Tuesday, November 2, 2010
ideas for paper #3...
What I noticed in the book was a how independant the women were in 1984, how they worked and had a high up role in the society. This is an odd thing to put in a book writtin in the late 40's because I'm pretty sure back then women were just starting to enter the work and it was highly contreversal because women were supposed to stay at home. which got me thinking, to the author is women high up in the work force an aspect of a distopian world?! Everything else was backward about that society. So what i want to do is see if other early distopian literature has the same sort of idea of womens role in their books. this might be hard to do though so the topic of my paper might change.
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gender in 1984 is a great topic to tackle, Jordan, and I don't think you'll have a problem finding research...some of the research into gender and science fiction in general might be useful. also a very interesting take on women's roles in dystopian literature! some places to focus might be the role of Julia vs. the role of Winston's mother in the text.
ReplyDeletejust as a side note, women were very much in the workplace in the 40s, because of WWII - the men were fighting in the war, and women took over many traditionally male roles (Google Rosie the Riveter). but when the men returned home, they wanted their jobs back, which resulted in the very traditional nuclear family and gender roles of the 50s, which in turn led to women realizing they'd given up the workplace freedom they'd gained during the war years, and the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s. there is a lot of research on this topic, so I would narrow down your idea.