Femininity And The Female Body Cultural Studies Essay

Femininity And The Female Body Cultural Studies Essay The stereotypical gender roles given by the society are female being feminine and male being masculine. The social expectations of male masculinity and female femininity are described by Mc Cubbin and Blum Dahl, former professors at the University of Minnesota, as Men should be brave, strong, ambitious and aggressive, while keeping their feelings under control; Women should be gentle, nurturant, passive, dependent, and expressive of their feelings (Mc Cubbin and Blum Dhal, 2005, 189). The term femininity involves a social process in which a female sex is recognized with certain traits and characteristics. These traits are marked by the society the moment she is born hence, creating a sexual difference of being a woman. The construction of gender identity by our surroundings if further described by Bornstein as, Then theres gender attribution, whereby we look at somebody and say, thats a man, or thats a woman. And this is important because the way we perceive anothers gender affects the way we relate to that person. (1995, p. 26). A woman meant to be feminine and the degree of femininity she possesses is evaluated by the way she dresses up, the way she speaks, the way she walks, her body language and most importantly her beauty. Paintings, fashion photographs, news photographs, pornographic images, magazines differ in the way they are utilized but, they all interconnect in the representation of femininity and the female sexuality. The photograph by a renowned photographer Horst P. Horst (See Appendix, Figure 1) will be analysed to discuss the feminist issue of measuring a females value through her appearance and the feminism, the feminist theories against it and also representing women as surreal objects. Horst P. Horst was a German American photographer who is famous for his fashion and women photography. The Mainbocher corset is regarded as one of his iconic photographs created for Vogue in1939 (Koetzel, 2003). The image consists of a woman sitting on a bench seen from behind. She is wearing a back lacing corset and looking down through her right arm. The whole image encompasses a feel of a power less woman. However, when seen in different angle, it can give a different meaning altogether. The corset, a piece of underwear, which has a long history connected to it had long been part of a female body. A female wore tight-laced corset in order to define her waist more blatantly. Fontanel depicted the transformation of a female body as a great silky insect with outspread wings (1997, p. 49). In addition to making the waist line more evident, corsets cause breasts to heave and make buttocks stand out creating a slender and seductive silhouette. Therefore, a female wears a gracious instrument of torture so as to transform into a desired shape. Moreover, in the nineteenth century the tightly laced corsets were outrageous and lunatic and caused hindrance in the movement. Dubios in his book An Examination of five plagues regarded corset as one of the plagues as it causes terrible physical damage; deformation, breast sagging etc, when worn for longer duration (Fontanel, 1997). Likewise, it lends a female her femininity but, not a healthy one. Feminists argue that the act of theorizing the body is especially pertinent to women (Carson, 2001, p. 117). Moreover, the bodies of women are controlled by men and are idealized for male consumption. Beauvoir (1997) describes woman as the Other and writes, No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature (p. 295). In other words, the culture has created an idealized female body image and is represented in Horsts image. On the contrary, the unravelled corset is recuperating the depiction of the female body from stereotyping. It is portraying womens; freedom from corset, freedom of movement and freedom from conventional gender role. The image also surfaces the notion of surrealism. The word surreal is defined as characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions. Surrealism was an artistic movement founded at the beginning of the 18th century. Andre Breton, the founder of the movement wrote a Surrealist Manifesto and described surrealism as, based in the belief in the superior reality of certain previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dreams, in the disinterested play of thought (Mikics, 2007, p. 292) . In other words, surrealism eradicates the borderline between real and unreal and conscious and unconscious. It is a new way of seeing the world. Hence, moving out of the ordinary and getting into the imaginary world. Surrealism: decontextualizing an everyday object and transposing it to an unusual or socially unacceptable place in order to highlight its status as sign. Women have always been the primary subjects of criticism and display and so they are in surrealism. Horsts image focus on one of the most persistent notion of surrealism that is fetishization. The corset is a fetish object creating erotic and provocative image, thus, arousing sexual desire for the object being displayed. According to Freud, it is as though the last impression before the uncanny and traumatic one is retained as a fetish pieces of underclothing which are so often chosen as a fetish, crystallize a moment of undressing, the last moment in which women could still be regarded as phallic (As cited in Wood, 2007, p.32). In other words, the corset accentuates female body parts and shapes her body into an hour glass figure. The less natural her appearance, the more seductive she [] looks (Fontanel, p. 52). This brings up the idea of transforming womens bodies for mens pleasure. In addition, the image also seizes the moment where women is submissive and have no control over m ens desires. Feminists are against the objectification of the female body and representing it as fetishised object as seen in the image. A more modern concept however, is that the corset allows a woman to express her sexual freedom. Women feel more sexy in a corset. It is no longer considered part of a Victorian era dress code, but simply as sexual leisure-wear. the female control over male desires, and the males control over the female body. Conclusion:othing is so lively, so lovely, as deathly pallor: Embracing the body, the corset frames a story to stir the emotions and set the imagination free.

