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Iop on the Glass Menagerie, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and a Doll's House

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Iop on the Glass Menagerie, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and a Doll's House
IOP on Glass, Eyes, and Doll’s Imagery; vivid descriptive language that appeals to one or more of the senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste). The first impression of a person that someone gets will always color the image of the person. Everything about how someone looks and acts creates how that person is viewed by others. But when this image is controlled by others or the person just isn’t strong enough to show their true self, their identity is twisted into something almost unrecognizable. Henrik Ibsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Tennessee Williams use the imagery connected with their lead female characters to show how society tries to put individuals down with false generalizations to hide women’s identities.

The authors use the imagery of clothing to address how family members try to mold the women below them in power to their image of their character. For the Sternberg's fancy dress ball Torvald want’s his wife Nora to dress up, “... and Torvald wants me to go as a Neapolitan fisher-girl,...” (Ibsen 37). The Neapolitan fisher girls are girls from Naples, Italy often thought of as possessing a very classic Grecian beauty. These fisher girls have been subjects of many works of art such as paintings and statues. With Torvald making Nora dress up as a Neapolitan fisher girl he is making her into something beautiful and to be appraised like a piece of art. This image of Nora being beautiful like a painting is Torvald’s way of putting Nora beneath him. He dresses her up and parade’s her among their friends while all the while taking ownership of her beauty. Nora doesn’t get to choose what she wears to this ball and she is not recorded saying a word to anyone at the party. Torvald even commands Nora to leave the party after she has finished her dance as he doesn’t want anyone being near her. Nora’s identity is lost in the imagery of her Neapolitan fisher-girl costume and Torvald’s control of her dress. By the same token Janie in Their Eyes Were

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