Arranged Marriages essays

Arranged Marriages essays Many people believe that arranged marriages offer protection and security to women. They say there is a great amount of pressure for women to love their spouse. However, women have been known to stay in abusive relationships for the sake of family pride and respect in society. In fact, traditions and family are two major reasons why arranged marriages are still used today. First of all, love marriages offer more independence and freedom compared to arranged marriages where the girl or boy is chosen by the parents so that there is pressure to conform to parental expectations like producing a male heir, taking part in family rituals and traditions, putting up with sister-in-laws, contributing to family expenses, and so on. One of the usual questions against an arranged marriage is: how can you marry somebody you dont know? Knowing somebody before marriage allows partners to have better respect and understanding for each others needs and desires. This way, they are better adjusted in the marriage when they finally take their wedding vows. Secondly, arranged marriages deprive individuals of their liberation and goes against freedom of speech. In India, where many arranged marriages happen, women have been known to stay in abusive relationships. You cant play music or watch TV, just imagine your freedom being taken away from you, because of your traditions that occur in your culture. This is upsetting to me. The fact that women lose such personal freedom sickens me. Every person, no matter what race, should be treated equally to others. Finally, why do people follow tradition? There are three major reasons why people would follow through with customs: family, society/peer pressure, and nurture. Fitting in with society is a major reason why families are so strict about arranged marriages. Families in certain communities are concerned about their social status ...

Definition and Examples of Belles-Lettres in English

Definition and Examples of Belles-Lettres in English In its broadest sense, the term belles-lettres (from the French, literally fine letters) can refer to any literary work. More particularly, the term is now generally applied (when used at all) to the lighter branches of literature (The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989). Until recently, belles-lettres has similarly been used as a synonym for the familiar essay. Adjective: belletristic. Pronunciation: bel-LETR(É™). From the Middle Ages until the late 19th century, notes William Covino, belles-lettres and rhetoric had been inseparable subjects, informed by the same critical and pedagogical lexicon (The Art of Wondering, 1988). Usage note: Though the noun belles-lettres has a plural ending, it can be used with either a singular or plural verb form. Examples and Observations The emergence of a literature of belles-lettres in Anglo-America reflected the success of the colonies: it meant there now existed a community of settlers who took settling in the New World enough for granted not to write about it. Instead of histories, they wrote essays in which style mattered as much as content and sometimes more . . ..Belles-lettres, a literary mode that originated in 17th-century France, signified writing in the style and service of cultivated society. The English mostly kept the French term but on occasion translated it as polite letters. Belle-lettres denotes a linguistic self-consciousness testifying to the superior education of both writer and reader, who come together more through literature than through life. Or rather, they meet in a world reconstructed by literature, for belles-lettres makes life literary, adding an aesthetic dimension to morality. (Myra Jehlen and Michael Warner, The English Literatures of America, 1500-1800. Routledge, 1997)Reporting tr ained me to give only the filtered truth, to discern the essence of the matter immediately and to write about it briefly. The pictorial and psychological material which remained within me I used for belles-lettres and poetry. (Russian author Vladimir Giliarovskii, quoted by Michael Pursglove in Encyclopaedia of the Essay, ed. by Tracy Chevalier. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997) Examples of Belle-Lettrists Often the essay is the favoured form of the belle-lettrist. The works of Max Beerbohm provide good examples. So do those of Aldous Huxley, many of whose collections of essays . . . are listed as belles-lettres. They are witty, elegant, urbane and learnedthe characteristics one would expect of belles-lettres. (J.A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 3rd ed. Basil Blackwell, 1991) Belletristic Style A piece of prose writing that is belletristic in style is characterized by a casual, yet polished and pointed, essayistic elegance. The belletristic is sometimes contrasted with the scholarly or academic: it is supposed to be free of the laborious, inert, jargon-ridden habits indulged by professors.Reflection on literature has most often been belletristic: practiced by authors themselves and (later) by journalists, outside academic institutions. Literary study, beginning with research on the classics, became a systematic academic discipline only in the 18th and 19th centuries. (David Mikics, A New Handbook of Literary Terms. Yale University Press, 2007) Oratory, Rhetoric, and Belles-Lettres in the 18th and 19th Centuries Cheap print literacy transformed the relations of rhetoric, composition, and literature. In his review of [Wilbur Samuel] Howells British Logic and Rhetoric, [Walter] Ong notes that by the close of the 18th century orality as a way of life in effect ended, and with it the old-time world of oratory, or, to give oratory its Greek name rhetoric (641). According to one of the literature professors who occupied the chair of rhetoric and belles lettres established for Hugh Blair, Blair was the first to recognize that Rhetoric in modern times really means Criticism (Saintsbury 463). Rhetoric and composition began to be subsumed into literary criticism at the same time that the modern sense of literature was emerging . . .. In the 18th century, literature was reconceived as literary work or production; the activity or profession of a man of letters, and it moved toward the modern restricted sense, applied to writing which has claim to consideration on the ground of beauty of form or emotiona l effect. . . . Ironically, composition was becoming subordinated to criticism, and literature was becoming narrowed to imaginative works oriented to aesthetic effects at the same time that authorship was actually expanding. (Thomas P. Miller, The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997) The Influential Theories of Hugh Blair [Throughout the 19th century, prescriptions for] fine writingwith their attendant critique of literary styleadvanced an influential theory of reading as well. The most influential exponent of this theory was [Scottish rhetorician] Hugh Blair, whose 1783 Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres was the text for generations of students. . . .Blair intended to teach college students the principles of expository writing and speaking and to guide their appreciation of good literature. Throughout the 48 lectures, he stresses the importance of a thorough knowledge of ones subject. He makes it clear that a stylistically deficient text reflects a writer who doesnt know what he thinks; anything less than a clear conception of ones subject guarantees defective work, so close is the connection between thoughts and the words in which they are clothed (I, 7). . . . In sum, Blair equates taste with the delighted perception of wholeness and posits such delight as a psychological given. He makes this remark by way of connecting taste with literary criticism and concludes that good criticism approves unity above all else.Blairs doctrine of perspicuity further connects least effort on the readers part with admirable writing. In Lecture 10 we are told that style discloses the writers manner of thinking and that perspicuous style is preferred because it reflects an unwavering point of view on the part of the author. (William A. Covino, The Art of Wondering: A Revisionist Return to the History of Rhetoric. Boynton/Cook, 1988)