Antiguan Paints: Lack of Communication and Poor Organizational Structur

As this case analysis was thoroughly investigated we have discovered that the company Antiguan paints had some major problems, after careful consideration and collaboration it has been established that the core problems which hinders the success of Antiguan Paints are as a result of the lack of organization structure and Communication. The Satellite problems stated within this case study are management, leadership, role conflict and role ambiguity. Organization structure can be defined as the process that determines the authority relationships amongst employees within an organization. Communication can be considered as a process or flow, it conveys a message and it is the transference of understanding and meaning, it is also physical as well as psychological. Summary of the Facts Antiguan Paints was formed in 1980 by a group of local businessmen who came together to take over a foreign owned company that had gone into voluntary liquidation. The company continued to make a loss after two years and as a result of the loss they hired a consultant, Mr. Stanley Edwards with whom they depended on to make major decisions within the organization. During Mr. Edwards’s stint at Antiguan Paints he was informed of various complaints against Mr. Hilary Frankly. It has been said that it was a case of no management rather than mismanagement seeing that Mr. Franklyn was not able to cope with people. The majority of employees came from the same neighborhood as Mr. Franklyn. Mr. Franklyn allowed the workers to lime and play cards during work hours, he allowed tardiness for example employees being late from which he did nothing. Mr. Franklyn took the responsibility and did all the work himself. Causes of the Problem Firstly,... ..., depress and exhibit dissatisfaction. Mr. Franklyn is constantly allowing his subordinates to exhibit behavior that they have learnt within their environment, this is as a result of majority of his subordinates living within the same neighborhood and he has allowed them to bring the same culture that they exhibit within their neighborhood into the organization. Hence his subordinates don’t have any respect for him and they will continue to do as they please once they know that at the end of the day Mr. Franklyn is going to do the work and also that he would not reprimand them for their behavior. The lack of a marketing department within the organization has also resulted in their problems; they took it upon themselves to unethically sell both their higher and lower level products at the same price however obtaining other supplies to label the lower quality paint.

Child Dieting and eating disorders :: essays research papers

Worried about her weight, Kristy swore off dessert and cut back on meal portions. As do many of us all the time. Eventually, she began skipping breakfast and was just nibbling at lunch and dinner. Within six months, she dropped 13 pounds. A weight-loss success story? Not at all. Kristy is only 10 years old. Her diet cost her 20 percent of her weight.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Children such as Kristy, a 4th-grader, are at the forefront of a disturbing new trend affecting the health of U.S. children: dieting. Around the country, children as young as 6 are shedding pounds, afraid of being fat and increasingly being treated for eating disorders that threaten their health and growth. With girls reaching puberty at younger ages, it has become natural for youngsters under age 10 to grow increasingly concerned about bodily changes and weight gain. Puberty is a time of rapid growth in a child's life. Girls and boys alike usually become curvier during this time. Females tend to gain weight on their hips, while males develop broad shoulders and backs. Therefore there is often an increase in overall body fat. A study by Steven R Thomsen in the Internalizing the Impossible Journal says that U.S. girls are showing signs of puberty at a younger age. A common medical view is that less than 1 percent of girls under 8 enter puberty. The study based on current data from 17,000 children found pubescent development in 7 percent of white girls and 27 percent of black girls between 7 and 8 years old. Between ages 8 and 9, signs were evident in 15 percent of whites and 48 percent of blacks. This is one of the reasons for an increase in the number of adolescent children on diets and with eating disorders. Another reason would be the increase of obesity in the United States. During the past 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the US. In 1991, four states had obesity rates of 15–19 percent and no states had rates at or above 20 percent. In 2003, 15 states had obesity prevalence rates of 15–19 percent; 31 states had rates of 20–24 percent; and 4 states had rates more than 25 percent. Not only are the obesity rates increasing, so is the knowledge of these statistics. More and more parents are putting their children on diets so they do not become a number in these statistics.

