Life Of Man Research Articles

Father's Role in Preconception Health.

As part of the federal multi-agency conference on Paternal Involvement in Pregnancy Outcomes, the existing Fatherhood paradigm was expanded to include a new focus on Men's Preconception Health. This concept grew out of the women's preconception health movement and the maternal and child health (MCH) life course perspective, as well as pioneering research from the child development, public health data and family planning fields. It encourages a new examination of how men's preconception health impacts both reproductive outcomes and men's own subsequent health and development. This essay introduces the concept of men's preconception health and health care; examines its historical development; notes the challenges of its inclusion into fatherhood and reproductive health programs; and situates it within a longer men's reproductive health life course. We then briefly explore six ways men's preconception health and health care can have positive direct and indirect impacts-planned and wanted pregnancies (family planning); enhanced paternal biologic and genetic contributions; improved reproductive health biology for women; improved reproductive health practices and outcomes for women; improved capacity for parenthood and fatherhood (psychological development); and enhanced male health through access to primary health care. Research on men's preconception health and health care is very limited and siloed. We propose a research agenda to advance this topic in three broad domains: increasing the basic epidemiology and risk factor knowledge base; implementing and evaluating men's preconception health/fatherhood interventions (addressing clinical health care, psychological resiliency/maturation, and social determinants of health); and fostering more fatherhood health policy and advocacy research.

Fathers of adults who have a learning disability: Roles, needs and concerns

Accessible summary This study asked fathers of adults who have a learning disability about their experiences, what helps them and any worries they may have. Fathers reported different experiences of being a father to an adult with a learning disability and talked about things that were helpful, such as their wives, grandparents, having information and hobbies. Fathers were worried about the person who has a learning disability in the future. Fathers can be important in supporting people who have a learning disability throughout their lives. AbstractBackgroundThere is little research that specifically relates to fathers of adults with a learning disability despite the social expectation that fathers will provide a supportive role over the lifespan.MethodsSemi‐structured interviews were carried out with seven fathers of adults with a learning disability to explore their roles, needs and concerns. Data were analysed using a framework associated with interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).ResultsThemes arising demonstrate that fathers were shocked at the diagnosis of learning disability but usually reported adaptation over time. The impact of learning disability upon men's lives, their perception of their adult child and the roles they assumed were varied. Fathers valued support from wives and grandparents, having knowledge and interests and work‐type roles. All fathers were concerned about the future yet comprehensive futures planning was lacking. Some fathers reported difficulties in being emotionally open, and referred to societal stereotypes. Fathers valued positive support from service providers; however, this relationship was often in conflict.ConclusionAlthough mothers are often the main carers for adults with a learning disability, fathers can make a significant contribution. The findings presented here support the results of previous studies regarding paternal response to learning disability and varied impact upon men's lives. Identified support strategies include leisure interests, volunteer/work roles, having information and support from wives and grandparents. Ongoing concerns incorporate the future and ambivalent relationships with service providers, which could have a negative impact upon the individual who has a learning disability.

The Effect of Nutrition Therapy and Exercise on Cancer-Related Fatigue and Quality of Life in Men with Prostate Cancer: A Systematic Review