Questions Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 9

Questions - Assignment Example Christianity triumphed in the Roman Empire following the unity that Christians exhibited. The religion remained open to new converts, thereby giving it the potential to grow and expand in numbers. At the same time, the influence of Christianity was significantly being felt across the empire and beyond. As a result, Christianity became integrated in the Roman Empire. Judaism, Greek philosophy, and Hellenistic mystery religions influenced early Christianity in one way or another (Marshall 132). They gave Christianity an aspect of organization, growth, and development, given the fact that they preceded the start of Christianity. The values they stood for also shaped Christianity. Morals that had been previously ignored by sects and prior religions were accounted for by Christianity. Christianity moved swiftly to embrace virtues across all its teachings, and so did Greco-Roman humanism. In some instances, flaws were overlooked in both contexts, although the extent to which the flaws were overlooked differed. On the same note, new ideas were influenced by just a few individuals who stood out over the rest. However, the practices of both Christianity and Greco-Roman humanism were based on different beliefs (Marshall

Analysis of Panic of 1837 Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Analysis of Panic of 1837 - Research Paper Example The 1837 panic did not result from a vacuum. A variety of factors aggravated the panic. The expansion of railroads and canals established large debts that would be incurred by the states. Imports exceeded exports leading to an unfavorable balance of trade. This resulted in a thrash of species, i.e. silver and gold, to the opposed paper currency. Several crop failures between 1835 and 1837 resulted in deficiencies in the budgets. The foremost cause of panic was the economic effect of land speculation. This was a moment of tentative mania. Following the demise of the United States’ bank, wild cats and state banks evolved hastily during the 1830s (Van 76). Money was easily obtained. Investors borrowed funds at a pace that could be termed as incredible. This did not only involve the western farmer but also manufacturers, traders, and merchants. The entire business community anticipated high returns if they spend their borrowed funds in speculative enterprises rather than refinanci ng novel ventures and settling out their debts. In the list of ventures, the leading would be investments in the readily available despicable land. The offices of land throughout the nation reported the sales as the speculators continued their investments for faster returns. In the years between 1834 and 1836, the sales had totaled approximately 37 million acres. In 1836, these sales were ten times more than they had been in 1830. The order of the day was the land office business. In an attempt to curb this tentative fever, president Jackson has issued the Specie Circular. This order authorized every land office to accept only silver or gold instead of rag money in disbursement for the public lands (Friedman and Schwartz 89). The state banks had little specie backing. The land sales slumped. Many speculators defaulted payments due to the little silver and gold available. The tentative mania continued across businesses despite the attempt of the federal government to halt or curb it. The speculators equipped with sufficient cash hired smart agents to enable them to appraise the most excellent lands. The superior speculators initiated illegal and unethical methods to get favor in their land quest. The Urban real estate was also involved in the mania as the values increased (Bourne 53). Valuation of real assets skyrocketed in New York above 50 percent within five years. The marine lands also tripled in value in a few years. Martin Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson. Jackson bequeathed a precarious economy to his successor due to the battle between him and Nicholas Biddle, the president of the U.S. Bank. This battle sternly damaged the U.S. economy. In a few months after Buren took office, the federal government operated on deficit due to the demise of the United States’ Bank that funded operations (Smith 96). These economic contractions established strapping repercussions that unfastened the path for the emergent of the Whig party as a tough alternative to the Democrats.  Ã‚  

