly dissociating the class 'women' and 'woman (the myth).' Women (the myth) is the product of a social relationship and is only a temporary, utilitarian label to be used until the struggle for her classless society (i.e., where the term 'male' will also be eradicated) is complete.

Another view of social construction of gender is in Ehrlich's and King's 'Gender-Based Language Reform' The authors observe that 'language is not a neutral vehicle in the representation of reality.' Language is 'laden with social values,' and the arbiters of our culture call the shots on what meanings are given to gender-based terms. These arbiters in our society have been the males.

Where are the women writers in translation?

I've always believed that writing is a fairly even playing field between the sexes.

But I've realised something: when I think about the great novelists translated into English from other languages, disproportionately few of the names I come up with are women's. For every Isabel Allende there's a raft of José Saramagos, Gabriel Garcia Marquezes, Mario Vargas Llosas and Pablo Nerudas. Hardly any of the familiar names of pre-war European fiction belong to women: the odd female contender like Colette is barely even visible among the clamouring ranks of male giants like Tolstoy, Flaubert, Kafka, Proust, Mann and Dostoevsky.

So have social conditions perhaps been kinder to British, American and other English-speaking women than to female writers in most European cultures? Perhaps. But the strange thing is that despite a century of increasing sexual equality throughout the western world, the trend is no more representative today. Of the six new works of fiction Faber & Faber is publishing in translation between January and June 2008, none are by women; of the two Bloomsbury is publishing in the same period, neither are by women. Penguin is publishing three, none of which are by women - and so the list goes on.

Now, it seems to me there are at least three possible explanations for this disparity. First of all, it's conceivable that the publishing industries of many non-anglophone cultures are themselves inherently sexist. Secondly, it's possible - just possible - that unlike their English-speaking counterparts, female novelists in Europe, South America, Russia and Japan simply aren't writing at the same level as their male contemporaries. And finally, it's worth considering the idea that translators and/or publishers in the English-speaking world are somehow biased towards a romantic image of the truly profound author as a tortured, chainsmoking man.

Yes, these are all fairly dismal explanations. But before we dismiss it as too incomprehensible to be true, consider the following anomaly: Nobel laureates Gabriela Mistral, Grazia Deledda and Nelly Sachs didn't have any of their works translated into English until after they'd been honoured by the Swedish Academy. The same is true of only one male Nobel laureate in literature - Salvatore Quasimodo - and this is despite the total ratio of 92 male laureates to only 11 women.

Why is it hard for a man to understand a woman?

Why men don't understand women?
The simple answer, as if there was anything simple about it, is: Evolution.

As far as our DNA is concerned, we have left the caves a few minutes ago. Deep inside our brain the wiring is just the same as that of the Geico caveman. Helen fisher 'The first sex' and Deborah Tannen 'You just don't understand' have carried out seminal work on the subject of male-female communication and behavior.

The short answer is this: Men evolved to be hunters and as such developed a task oriented behavior and communication style. Communication in men developed to solve immediate problems, generally related to the task at hand; whether the task is getting a woolly mammoth to fall off a cliff, or taking apart a motorcycle engine, the style of communication is the same: Brief, explicit and task oriented. Sometimes I've gone fishing or hunting with a male friend. After I come home, my wife asks me: 'What did you guys talk about?' The answer is of course 'Nothing' There is not much talk needed to butcher a deer or gut some fish.

Women on the other hand were gatherers. They probably moved about in female groups, gathering roots, berries and such, while communicating with each other. At the same time that food was gathered, they would keep an eye on the children, make sure they did not stroll to close to that hedge where that big snake lives, keep an eye on that lion over there, make sure it doesn't get any closer, and at the same time catch up on the doings of the other women in the group. I.e. multitasking and non linear thinking.

Not only did women evolve differently but on top of it they developed a higher pitched voice. Now babies respond to high pitched tones more than lower pitched tones, so this may have provided an evolutionary advantage and thus the different tone of voice, but this resulted in a more musical speech by women. Recent studies on brain function found out that men do not hear musical speech as well as women. There's strike two.