Background: Improvements in diet and/or exercise are often advocated during prostate cancer treatment, yet the efficacy of, and optimal nutrition and exercise prescription for managing cancer-related fatigue and quality of life remains elusive. The aim of this study is to systematically review the effects of nutrition and/or exercise on cancer-related fatigue and/or quality of life. Methods: A literature search was conducted in six electronic databases. The Delphi quality assessment list was used to evaluate the methodological quality of the literature. The study characteristics and results were summarized in accordance with the review’s Population, Intervention, Control, Outcome (PICO) criteria. Results: A total of 20 articles (one diet only, two combined diet and exercise, and seventeen exercise only studies) were included in the review. Soy supplementation improved quality of life, but resulted in several adverse effects. Prescribing healthy eating guidelines with combined resistance training and aerobic exercise improved cancer-related fatigue, yet its effect on quality of life was inconclusive. Combined resistance training with aerobic exercise showed improvements in cancer-related fatigue and quality of life. In isolation, resistance training appears to be more effective in improving cancer-related fatigue and quality of life than aerobic exercise. Studies that utilised an exercise professional to supervise the exercise sessions were more likely to report improvements in both cancer-related fatigue and quality of life than those prescribing unsupervised or partially supervised sessions. Neither exercise frequency nor duration appeared to influence cancer-related fatigue or quality of life, with further research required to explore the potential dose-response effect of exercise intensity. Conclusion: Supervised moderate-hard resistance training with or without moderate-vigorous aerobic exercise appears to improve cancer-related fatigue and quality of life. Targeted physiological pathways suggest dietary intervention may alleviate cancer-related fatigue and improve quality of life, however the efficacy of nutrition management with or without exercise prescription requires further exploration.

Human Papillomavirus-Related Cancer Surveillance, Prevention, and Screening Among Transgender Men and Women: Neglected Populations at High Risk.

Researchers and healthcare surveillance systems must clearly disaggregate data for transgender men and women from data for cisgender men and women to identify population-level health disparities and give every person an opportunity for cancer prevention. The limited human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine recommendations for transgender men and women may be due to the scant literature on cancer prevalence coupled with poor understanding of HPV risks for these populations. Comprehensive cancer screening and prevention initiatives centered on relevant anatomy and sexual risk behaviors that are inclusive of transgender men and women are needed. Moreover, we need specific research to understand the impact of HPV and associated cancers on both transgender men's and women's lives.

Why did life expectancy decline in the United States in 2015? A gender-specific analysis

In 2015, age-adjusted mortality rates increased for 8 of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States. As a result, life expectancy declined by 0.17 years for both women and men. The decline could be just an anomaly, or it could represent the start of a new trend of stagnation or decline in life expectancy, as some scholars have warned. The first step is to determine the sources of the decline. In this study we analyze the contribution of specific causes of death to the decline in men's versus women's life expectancy, as well as the mechanisms that generated the decline. With regard to mechanisms, we examine whether the decline in life expectancy resulted from reductions in the average age at death for most causes of death, or from a greater risk of dying of causes that disproportionately affect the young and middle-aged. Using CDC mortality data, we construct life tables for men and women separately, based on 20 different underlying causes of death. We find that men's reduction in life expectancy was attributable primarily to changes in midlife mortality, with a greater risk of dying of causes such as accidental poisoning or homicide. The reduction in women's life expectancy, on the other hand, was attributable primarily to changes in old-age mortality, where the mean age at death for most causes (such as heart disease and mental illnesses) was lower in 2015 than it was in 2014. These gender-specific mechanisms that contributed to the decline in life expectancy are common to the major racial/ethnic groups, but the magnitude of the decline differs greatly across racial/ethnic groups. Future research can use the tools provided here to investigate in more detail how the gender-specific mechanisms of the 2015 decline differ by race.

Long-Term Testosterone Therapy Improves Urinary and Sexual Function, and Quality of Life in Men with Hypogonadism: Results from a Propensity Matched Subgroup of a Controlled Registry Study.

We investigated the effects of long-term testosterone therapy on urinary and sexual function, and quality of life in hypogonadal men. We performed an observational, prospective, cumulative registry study in 656 men with a mean ± SD age of 60.7 ± 7.2 years who had total testosterone 12.1 nmol/l or less and symptoms of hypogonadism. In the testosterone treated group 360 men received parenteral testosterone undecanoate 1,000 mg/12 weeks for up to 10 years. The 296 men who elected against testosterone therapy served as controls. From each group 82 patients were propensity matched by age, waist circumference and body mass index, resulting in 82 matched pairs of 164 men. Data were analyzed and estimated differences between the groups were adjusted for components of metabolic syndrome and quality of life. We found significant decreases in I-PSS (International Prostate Symptom Score) and post-void bladder volume (each p <0.0001) in patients receiving testosterone therapy but not in the untreated group. We recorded a decrease in AMS (Aging Males' Symptoms Scale) in the testosterone treated group but not in the untreated group (p <0.0001). We also recorded significant improvement in the IIEF-EF (International Index of Erectile Function-Erectile Function) domain in the testosterone treated group but not in the untreated group (p <0.0001). The improvement was maintained throughout followup. Long-term testosterone therapy in hypogonadal men resulted in significant improvements in urinary and sexual function, and in quality of life. In untreated hypogonadal men voiding and erectile function deteriorated with continued followup.

