*Question* "...what society believes is best for children consists of indeterminate and largely speculative ideas, often deeply ambiguous, often not entirely child-centred...[d]ecisions do not represent absolute truths, but value judgments firmly rooted in prevailing societal experience and produce...

Verbal and visual representation of the matriarchal rule. Ursula Buendia in One Hundred Years of Solitude and Mama Elena in Like Water for Chocolate are two of the prominent and powerful female characters in the novels. No less important than men, these women assume the leading roles in the fam...

True Nature Revealed From Behind a Mask of Words Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" is a dramatic monologue; it is told from the point of view of one character. Readers are left to infer the character development, the situation, and the action from the speaker's language. ...

The Clerk's Tale: An Analysis These are the reflections of a truly good woman, one of endurance, marked by innocence and bruised by obedience. Poet Geoffrey Chaucer's 15th century tale of tales, The Canterbury Tales, is not just a series of stories, rather Chaucer's own ironic depi...

Human nature leads us to be curious. Due to this we have acquired a thirst for knowledge about many aspects of life - one of these is the past. The city of Rome was founded in 753 B.C. By 275 B.C., it controlled most of the Italian Peninsula. At its peak, in the A.D. 100's, the Roman Empire covered...

Throughout Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the marriages in the stories are as different and as intertwined as the pilgrims themselves who told of these tales. The diversity amongst the marriages was well illustrated by the following tales, The Wife of Bath, Alisoun's departure from the sta...

"Poetry, Passion, and Power: The Lyrics of Andal-Goda and the Music of Goda Mandali," Vasudha Narayanan & "Mirabai: Inscribed in Text, Embodied in Life," Nancy M. Martin-Kershaw This is a summary and reaction to the above articles, both of which have similar foci in that they each dis...

Marriage and family have played a major role in women's lives throughout history and especially in the United States. This role has mostly been restricting. Many people in the United States have grown up with the concept of "romantic love", equal treatment with their significant others. Ho...

"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them." Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam. This quote by Gibran means that people choose their fates long before they become their realities. For example, Oedipus, in Oedipus Rex, had sincere intentions to avoid his fate of killing his fath...

Roles and Choices of Women Throughout history, women have been forced into a subservient role, forced to abandon their own self-interest for the interest of men. Confined to the private sector of social life, women have had two choices, to follow the path of marriage or the path of serving their g...

Marital Issues: Restoring Hope When "marriage" is mentioned the image that comes to mind is that of a beautiful bride and a handsome groom, surrounded by their loved ones, witnesses to their blessed union. Very rarely does an image of that same couple a...