Organizational Development Final Project

In preparing his paper, you will examine how the theories and models presented In this course, as well as In the literature, can be utilized to support and facilitate a planned change effort. Your focus can be within a particular organizational setting of your choice, or an industry, or a type of organizations in general (for example, non-profit, civic, for- profit). The focus could be on a specific organizational change, for example, enhancing creativity and innovation. The action plan should be written as a serious proposal to executive management about a specific planned change effort. Discuss the following elements in your proposal.As you will see, you will need to have a working knowledge of this challenge, either from literature or company documents or your own observations. 2 Introduction. Brief description of the current organizational challenge. This proposal is from your perspective, as you have not yet engaged others in this process. That said, describe the challenge from your perspective and describe your role as related to the challenge. Current State. Description of current state to Include: o What has been done to correct or address the challenge? O What is the urgency to meet this challenge? O What are the consequences of not changing?Desired Future State. Description of the desired state you wish to see in terms of this current challenge to include the following elements. Keep in mind that this is still from your perspective, as you have not yet engaged others in the DO process. Please note that if you have engaged others in this discussion, such as the manager of the department, address that in the paper. O What is the ideal state of the organization in terms of this current challenge? O What behaviors will organizational members demonstrate? O What behaviors will organizational leaders demonstrate? O What will the â€Å"changed organization† feel like (culture)?What value will this planned change effort add to the organization? Action Plan. Steps you (and others) will take to make the desired state a reality. O Change Team: Who needs to be involved in this process to ensure its success? O Brief discussion of alignment of this proposed change with organization development values and assumptions. O Describe an overall approach (strategy) for creating and implementing the change, such as Action Research, Organization Change Process. O Describe a minimum of three methods or tools you will use to assess and facilitate this planned change effort (embedded within your strategy).Describe challenges and barriers you anticipate and how you will address them. This could include organizational readiness for change, expected resistance to change, organizational leadership. Benefits. Description of benefits of this proposal. O List 3 – 5 specific results you expect from successful implementation of the plan. Option 1 for Signature Assignment 61 5 Organization Development and Change Master Syllabus rev 01 . 13. 12 page 7 o Link back to consequences of not changing. O Describe success measures that will be used (evaluation). First Step. Summarize with one specific first step.You will draw from multiple sources (minimum 5) including Journal articles, books, and professional references such as associations and websites (this will help place your proposal within the framework of what others have done to address the challenge. ) You may also draw from class discussions and activities, as well as your own experience within organizational settings. Look for ways to integrate organization development with other leadership theories and concepts discussed in organizational leadership (drawing from other OLL, HRS, HA courses and/or 613 Dynamics of Organization Behavior). Page 8

Price Elasticity of Demand

The demand for corn as an ingredient for an alternative energy source has had a profound effect on its supply as a core food ingredient. So, what has been the effect on the supply of corn and its substitute such as the soybean? The answer can be found by examining the five demand determinants and five supply determinants to see which ones will shift demand and supply. The demand determinants are known as T-I-P-E-N, which stands for Taste of preference, Income, Price of complements and substitutes, Expectation of consumer, and Number of buyers in the market. The supply determinants are known as P-R-E-S-T, which stands for Producers (number of), Resource price, Expectation of business, Subsidies and taxes, and Technology. The farming industry has had to ramp up production of corn to satisfy the demand that was caused by the