The End of Bare Life?

Since Giorgio Agamben's influential critique of the liberal-democratic state, scholars have offered a more fulsome engagement with the ways that this formation extends Foucauldian biopolitical discourses by foregrounding the emergence of biological existence as “the new political subject.” InHomo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare LifeAgamben argues that it is impossible to understand the development, vocation, and contradictions of the modern state “if one forgets that what lies at its basis is not man as a free and conscious political subject, but, above all, man's bare life, the simple birth that as such is, in the passage from subject to citizen, invested in the principle of sovereignty.” Bare or pure life is the human as animal in nature without political definition or mediation. It is the isolation of the metaphysical from the various forms of concrete life that defines and conditions Western politics. Projects that imagine political communities as grounded in belonging or endeavor to found political rights in the citizen are in vain. The figure of thehomo sacer – the “sacred man” who “may be killed and yet not sacrificed” – is one of the most distinctive elements of Agamben's project of redefining sovereignty in biopolitical terms. Contra notions of collective political sovereignty as the basis of state politics, the figure of thehomo sacerattends to a more authoritarian model that pivots on the role of state authorities in simultaneously conditioning and dis/avowing the movement from bare life to rights-bearing subject.

Differend in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

Through the process of passage of man's life, there are some conditions and situations wherein he remains silent and he cannot do anything in the response of others. A postmodern French thinker, Jean-François Lyotard articulates that man is forced to be silent in confronting to some situations and conditions. Lyotard states that man is incapable of representing and expressing his own inner emotions and thoughts in some conditions. This situation of unrepresentability and unanswerability is named differend by Lyotard. Due to Lyotard's differend, through reading Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the reader can notice that there are some conditions in which some characters are unable to represent and state their own feelings and ideas. In this sense, some black people or characters of the novel are surrounded by the conditions that they cannot utter themselves when they face others, especially white people.

Henry Mayhew and the Street Traders of Victorian London — A Cultural Exchange with Material Consequences

Generally, the early Victorian bourgeoisie imagined the poorer districts of London as a hotbed of ‘filth’ and anarchy. However, there are exceptions, such as the journalist Henry Mayhew, who wrote a report on London Labour and the London Poor (1851–52). In his work Mayhew frequently conveys the impression that poor Londoners lived in several sophisticated cultures of their own design. How are we to read this text? Some conceive of it as part of a bourgeois discourse. Others claim that Mayhew shows the poor man's life as it actually was. In accordance with newer approaches in Mayhew studies, I want to suggest a third reading, regarding ‘London Labour’ as part of a complex cultural exchange. The parties involved (i.e. Mayhew and his poor informants) evaluated each other, and in doing so they rethought and redefined their images of Self and Other in sophisticated ways. The Victorian press, for example, reports on a group of street traders who met several times to rail against Mayhew. He had depicted them entirely falsely, they argued, and consequently negotiated images of who they ‘really’ were. Cultural self-images such as these in turn can lead to ‘social closure’ and exclusion. In this sense Mayhew, however indirectly, may well have contributed to the social unequality among the poor people he described.

Extending the ACEs Framework: Examining the Relations Between Childhood Abuse and Later Victimization and Perpetration With College Men.