Relationships with external care providers Essay Example for Free

Relationships with external care providers Essay Cultivating and nurturing relationships with outside care providers and researchers who are involved in a church’s social programs is easy to forget; it can fall by the wayside as a busy pastor tries to juggle many balls, and it is easy to delegate these programs to willing volunteers or outside help. However, study after study has emphasized the importance of pastoral involvement in social programs as a factor for their success. The congregation trusts the pastor implicitly: they trust his judgment and will follow his lead. A pastor who remains interested and enthusiastic about social programs, with as much active involvement as his time allows, will produce a congregation which is interested in and enthusiastic about its church’s social programs, willing to support them and utilize them if they are in need. The pastor can also help ensure success of a social program administered by outsiders by helping the outsiders to understand the cultural norms, traditions and history of the church. This is particularly important in a church where there are significant mental health programs in place; maintaining ties to the formal care system , and gaining the knowledge required to pre-screen congregants and help provide referrals to formal care services when required. CONCLUSION The Black church has developed a unique tradition of holistic care for its congregants. In an atmosphere of slavery, oppression, inequality and uneven or nonexistent access to formal services, the extended family and the care services provided by the church has been invaluable in preserving the physical and mental health of African-Americans. Today, this tradition continues with formalized social programs as well as informal care networks; areas such as community health care, mental health, youth services, and economic and literacy initiatives as well as traditional pastoral care continue to provide an essential resource to congregants who are still underserved and suffer disproportionately from social ills. In order to ensure that the congregants of his church have the best chance at health and secular success as well as spiritual well-being, the pastor of the Black church must determine the best social programs to emphasize, and facilitate the implementation of these programs to the best of his ability. REFERENCES Adkinson-Bradley, Carla, Johnson, Darrell, Sanders, JoAnn, Duncan, Lonnie, Holcomb- McCoy, Cheryl. â€Å"Forging a Collaborative Relationship Between the Black Church and the Counseling Profession. † Counseling and Values 49 (January 2005):147-154. Blank, Michael, Mahmood, Marcus, Fox, Jeanne, Guterbock, Thomas. â€Å"Alternative Mental Health Services: The Role of the Black Church in the South. † American Journal of Public Health. 92. 10 (October 2002): 1668-1672. Borg, Walter R. Educational Research. New York: David McKay Co. , 1963 Drake, St. Clair and Cayton, Horace. Black Metropolis: A Study of the Negro life in a Northern City. New York: Hartcourt, Brace World, 1970 Ferguson, Everett. â€Å"Factors leading to the selection and closure of the New Testament Canon Debate. †. in The Canon Debate. Eds. L. M. McDonald J. A. Sanders. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002. Ferman, Gerald S. , and Jack Levin. Social Science Research a Handbook for Students. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975. Isaac, Stephen. , and William B. Michael. Handbook in Research Evaluation. 2d Ed. San Diego, CA: Robert R. Knapp, 1988 Lewin, Kurt, â€Å"Action Research in Minority Problems,† Journal of Social Issues. 2, no. 4. 1948. Markens, Susan, Fox, Sarah A. , Taub, Bonnie, Gilbert, Mary Lou. â€Å"Role of Black Churches in Health Promotion Programs: Lessons from the Los Angeles Mammography Promotion in Churches Program. † May, 2002. 92(5):805-810. Miller, Kelly. Radicals and Conservatives and other essays on the Negro in AmericaNew York:Schocken Books, 1968.