increase in the number of buyers. More buyers will generate more income, so most likely farmland will be used to produce more corn. The determinants of Number of buyers and Income are responsible for this demand shift. The land available for soybean crops will decrease, resulting in a reduction of supply. This supply shift is the result of Producers (number of). What will the effect of these shifts have on the price of corn oil? As the production of corn used for energy alternatives is increased, the available production for other corn products such as corn oil will obviously decrease. Less production will mean a decrease in corn oil supply. Because of a consistent demand for the product, the price will increase due to the lower supply. The demand determinant of Expectation and the supply determinant of Producers (number of) will govern this shift. The only way to modify the shift and keep prices from increasing would be to develop the supply determinant of Technology to overcome the decreased production capacity. In what way does the price elasticity of demand for corn oil influence the quantity-demanded of corn oil and the Total Revenue earned by sellers of corn oil? The answers can be found by referring to the characteristics of a typical demand curve. Price and quantity demanded move in opposite directions. When the quantity demanded falls, the price of a commodity such as corn oil will rise. When the quantity demanded increases, the price of the commodity will fall. The total revenue of sellers of corn oil will increase and decrease in correlation with the quantity demanded due to the supply determinant of Resource price and the demand determinant of Number of buyers. With the information presented thus far, it is interesting to note that a unique shift in the corn and corn substitute market will be occurring in the near future. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek article (McFeron, May 2011) the inventories of produced corn and soybean for this year will be much larger than expected. Therefore, the prices will fall as concerns of the public are eased. This is the shift of the demand determinant Expectation of consumer. Soybean inventories are also much larger for the coming year than expected. References McFeron, Whitney, (May 11, 2011) Bloomberg Businessweek,   Ã¢â‚¬Å"Corn, Wheat, Soybeans Drop as USDA Supply Outlook Tops Forecasts†, retrieved from: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-05-11/corn-wheat-soybeans-drop-as-usda-supply-outlook-tops-forecasts.html Price Elasticity of Demand Price Elasticity of Demand is used to measure the responsiveness of the quantity demanded to the change in price. It is measured by the percentage of change in quantity over the percent change in price [% ? in quantity demanded/ % ? in price]. Price elasticity of demand (PED) does not have any units as all the units cancel out while calculating it. Also,  ¦PED ¦ is usually negative because the value of quantity demanded will always be inverse to its price (i. e. when price gets high, quantity demanded decreases and vice versa).This is also a reason why  ¦PED ¦ is written as an absolute value. When the value of PED is more than 1, it is a relatively more elastic demand, when equals to 1, it is unit elastic and when less than 1, the demand becomes inelastic. The slope of a demand curve cannot indicate the PED because the slope and elasticity are two different concepts. Slope measures the steepness and flatness of the curve and give units of price and quantity at a point. On the other hand price elasticity of demand measures the responsiveness of quantity to the changes in price.In a demand curve, the slope decreases by a constant unit while In PED, elasticity is different at each point. As shown in the picture above, PED changes at every point. At the change in quantity from 2. 5 to 3, and change in price from 15 to 14, the PED is  ¦2. 64 ¦ while at the change in quantity from 7 to 7. 5, and change in price from 6 to 5, the PED is  ¦0. 38 ¦. On the other hand, while seeing the slope of the line, it is changing by 2 units throughout.This shows that while the slope remains constant, the elasticity keeps varying on the curve. This is also one of the reasons that elasticity is relatively more elastic on the upper portion of the demand curve compared to the lower portion of the curve which gradually gets perfectly inelastic when the demand curve intersects the horizontal axis. Thus, the frequent change in elasticity at every point and the slope being c onstant determines that the slope of the demand curve cannot indicate Price Elasticity of Demand.