Research has revealed that forms of violence are interconnected, but less work focuses on the interconnection of victimization and perpetration, particularly with men. Subsequently, our understanding of the complexities of violence exposure in men's lives and related policies and treatments remains limited. The present study utilizes a sample of at-risk for violence involvement, college men, to examine the relationships between childhood victimization, adulthood victimization, and adulthood perpetration. Participants are 423 college men receiving course credit who completed a battery of standardized questionnaires via an anonymous web survey. Logistic regression is used. Results indicate that 27% of the men report polyperpetration (two or more types of perpetration), 43.5% report polyvictimization (two or more types of victimization), and 60% report experiencing both forms of victimization and perpetration in the past year. Childhood physical abuse has predictive power for perpetration (psychological aggression and polyperpetration) and victimization (sexual violence, psychological aggression, and polyvictimization) for the men in the past year. Childhood sexual abuse has strong predictive power for perpetration (physical violence, sexual violence, and polyperpetration) and victimization (physical violence and sexual violence) with the men in the past year. Finally, emotional abuse has predictive power for victimization (physical violence and psychological aggression), but not perpetration, for the men in the past year. Developmental psychopathology and the adverse childhood experiences frameworks are used to posit potential pathways explaining the relation between childhood abuse and the overlap between victimization and perpetration in adulthood for men. Implications of this study include the use of trauma-informed models of care with men and expanding the scope of study to examine experiences of both victimization and perpetration, and various types of violence, among men.

Physicality's phenomenon in the aspect of cyber-culture

In the article physicality's phenomenon is revealed as a contradictory and topical issue of socio-philosophical discourse. The consideration of the theoretical-philosophical and psychological definitions of physicality made it possible to disclose it as an attribute of human-morphemes and the integrity of anthropo-being. Attention is focused on body-transformations in conditions of cyberculture and the main boundary forms of human body-modifications are determined. Physicality is defined through the prism of socio-cultural practices as a way of preserving social man and the main means of individual self-identification. The representation of spiritual filling of physicality is carried out helping of its symbolic-attributive codes of interaction with culture. Physicality is considered as a visualization, a realization of the spiritual existence of man and the substratum of man's creative potential.. After all, man's life values, empathic abilities, motivational attitudes, ideas and vital signs are formed through his physical deformations and psychosomatic states into a person. Person's estrangement from natural development, turning into an immortal and not needing a reproductive update leads to a crisis of humanity and an anomie of universal values. After all, such phenomena of human relations as love for children, the unfolding of oneself through the understanding of others and the definition of fragility and not the infinity of human existence, and generate humanity. And these humanistic attitudes shape the meaning of human life in its content. If this sense-determining physicality's layer of is eliminated, man's existence is jeopardized. The solution of this issue is demanded by modern society without delay and only practical philosophy can offer solutions to it. Physiosophy or samosofia is a new direction of modern scientific knowledge about the spiritual and cultural senses of body and its physiological influences on this process. Excluding physicality – we eliminate materialization's substrate of conscious and cultural sphere of man, deprive the person of his spiritual expression of filling, his symbolic-attributive algorithm of interaction with culture

Реалізація концепції особистісно орієнтованої музичної освіти школярів України на межі тисячоліть

The article is devoted to the concept of personality oriented education for schoolchildren in Ukraine at the turn of the millennium. Therefore, the most urgent problem of upgrading the national education, in that music, is the transition to student-centered education concept and education of secondary school students. The analysis of scientific literature identifies that currently there is a number of specific concepts in the field, which do not contradict each other, but just emphasize different aspects in music pedagogy and education. In fact, art is considered to have a powerful cognitive and educational potential and is associated with the aesthetic nature, through which the most challenging and hidden processes of man's spiritual life are being comprehended, that is known to be a strategic link in the overall student’s training. The concept of student-centered teaching and education at the present time is widely implemented in all forms of student’s creative activity. They are music lessons and classes in schools, in the extracurricular education and culture institutions. However, since classes of music are still the common form of music training in school and education is being completed in the semantic, temporal and organizational terms, the implementation of the concept of personality-oriented music education can be carried out through the use of specific components of training. These components include: content and procedural, motivational, and reference implementation which successfully influence the realization of the personality oriented education concept tor schoolchildren in Ukraine at the turn of the millennium in the educational environment.