The third strike is the short attention span that men have for anything that is not of immediate interest. Because men communicate only to problem solve (almost only) and not to share, the minute a woman talks to a man about something, he immediately tries to problem solve. This is a recipe for disaster. Here she is sharing something that frustrated her for the whole day, and he glibly provides an answer after only a minute of conversation. When she complains some more, he gives her a second answer, and maybe a third; if, as usually happens she is getting more and more upset, he can't understand what got into her. He has been trying to be so helpful; he provided three solutions to her problem; why doesn't she like any? In any case, he ends up in the couch, drinking a beer and wondering what did men do to deserve this.

Of course she wants to share and, if he has some experience, he will just shut up and pretend to listen. That is the reason words like Aha, hmmm, and harrumph exist. Of course she gets wise to this very fast and he ends up in the couch, drinking a beer and wondering what did men do to deserve this.

Both sides are equally responsible for this, and no one side can resolve the issue.

Men need to detect when women just want to share, and then just nod their heads and say 'Yes dear' and try to keep at least track of the general drift of the monologue, err.. I mean conversation.

Women need to let men know that they just want to share, and do not need a solution to their problem, and also understand that men's attention span, if there is no problem to be solved, is about 1.5 minutes, and do their sharing in a short time period. Maybe 5 minutes.

Traits of the masculine stereotype

Emotional Stability

Decided, firm, steady, calm.

Disciplined, methodical, organized, rigid, likes organized discreet, outspoken.

Autonomy, Depedence

Patriotic, likes risk, independent.

Dominance, Self-assertion

Need of power, need of farme, Ambitious, likes to be in charge, domineering, self-important, sure of himself, need of prestige, arrivisye, need to assert himself.

Aggressiveness

Combative, cynical, likes afight

Level of Activity

Impetuous

Acquisition

Egoistic, materialistic

Intellectual Qualities and Creativity

Creative, lucid, objective, likes theoretical ideas, natural dispositive for mathematics and science.

Traits of the feminine stereotype

Emotional stability

Capricious, hysterical, sensitive, nervous, emotional, puerile, frivolous, talkative, incoherent, affective, secretive, scatterbrained, sly

Autonomy, Dependence

Need to confide, to please, flirtatious,  submissive

Dominance, Self-Assertion

Weak

Aggressiveness

Sly

Level of Activity

Passive

Acquisition

Inquisitive

Intellectual Qualities, Creativity

Intuitive

Bibliography

Coates, J., (1993) Women, Men and Language. London: Longman

Coates, J., (1998) Language and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd

Holmes, J., (1992) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: Longman

Lakoff, R., (1975) Language and Women's Place. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Martin, F., (1954) Social Mobility in Great Britain. London: Longman

Talbot, M., (1998) Language and Gender: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press

Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice, (Penguin English Library, 1974)
Austen, Jane, Sense and Sensibility, (Penguin English Library, 1969)
Copeland, Edward and Juliet McMaster (ed.) The Cambridge companion to Jane Austen, (Cambridge University Press 1997)p.34
Johnson, Claudia L., Jane Austen, Women, Politics and The Novel, (University of Chicago press ltd, 1988)
Secondary Reading:
Bush, Douglas, Jane Austen, (The Macmillan Press Ltd,1975)

Aitchison, J., (1996) The Seeds of Speech: Language, Origin and Evolution Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Chaika, E., (1989) Language the Social Mirror. New York: Newbury House Publishers

Chomsky, N., (1986) Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use New York: Praeger

Finch, G., (2003) Word of Mouth: A New Introduction to Language and Communication New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Gill, J., (1997) If a chimpanzee could talk and other reflections on language acquisition. University of Arizona Press

Jackendoff, R., (1993) Patterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature London: Harvester

Jesperson, O., (1992) Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin Oxford: Oxford University Press

Matthews, P., (2003) Linguistics London: Oxford University Press

M.C Dermott " The sex problem in modern life"

Harding M. Esher " The way of all Women"

Buttler Judith "Bodies that Matter"

Badinter Elisabeth " Man/Women"

Emily Bronte ,Anne Bronte, Charlote Bronte "Jane Eyre"

Jane Austen

"Literatura Contemporana"

"Limbaje si comunicare"

Tohoreanu "Studii de stilistica si verificatie"

Popescu Julian "Stil si mentalitati"