Essay on dickin’s journey to niagra Essay

Dickens felt transported by the sublimity of Niagara Falls when he visited it on his 1842 journey to the United States and Canada. In a letter to Forster (26 April 1842), he said of Horseshoe Falls (the Canadian side of Niagara) that â€Å"It would be hard for a man to stand nearer God than he does there† (Letters 3: 210). Dickens proceeds to effuse over the beauty and majesty of the falls in a passage that forms the chief part of his description of his experience in American Notes, although the letter actually offers the superior account: There was a bright rainbow at my feet; and from that I looked up to –great Heaven! To what a fall of bright green water! The broad, deep, mighty stream seems to die in the act of falling; and, from its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and mist which is never laid, and has been haunting this place with the same dread solemnity–perhaps from the creation of the world (Letters 3: 210-11). In this essay, I analyze Dickens’s reaction to Niagara Falls in the context of other British travel narratives from the previous decade, and examine how Niagara speaks to Dickens of life after death (as he describes it above, the falls die and then rise again in ghostly mist). His profound experience at Niagara Falls shaped his treatment of climactic, transcendent moments in subsequent novels; in particular, from this point on Dickens repeatedly uses water imagery (especially seas, swamps and rivers) as symbols of death, rebirth, transformation and of being disturbed with â€Å"the joy of elevated thoughts,† to use Wordsworth’s phrase in â€Å"Tintern Abbey.† But Dickens’s reaction was more than just a typical Romantic experience, similar to those of other nineteenth-century British travelers; it was in part shaped by his overall disappointment in America and his relief to be on English ground again. Niagara Falls fulfills several definitions of the sublime. Philosophers since Longinus have used the term â€Å"sublime† to refer to experiences that go beyond the everyday, that inspire awe, that involve a sense of grandeur, that elevate one’s thoughts and feelings and that exceed the capacity of human descriptive powers. Longinus, of course, used the term in reference to rhetoric, but later philosophers found many of the same qualities in sublime scenes of nature. Edmund Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) emphasized the role of terror in the sublime, for only the presence of fear, he felt, could account for the complete overwhelming of all other thoughts and sensations in experiencing sublime scenes in nature. Alexander Gerard in â€Å"An Essay on Taste† (1759) stressed the importance of physical immensity in the experience of the sublime: â€Å"When a large object is presented, the mind expands itself to the extent of that object, and is filled with one grand sensation, which totally possessing it, composes it into a solemn sedateness and strikes it with deep silent wonder and admiration† (11). Similarly, the Romantics, and particularly Wordsworth, felt that natural scenes that impress the viewer with their immensity and particularly their power, such as mountains or waterfalls, create sublime sensations that feed the soul and the poetic imagination both at the moment and in the future by the aid of imagination and memory. Niagara Falls embodies all the qualities traditionally associated with the sublime–its immensity, power, and beauty overawe viewers, reminding them, particularly in nineteenth-century accounts, of the presence of other awe-inspiring forces such as death and God. Niagara Falls, oddly enough, fits even the scientific definition of sublime, which is â€Å"to cause to pass from solid to the vapor state by heating and againcondense to solid form.† Not by heating but by motion and pressure the falls turn water into vapor, the ever present mist that surrounds them, and the vapor eventually returns again to the falls, a cycle that led Dickens to use death/resurrection imagery in the description quoted above (i.e. â€Å"The broad, deep, mighty stream seems to die in the act of falling; and, from its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and mist which is never laid†). It is the never-ending presence of great volumes of spray that leads to the ever-present rainbows in descriptions and paintings of the falls, such as Frederic Church’s famous 1857 painting, â€Å"Niagara.