Mele Pasa ENG2(8) - FINAL EXAM

Theme:
Gender Roles: Men vs Women
Texts used in essay:
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Taming of the Shrew (William Shakespeare)

In the texts The Taming of the Shrew and The Great Gatsby, Men vs Women is a clear issue that shows how different gender roles are. They show how women are mistreated and have high expectations from the men in the texts.

In the Taming of the Shrew, the women are assumed to be obedient to what is expected of them Katherine is a character who does not agree witht his idea of women being obedient. I like how she stands up for herself and that she does not agree with her father and how he tells her what to do. Bianca, on the other hand, does what her father tells her to. She is very sweet and obedient but seriously, to me shes a disgrace to women because she is so easy trick, manipulate and walk all over. In the Great Gatsby, Daisy is expected to stay home and and be a mother to her daughter. Instead she does what she likes behind her husbands back. All three of these women do not show what the characteristics of what a real woman should be like. Because they are taken for granted, the characteristics, behaviour and attitudes of these women are not so great. In Bianca's case she wouldn't feel this way because shes a spoilt brat.

In both the Taming of the Shrew and the Grat Gatsby, the male roles of the characters show that they have high expectations of the women and they do whatever they like. Baptista, Katherine's father, expects her to be more like Bianca. Petruchio also expects Katherine to be obedient as his wife, to do whatever he says and in the end he accomplishes this. He turns Katherine into an obedient wife. In the Great Gatsby, Tom expects Daisy to stay home all day with their daughter. Not to go out, unless she goes with him. Also in the Great Gatsby, Gatsby expects Daisy to give all that up. To be his lover. To leave her husband and child for him. He wants her to say that she never loved Tom. Gatsby could have ended up with Daisy but it was his high expectations of her that killed it. I believe if he didn't expect too much of her, she would have left Tom.

Both texts have shown that male roles are much more different to womens. It's like men are seen as masters, and women are seen as slavesbecause women are highly expected to be obedient to what is asked of them and they are commonly taken for granted.