ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => VCE English Studies => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE English Work Submission and Marking => Topic started by: zxcasdqwe on June 09, 2016, 05:16:08 pm
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Hi, can someone please give me some feedback on this essay?
Thanks! :)
Prompt: Women have no power in Burial Rites. The patriarchal society determines their lives. Discuss.
Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites is a story of protagonist Agnes Magnúsdóttir’s struggle against the unyielding nineteenth century Icelandic society, which restricts her as well as other women. Moreover, social class discrimination and personality pigeonholing further compound Agnes’ misfortune, whilst enabling the elevation of certain women into positions of relative power. Ultimately, Kent’s depiction of an unjust patriarchal society acts as an allegory for contemporary power imbalances.
Gender inequality in Burial Rites is rampant. Tools of empowerment such as education, sexual liberation and positions of authority are restricted for women. While basic literacy appears commonplace, as shown by the parish testings, Agnes’ intelligence as a female is frowned upon. From a young age, her natural curiosity is scorned, as her foster father Björn tells her that books are “not for your kind”. He “did not like that [she] knew the sagas better than him”. Then, as an older woman, her capacity is used as evidence of her guilt. Björn Blöndal exemplifies society’s fear of smart women when he tells Tóti: “like many older servant women she is practised in deception”. Society also seeks to suppress women’s power through sexual vilification. While a man like Natan Ketilsson, who has had several partners, is described as merely “indiscreet”, women are labelled as “loose with their morals”, “loose skirts”, and “whore”. Married farmers and servant men alike suffer no repercussions from engaging in sexual activity, while women are often physically and socially vulnerable, and therefore have no power to reject unwanted advances. Furthermore, men control the government and religion at every level: from the Danish King to the reverends - thus the suppression of women’s power is systematically ingrained.
However, even restricted as they are, women are not equal in their power. Some, like Margrét and Poet Rósa, have been able to elevate their position in society. Margrét is the wife of a District Officer. While the family is poverty-stricken, they are still able to employ servants, thus giving Margrét a respected and authoritative position in the household. Meanwhile, Poet Rósa seems to escape the prejudice against promiscuous women through her celebrity status. She is victimised by Icelandic society despite being an adulterer. As Agnes argued, Natan “wasn't hers to love”. Class division is also apparent from the disgust District Commissioner Björn Blöndal shows the Kornsá household. Kent’s juxtaposition of Blöndal’s “more spacious dwelling...at Hvammur” with the “[cramped turf] hovels of peasants and farmers” emphasises the difference social standing can make to standard of living. Additionally, Agnes’ supposed father Magnús may have been maligned due to his low social standing as a servant, which afforded his reputation little protection, demonstrating that imbalances of power amongst men also exist because of classism.
Similarly, conformity to society’s ideals may grant or diminish the power of a woman. Sigga is constantly victimised as people think her “too young and sweet to die”. She has power in her likeability, as exemplified by her successful appeal. Even Reverend Pétur Bjarnason, a religious man who should be unaffected by such charms, judges his parishioners by a stereotypical standard. He says of Lauga: “The younger daughter is quite a beauty...runs circles around her sister.” Thus, Kent shows that adherence to two-dimensional stereotypes for women - the mother, the daughter, the virgin, the victim - enables women to have power through their appeal to men. Meanwhile, Agnes who is not “dumb and pretty and young”, Agnes who defies categorisation, Agnes who “never stood a chance in the beginning” is shunned by society, leaving her with little power with which to defend her reputation and the narration of her story when it has already been defined for her.
In essence, while all women are limited by the patriarchal society, some are able to wield a greater power through social status and likeability determined by defined gender roles. Thus, it is a combination of Agnes’ gender, pauperdom, servant status and personal characteristics that leads to society’s desire to diminish any power she may hold. Burial Rites bears a strong undercurrent of feminism, as Hannah Kent encourages readers to sympathise with the hardships Agnes faced as a woman. Ultimately, Kent promotes reflection upon the disproportionate power of the sexes in today’s society, and its determination of women’s lives.
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Prompt: Women have no power in Burial Rites. The patriarchal society determines their lives. Discuss.
Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites is a story of protagonist Agnes Magnúsdóttir’s struggle against the unyielding nineteenth century Icelandic society, which restricts her as well as other women good, though try to only use these general statements when the prompt warrants them (i.e. saying something about the unyielding patriarchal nature of the period is fine for a prompt that's about those ideas, but would be a lot less relevant if the prompt didn't have that as a central focus.) Moreover, social class discrimination and personality pigeonholing this is a bit colloquial - what do you mean by this? further compound Agnes’ misfortune, whilst enabling the elevation of certain women into positions of relative power. Ultimately, Kent’s depiction of an unjust patriarchal society acts as an allegory for contemporary power imbalances good intro.
Gender inequality in Burial Rites is rampant. Tools of empowerment such as education, sexual liberation and positions of authority are restricted for women. While basic literacy appears commonplace, as shown by the parish testings, Agnes’ intelligence as a female is frowned upon would be good to compress these into one sentence; this is breaking up the flow a bit at the moment, and it's not ideal to have the first three sentences be about very general ideas - you want to get into textual details within the first two, ideally. From a young age, her natural curiosity is scorned, as her foster father Björn tells her that books are “not for your kind”. He “did not like that [she] knew the sagas better than him”. Then, as an older woman, her capacity is used as evidence of her guilt. Björn Blöndal exemplifies society’s fear of smart women when he tells Tóti: “like many older servant women she is practised in deception”. Society also seeks to suppress women’s power through sexual vilification. These short sentences are preventing the flow of ideas. Admittedly it's better to have short and clear ones than rambly unfocused ones, but simply coordinating or linking these sentences together would help immensely. While a man like Natan Ketilsson, who has had several partners, is described as merely “indiscreet”, women are labelled as “loose with their morals”, “loose skirts”, and “whore
However, even restricted as they are, women are not equal in their power. Some, like Margrét and Poet Rósa, have been able to elevate their position in society. Margrét is the wife of a District Officer. no need to explain summative details like this. While the family is poverty-stricken, they are still able to employ servants, thus giving Margrét a respected and authoritative position in the household. Meanwhile, Poet Rósa seems to escape the prejudice against promiscuous women through her celebrity status. She is victimised by Icelandic society despite being an adulterer. As Agnes argued, Natan “wasn't hers to love” not sure this is wholly relevant to what you're discussing at the moment. Class division is also apparent from the disgust District Commissioner Björn Blöndal shows the Kornsá household. Kent’s juxtaposition of Blöndal’s “more spacious dwelling...at Hvammur” with the “[cramped turf] where is this modification from? Are you just adding these words in? (sorry, don't have my copy of the text on me so I can't check, but is this an alteration of a quote or the addition of your own words?) hovels of peasants and farmers” emphasises the difference social standing can make to standard of living. Additionally, Agnes’ supposed father Magnús may have been maligned due to his low social standing as a servant, which afforded his reputation little protection, demonstrating that imbalances of power amongst men also exist because of classism yes, but the relevance of this is dubious. Try and take things back to the prompt at the end of each paragraph.
Similarly, conformity to society’s ideals may grant or diminish the power of a woman. Sigga is constantly victimised as people think her “too young and sweet to die”. She has power in her likeability, as exemplified by her successful appeal. Even Reverend Pétur Bjarnason, a religious man who should be unaffected by such charms, judges his parishioners by a stereotypical standard. He says of Lauga: “The younger daughter is quite a beauty...runs circles around her sister.” Thus, Kent shows that adherence to two-dimensional stereotypes for women - the mother, the daughter, the virgin, the victim try and be more succinct with your point here. This gets a little bit contradictory (i.e. the stereotype of being both a mother and a virgin?) - enables women to have power through their appeal to men excellent point. Meanwhile, Agnes who is not “dumb and pretty and young”, Agnes who defies categorisation, Agnes and (avoid fancy phrasing or overly creative sentence structures in T.R. - leave that stuff for Context pieces :) ) who “never stood a chance in the beginning” is shunned by society, leaving her with little power with which to defend her reputation and the narration of her story when it has already been defined for her. Therefore...?