† The rainbows naturally heighten the spiritual effect of the falls as they are the perfect image of a bridge between earth and heaven and are the symbol of God’s covenant with man in the flood story in Genesis. They are also a striking conjunction of energy (light) and matter (water particles) and as  such are a powerful metaphor for the presence of the divine on earth. It is the rainbows that seem to move Dickens the most on his second visit to Niagara in 1868, a quarter of a century after his first visit, a trip he took purely for pleasure. As he wrote to Forster on March 16, 1868: The majestic valley below the Falls, so seen through the vast cloud of spray, was made of rainbow. The high banks, the riven rocks, the forests, the bridge, the buildings, the air, the sky, were all made of rainbow. Nothing in Turner’s finest water-colour drawings, done in his greatest day, is so ethereal, so imaginative, so gorgeous in colour, as what I then beheld. I seemed to be lifted from the earth and to be looking into Heaven. What I once said to you, as I witnessed the scene five and twenty years ago, all came back at this most affecting and sublime sight (Letters 12: 75). Dickens was certainly not the only English tourist to be awed by Niagara Falls. In fact, his visit there, and even his mystical effusions about it, could be considered customary and necessary elements of any narrative of travels through America and Canada. As Amanda Claybaugh states in The Novel of Purpose: Literature and Social Reform in the Anglo-American World, â€Å"the conventional itinerary included the †¦ [main] natural sites (the Mississippi River, the prairies of the West, and above all else, Niagara Falls)† (71-2). In Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), Frances Trollope refers to all the chief elements of the sublime in her description of Niagara Falls, repeatedly expressing that they defy description and that in viewing them â€Å"wonder, terror, and delight† overwhelmed her (337). â€Å"I wept with a strange mixture of pleasure and of pain,† she writes, â€Å"and certainly was, for some time, too violently affected†¦. to be capable of much pleasure; but when this emotion of the senses subsided †¦ my enjoyment was very great indeed.† She notes the mystical effect of the falls as well: â€Å"It has to me something beyond its vastness,† over which â€Å"a shadowy mystery hangs,† which â€Å"neither the eye nor even the imagination can penetrate† (337). Harriet Martineau visited the falls in 1834 and, like Trollope and Dickens, associated them with the mystical: â€Å"to offer an idea of Niagara by writing of hues and dimensions is much like representing the kingdom of  Heaven by images of jasper and topazes† (96). On her second visit to the falls months later, Martineau descended the stairs behind the falls and wrote: From the moment that I perceived that we were actually behind the cataract, and not in a mere cloud of spray, the enjoyment was intense. I not only saw the watery curtain before me like tempest-driven snow, but by momentary glances could see the crystal roof of this most wonderful of Nature’s palaces (104). Perhaps the oddest narrative of a British visit to Niagara Falls comes from Captain Frederick Marryat, who wrote about his 1837 trip to the falls in his Diary in America, published in 1839: As I stood on the brink above the falls, continuing for a considerable time to watch the great mass of water tumbling, dancing, capering, and rushing wildly along †¦ I could not help wishing that I too had been made of such stuff as would have enabled me to have joined it; with it to have rushed innocuously down the precipice; to have rolled uninjured into the deep unfathomable gulf below (111). The longer he stood there the more the urge to jump into the falls rose in him until he had to pull himself away, an experience that testifies to the terror that Burke argued was inherent in the sublime, a terror that Trollope experienced but Dickens denied feeling in viewing the falls. As it turns out, Marryat might have done himself a favor to jump, for as Jules Zanger, the editor of his diary, asserts, â€Å"of all the literary lions who have made their progress through †¦ America †¦ the most tactless and blundering was Captain Frederick Marryat.† Zanger points out that Marryat began his journey as an â€Å"honored guest,† but before he concluded his trip, â€Å"he had been threatened by a lynch mob, had watched his books burned in public bonfires, and †¦ had seen himself hung in effigy [twice] by angry crowds† (9). He had a habit, it seems, of regularly saying the wrong thing, a habit that at times carries over into his travel narrative, as in a bizarre passage where he wishes he could transport Niagara Falls to Italy and pour them down Mount Vesuvius and thereby â€Å"create the largest steamboiler that ever entered into the imagination of man† (111). Later, Marryat counters the oddness of this image with the more conventional statement that the voice of Niagara was the  voice of the Almighty, and that a Presbyterian minister he heard nearby should have preached on its message instead of on the uninspiring and hackneyed subject of temperance (112). These were the American journeys and narratives most in the British public eye when Dickens embarked on his trip to North America. In this context, his ecstatic description of the falls may seem rather ordinary. Romanticism was still the dominant cultural influence at the time, so one was expected to have Romantic effusions about iconic Romantic scenes. (1) But while the journey to the falls may have become customary, and the experiences of the sublime similar in most narratives, yet the effect was still profound for Dickens, as one can see particularly in the letters where he goes beyond the vague, mystical language often associated with the sublime and makes specific personal connections with the falls. As I have pointed out above, the falls made Dickens think almost immediately of the cycle of death and resurrection with the falls descending into the abyss and rising again in spray. But even more specifically they reminded him of his beloved sister-in-law Mary who had died suddenly seven years earlier. As he wrote to Forster from Niagara, â€Å"what would I give if the dear girl whose ashes lie in Kensal-green, had lived to come so far along with us.