Essay Gender and Poverty- English Comp I Class

First Year Composition 1

October 11, 2015

Mulan

Written by Robert D. San Souci

When should women prove themselves to earn society’s respect?

Mulan is an example of bravery, empowering women by her performance and strength, pushing her limits into breaking the common social construction in her society. Battling the powerful authority that man has over woman in society by proving herself in ways that would be shocking and criticized by showing that she has a brain and speaks her mind.

She is a teenage Chinese girl, daughter of prosperous farmer Fa Zhou and because of her culture and tradition she has to start getting ready to meet with the village matchmaker. Mulan is kindhearted but very boyish who has little faith in becoming a great bride and housewife, but she follows through with the ritual of dressing up for the meeting without any other choice. During the Dynasty in ancient China, the legendary Great Wall fails to keep out Hun army and their ruthless leader, Shan Yu. The alarm is raised, and the Emperor entrusts General Li with mobilizing an army to protect China. The wise Emperor reminds the general that “one man can be the difference between victory and defeat”. The army select her father that is an older man with disabilities to join the army and feel that she needed to do something to protect him so he wouldn’t go to war and get killed since he was very sick and weak. She than takes upon herself to go in his place instead without anyone’s permission, making herself to look like a man and wearing her father’s combat outfit she takes off to the army camp. In that tradition, culture back in the day and still now days a woman that breaks the rules like Mulan did and overstep a man is critically punished and disowned, sometimes even sent to death role, in our current society this doesn’t really apply due to our cultural style of life however the message here shows that Mulan is trying to prove that even everything being against all she’s about to do, she...