Cratique on Losses Essay -- Essays Papers

Cratique on Losses The Poem â€Å"Losses† written by: Randall Jarrell, who was a poet, literary critic, and teacher, from New Orleans, served in the United States Air Force during World War Two. This helped Randall Receive most of his ideas and material for poems like this one. â€Å"It was not dying: everybody died. It was not dying: we had hied before In the routine crashes-and our fields Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks, And the rates rose, all because of us.† When people died in war it didn’t impact the majority of the people in the United States, they would just contact the papers or whoever sent the letters to there family and went on fighting the war. â€Å"We died on the wrong page of the almanac, Scattered on mountains fifty miles away; Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend, We blazed up on the lines we never saw.† When Randall referred to people dying on the wrong page of the almanac, this just meant that when people died they were marked down as a casualty of war and not of natural death. Scattered allover the land fitting with a friend or maybe someone they have just met and never saw before. The line they never saw before is the line between them and whom they were fighting. They couldn’t see this line but they new it was there and what was needed to be done to cross this line. The soldiers were not that old, at one point Randall says,† We died like aunts or pets or foreigners. (When we left high school nothing else had di...

Juliet is the Better Lover Essay

Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s greatest love story. With all the characters mixed up in love, hate, war and friendship, the bard’s tale spearheads a current debate on whether Romeo or Juliet was the better lover. This paper attempts to prove why Juliet is by far the better lover compared to Romeo. Experts have reason to believe that Romeo and Juliet were actually juveniles. Romeo was fourteen and Juliet was thirteen. This was evident in Elizabethan royalties where sons and daughters of the rich found themselves pre-arranged to sons and daughter of the same class. Girls were allowed to marry as young as 12. Between Romeo and Juliet, Juliet sacrificed more because she had to pursue her love to Romeo given the fact that she was a girl and was the younger of lover. Being a woman, much less a girl during the Elizabethan times meant following very strict rules. Breaking of these rules meant dishonor, disgrace and punishment from her parents. Although the Romeo deserves the same fate from his parents, the gender difference makes all the difference. â€Å"Elizabethan Women were totally dominated by the male members of their family. They were expected to instantly obey not only their father but also their brothers and any other male members of the family. The punishment for disobey was the whipping stool – the Elizabethan girls were beaten into submission and disobedience was seen as a crime against their religion. † (2005) Of the many definitions of love, Scott Peck describes it in his book The Road Less Traveled as; â€Å"The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. † (Peck, 1978) In this definition between Juliet and Romeo, it is Juliet who has extended herself. Trusting her life to the poison of the priest, she totally follows the plan hoping that through her sacrifice, Romeo and herself can live happily ever after. During those times when total faith is expected and practiced in society, the belief in earthly concoctions is almost equal to belief in witches’ ways. But because of her love for Romeo, Juliet allows her heartbeat to stop for three days choosing a life with her Romeo than a well-off life with her parents and Paris. Compared to the sacrifice of Romeo and Juliet, it is Juliet’s sacrifice that can be considered weighty because she became consistent with her selflessness for her lover. Romeo couldn’t sacrifice his vengeance for his friend who was killed by Juliet’s cousin which made the turns in the story. If love is self-sacrifice then Romeo is a better lover because he killed himself for the love of Juliet but love is not self-sacrifice per se. Love is the act of expanding oneself so that one could evolve from something to something better. To note, Juliet died twice for her Romeo. The first time was when she drank the poison and the second time was when she stabbed herself. So in the matter of the number of times the lovers tried to kill themselves for the love of the lover, it is still Juliet that outnumbered Romeo. She not only outnumbered Romeo in the time she killed herself but in the ways she did it. Romeo only used the poison once but Juliet used the poison and used the dagger to lead her to bleed to death upon her realization that her Romeo was dead. Juliet is the better lover because she