In essence, while all women in the text are limited by the patriarchal society, some are able to wield a greater power through social status and likeability determined by defined gender roles. Thus, it is a combination of Agnes’ gender, pauperdom, servant status and personal characteristics that leads to society’s desire to diminish any power she may hold. Burial Rites bears a strong undercurrent of feminism, as Hannah Kent encourages readers to sympathise with the hardships Agnes faced as a woman bit odd to bring this up in the conclusion. Ultimately, Kent promotes reflection upon the disproportionate power of the sexes in today’s society, and its determination of women’s lives.
Overall, a well-structured piece with a lot of decent textual analysis.
But the main thing is SENTENCE STRUCTURE! Your ideas work great in isolation, but having such separate and disparate sentences impedes flow.
The writing becomes stilted. Ideas don't really connect. This happens in spite of the underlying similarity in ideas. The grammar just becomes the primary focus. It's harder to focus on what's being said. Consequently, your reader pays too much attention to rhythm rather than content. This is quite bad.
^See?
Try and connect sentences where you can as most of them do actually fit with one another. But at the moment, it's kind of like you've got a bunch of jigsaw pieces that you haven't quite joined up - I can see they're meant to go together, but unless you go to the effort of making those links, I can't give you marks for 'completing' the jigsaw.
Also, make sure your paragraph conclusions are taking things back to your contention and the prompt :)
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Thank you so much for the feedback Lauren! I was afraid no one knew Burial Rites :o
About the sentence structure, that was actually the result of me copping it for run-on sentences and excessive use of commas :( Any suggestions as to how I can improve my sentence flow without running into these problems? (Question directed to anyone who can help me)
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I'm not sure if this will help you, but don't go on from one point to the next immediately. I'll talk about the third paragraph because its my favourite.
However, even restricted as they are, women are not equal in their power. How are women not equal in their power? Physically? Mentally? Emotionally? Spiritually? Try a brief explanation of this to then lead into your example. Some, like Margrét and Poet Rósa, have been able to elevate their position in society. Margrét is the wife of a District Officer. While the family is poverty-stricken, they are still able to employ servants, thus giving Margrét a respected and authoritative position in the household. Here I would not start with your statement, what about "Margret, the wife of a District Officer, is in a respected and authoritative person in the household. The household, despite being stricken by poverty is still able to employ servants which gives Margret individuals to hold power over"? Or something along the lines of that.Meanwhile, I'm just not a fan of this, maybe try "similar to" or "opposed to" depending on how Rosa is similar or different to Margret.Poet Rósa seems to escape the prejudice against promiscuous women through her celebrity status. She is victimised by Icelandic society despite being an adulterer. How can she escape the prejudice against women but be victimised? victimize-single out for cruel or unjust treatment. "they are victimized by racism or discriminatory barriers"
How does Rosa escape? What is it about Rosa which is different to Agnes? Rosa wasn't particularly bright for a woman, she was born to a married couple who were not servants, she had a set of valued skills, she had friends, she wasn't a pauper, she didn't have a mother who was seemingly a terrible person? Any of these as a further explanation will do. [/color]As Agnes argued, Natan “wasn't hers to love”. Ok, but maybe not the right place, try just the quote at the end of the last sentence, "...being an adulterer where Natan 'wasn't hers to love'"
Class division is also apparent from the disgust District Commissioner Björn Blöndal shows the Kornsá household. This isn't about women and lack of power? Not worth including unless you are making a point about Blondal treating different women differently, such as the way he treats Steina compared to Lauga. Kent’s juxtaposition of Blöndal’s “more spacious dwelling...at Hvammur” with the “[cramped turf] hovels of peasants and farmers” emphasises emphasising the difference social standing can make to standard of living.Good :) Additionally, Agnes’ supposed father Magnús may have been maligned due to his low social standing as a servant, which afforded his reputation little protection, demonstrating that imbalances of power amongst men also exist because of classism.Not worth it, not directly related to the patriarchy, leave it out. Instead include a linking sentence which sums up the significance of women being not being equal, different level of oppression and then link back to your contention.
I hope some of that helps in ways in which you can increase the flow of your sentences and where little bits can be put in to join the paragraph :)