† But then he takes back the wish because he decides that she must have â€Å"been here many times, I doubt not, since her sweet face faded from my earthly sight† (Letters 3: 211). His associating the falls with Mary’s death and her continuing spiritual presence on earth allows Dickens to make the falls his own, at least in part. They become linked to a personal family tragedy and offer a consolation for her loss. But Dickens makes another personal connection with the falls. In letters written from Niagara, he repeatedly adds to the date the phrase â€Å"Niagara Falls (Upon the English Side)† with â€Å"English† underscored with as many as ten dashes. He only does this in letters to his English friends, of course–including Forster, Mitton and Beard, as if to express a sense of relief. After Dickens’s well-known disappointments with Americans–his exasperation with their greed, their spitting, their lack of respect for privacy and copyright laws, not to mention their slavery–topics covered  fully in American Notes and in letters–being among English on English turf must have been a welcome experience. Writing to Forster on 26 April 1842, Dickens mentions that there were two English officers with them as they first approached the falls, and he exclaims â€Å"ah! What gentlemen, what noblemen of nature they seemed,† implying that he had not seen much of their kind in the States (Letters 3: 210). In emphasizing the English side of the falls, Dickens once again seems to imagine a personal connection to something that transcends the personal. He tries to come to terms with the sublimity of the falls, reduce them at least in part to his level, make them part of himself, part of his family story, part of his Englishness. In this way he can own his experience of the falls, anchor it mentally and emotionally and then use it later in his fiction, as he indeed does. His account of the falls in American Notes lacks some of the interest of his descriptions in letters precisely because he leaves out the personal connections he makes in correspondence, no doubt deeming them inappropriate for the public narrative. Having made these personal associations between the falls and the death and spiritual presence of Mary and between the sublime and the English, it is not surprising, then, that Dickens would work the falls and other powerful images of water into his portrayals of death, transformations, and transcendent moments in his subsequent novels. In order to gauge the change we must first look at the imagery Dickens used for such moments in his earlier novels. In the novels Dickens published before visiting Niagara in 1842, he frequently gestured toward transcendence in death scenes and in concluding chapters, but the imagery he used tends to center on sunny little communities, flowers and other greenery, angels, and churches. Consider Mr. Pickwick’s cheery rural community at the end of his tale–not transcendent, perhaps, but in the bond between Pickwick and Sam which â€Å"nothing but death will sever† certainly leaning to the legendary (ch. 57). Or consider the â€Å"gentle light† that Rose Maylie sheds as she stands with Oliver by Agnes’s tomb in Oliver Twist (both characters are suffused with light in Cruikshank’s last illustration). Nicholas Nickleby ends with a summery community of Nicklebys and friends with their children strewing flowers on Smike’s grave–Phiz nicely captures the feeling of summer and sunshine in  his final illustration (Figure 1). As Dickens describes the scene: The grass was green above the dead boy’s grave, and trodden by feet so small and light, that not a daisy drooped its head beneath their pressure. Through all the spring and summer-time, garlands of fresh flowers wreathed by infant hands rested upon the stone, and when the children came to change them lest they should wither and be pleasant to him no longer, their eyes filled with tears, and they spoke low and softly of their poor dead cousin† (ch. 64). Barr, Alan P. â€Å"Mourning Becomes David: Loss and the Victorian Restoration of Young Copperfield.† Dickens Quarterly 24 (June 2007): 63-77. Berard, Jane. Dickens and Landscape Discourse. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. Claybaugh, Amanda. The Novel of Purpose: Literature and Social Reform in the Anglo-American World. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2007. Dickens, Charles. The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens. Vols. 3, 12. Ed. Madeline House, et al. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974-2002. Gerard, Alexander. â€Å"An Essay on Taste.† Intro. Walter J. Hipple. 3rd ed. 1780. Gainesville: U of Florida P, 1963. Marryat, Captain Frederck. Diary in America. Ed. by Jules Zanger. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1960. Martineau, Harriet. Retrospect of Western Travel. Vol. 1. 1838. New York: Johnson, 1968. Metz, Nancy Aycock. The Companion to Martin Chuzzlewit. Robertsbridge: Helm Information, 2001. Page, Norman. Ed. and Intro. The Old Curiosity Shop. NY: Penguin, 2000. Poole, Adrian. Ed. and Intro. Our Mutual Friend. NY: Penguin, 1997. Slater, Michael. Ed. Dickens’ Journalism. Dent Uniform Edition. Vol. 2. London: J. M. Dent, 1997. Trollope, Frances. Domestic Manners of the Americans. London: Routledge, 1927. NATALIE MCKNIGHT (Boston University) NOTES (1) Jane Berard sees Dickens’s description of the falls simply as customary, but pays scant attention to his descriptions in letters (51). (2) Recent examples include Michelle Allen’s Cleansing the City: Sanitary Geographies in Victorian London, Athens, OH: U of Ohio P, 2007; Leon Litvack’s â€Å"Images of the River in Our Mutual Friend,† Dickens Quarterly 20.1 (2003): 34-55; and Pamela Gilbert’s â€Å"Medical Mapping: The Thames, the Body, and Our Mutual Friend,† in Filth, Dirt, Disgust and Modern Life, ed. by William A. Cohen and Ryan Johnson, Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2005, 78-102. (3) â€Å"Transmutation of Species,† AYR (9 March 1861), 519-21. Dickens was aware of other theories related to evolution as well, and refers to â€Å"the Monboddo doctrine †¦ of the human race having once been monkeys† in the first chapter of Martin Chuzzlewit (Metz 37-9) and to Robert Chambers’s Vestiges (1844) in a review of Robert Hunt’s Poetry of Science published in The Examiner in 1848 (Slater 2: 129-34). In addition, Household Words included F. T. Buckland’s â€Å"Old Bones,† (24 Sept. 1853) and Henry Morley’s â€Å"Our Phantom Ship on an Antediluvian Cruise† (16 Aug. 1851). See also Natalie McKnight, â€Å"Dickens and Darwin: A Rhetoric of Pets,† The Dickensian 102 (2006), 131-43. COPYRIGHT 2009 Dickens Society of America No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder. Copyright 2009 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. Please bookmark with social media, your votes are noticed and appreciated:

Behavior: Sociology and Psychological Core Essay

1. How is Unilever applying its understanding of internal consumer processes in the psychological core to market its products? One company that has maintained its dominance over time is Unilever. The company make used of their understanding of internal processes which are a series of changes that occur within the individual, which includes the psychological processes: motivation, perception, attitude and knowledge. They market their products to get more customers by explaining to them how and why they should use a product in order to make their lives better and also to make them feeling good about doing that action and this one, is a part of knowledge in the psychological core. They also try to make the use of the product in easier way and to fit with the environmental issues which is a part of attitude in the psychological core. 2. Which of the four external processes in the consumer’s culture do you think have been the most important to the success of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty? Why? The four external processes in the consumer’s culture are religion, ethnicity, reference groups, and social class. For me, the most important external process in the consumer’s culture to the success of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty is the ethnicity. It is the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition. Dove’s Campaign aims to touch customers by telling them that there is no norms for beauty, every women is beautiful with her own features. They set up this campaign without any categories of women in order to reach women of all ages, races, or sizes. The idea was to target all kinds of consumers as possible. The campaign worked out very well because consumers recognized themselves in the ads. 3. Do you agree with Unilever’s decision to link its brands with efforts to encourage healthy and environmentally sustainability behaviors? Explain your answer. Definitely, yes I agree with Unilever’s decision to link its brands with efforts to encourage healthy and environmentally sustainability behavior because it is another way to catch more customers and spread a good image of the organization. It also shows that Unilever really care with the customer’s health. Unilever not just only sell products but they also assured that the consumers will fit and satisfied with their products. And it will be a best way for them to keep their customers, as well as to build loyalty.