was the first one who had to endure a lover’s loss. When Romeo was banished, she grieved for her Romeo more than for her cousin. If Romeo did not instantly grieve the death of his friend, maybe Juliet’s cousin would still be alive, but then again the greatest love story would not have been told. Romeo grieved for Juliet only upon knowing of her death, which made very dramatic and weighty due to his committing suicide. However, the drama did not climax at the end of his suicide but it further gained heights when Juliet took the dagger and impaled it into her chest. â€Å"Suicide is not something that happens for a simple reason. It is impossible to rap up in a nutshell the many reasons a person may want to die. The reasons for suicide range from critical injury and fatal illness to momentary sadness or a sudden and emotionally jarring shock. Some reasons may seem logical (if you are in pain and dying anyway, why prolong the suffering? ) while others seem ridiculous (a crush dumped on you in front of friends and you feel humiliated) but whatever the reason, to the person thinking of suicide, they are unbearable. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of suicides are the result of a complex combination of circumstances, emotions and a psyche in turmoil. † (Hardcastle, 2007) For Juliet, it was definitely a combination of perplexities during that very moment. But surely among them, she had the option of just continuing her life free of anything and everything. She could start anew because she was dead to her parents and families anyway. However, since she was also young and in shock about the death of her Romeo, the dagger was a quick solution to make her be eternally together with Romeo. Juliet definitely chose love. Physiologically, Juliet is more capable of being the better lover. At fourteen, boys will be boys as could be proven by the rage Romeo had when his enemy killed his friend. The clouding of the mind, never mind if he was about to kill his bride’s cousin but the rage of testosterone controlled Romeo. There are physiological differences between girls and boys that would prove their capability of experiencing true and mature love, as explained by Dr. Gurian, 1999. 1. Adolescent boys are four times more likely to be diagnosed as emotionally disturbed than adolescent girls. Given this, Romeo most likely had decided to kill himself but that decision may have been influenced with disturbed thoughts. 2. Adolescent males are four times as likely to commit suicide as adolescent females. Given this data, the suicide of Romeo would not count so much as Juliet’s suicide due to gender difference. 3. Adolescent males are routinely found to channel other primary feelings; hurt, pain, grief, into anger. Given this, there would be a possibility for Romeo to have committed suicide due to anger at the whole world than due to love for Juliet. 4. Adolescent boys are 15 times as likely as adolescent females to be victims of violent crime. Adolescent boys commit violent crime at a higher rate than adult offenders. Given this data, the suicide of Romeo does not count more in intensity than Juliet in terms of the violence confronting the adolescents. The shock, fear, courage and other emotions of putting the dagger towards her heart has more weight due to the gender difference. 5. Millions of adolescent boys experience post-traumatic stress due to family, cultural, and socio-economic situations. A post-traumatic boy is ten times more likely than his female peer to act out in a way that is dangerous to another person. Proving who the better lover is most difficult but like in any debate, the definitions must be stated clearly. For this paper, love has been defined as the act of self-sacrifice in the most mature circumstances. Love is an act where a person would consistently show in her actions and decisions that she is bound to another because she wishes the other person expansion of himself with her along with him. The sacrifice of Juliet comes early on in the play as can be taken from the excerpt; â€Å"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet. † The line illustrates that Juliet will decide not to be Capulet if Romeo do not relinquish his name. This decision also illustrates how Juliet was ready to sacrifice her whole identity just for the sake of her lover. Maybe, for Romeo to become the better lover, he should have been more mature than Juliet. Meantime, the bard’s tale is a unique example of truly big women’s capacity to love is. References: †¦. , 2007. Elizabethan Women. http://www. william-shakespeare. info/elizabethan-women. htm Peck, Scott. M. MD. 1978. The Road Less Travelled. P. 81. Touchstone New York Hardcastle, Mike. 2007. Teen Advice. http://teenadvice. about. com/mbiopage. htm Gurian, Michael. PhD. 1999. Ten things each of us should know about adolescent boys.