Race, biopolitics, and the future: Introduction to the special section

We wrote the proposal for this special issue at the beginning of 2015. From our institutional home in the United States South, daily life, class discussions, and academic work felt saturated with biopoltical questions. The year 2014 had ended with waves of protests against racialized police violence and the pervasive criminalization of Black communities and protests had coalesced around a provocative set of signifiers. The #BlackLivesMatter movement, originally a response to the July 2013 acquittal of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin's vigilante killer in Florida gained the silent hands up, don't shoot gesture in reference to the August 2014 fatal shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, by a police officer subsequently acquitted by a grand jury. That winter, a New York City policeman was acquitted by a grand jury despite videotaped evidence of the July 2014 choking of Eric Garner, and t-shirts worn at protests and at sporting events called us to remember Garner's last words: I can't breathe. In each case, the loss of a young black man's life was followed by a second symbolic death, in the highlighting of the victim's supposed flaws and mistakes and the subsequent failure to hold anyone accountable for the death. A growing litany of these police killings was then given intersectional nuance by #SayHerName's recounting of Black female, queer and trans victims who had not only been subject to violence but then omitted from the public recounting. The names of Sandra Bland, Renisha McBride, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddy Gray, Philando Castille, and too many others signal particular lives valued and mourned, but also indicate a repetition and wearing down of life. We wrote the proposal with ferocious anger and with the Movement for Black Lives in mind as an expression of righteous fury at state violence that cuts directly to the heart of race-biopolitics. Two years later, as we write this introduction, Donald Trump takes the office of US President. He promises to wall out Mexican and Latin American migrants, expel or register Muslims, and restore white nationalism. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, four million refugees have left Syria since 2011, and more than six million were internally displaced at the end of 2016 (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2017), but in the political discourse of the US 2016 elections, refugees were figured as security threat rather than as a humanitarian crisis engendered in part by US geopolitical strategy. Likewise, migrants crossing the US-Mexico border were figured as sexual predators and economic leeches; never mind the securitization that contributes to the average of 362 annual deaths along the Southwest sector of the border in the last five years when crossers succumb to dehydration, exposure, violence, or other risks (United States Border Patrol, 2016). As the articles in this issue suggest, when racism is crucified in public only to be born again in private, (Goldberg, 2008: 24) we must attend to how race is (re-)produced globally through biopolitical practices. However, the sharp turn and parallel track of the present moment, in which white supremacy is once again openly embraced in the public sphere, only reveals the absurdity of claims to a post-racial era. Now, more than ever (or perhaps, just as much as always?), political life is figured as a battle for a particular kind of future; in fact, the future is the term of the battle itself. Trump's signature phrase and line of hats, Make America Great Again, is a fundamentally biopolitical statement of a strikingly racialized and gendered future. Recent political events demand our attention not as breaks with the past, but for the continuities they reveal about the grammar of humanity (Spillers, 2003) through which life and death are made sensible. These issues of national concern resonate with the global turn to the right--in Britain, India, the Philippines, Turkey, France, Brazil, and other contexts that is emerging in local forms but holds at its center sharp disagreements over the future. …

The Importance of Sex and the Meaning of Sex and Sexual Pleasure for Men Aged 60 and Older Who Engage in Heterosexual Relationships: Findings from a Qualitative Interview Study.

That many older individuals continue to engage in various forms of sexual expression well into later life is now well established in the literature. To date, however, only a small body of qualitative research has examined older men's experiences and understandings of sex in later life. Likewise, the ways in which older men's discussions on sex may be used as an avenue for "doing" masculinity remain underexplored. Older men are particularly interesting in this regard, as they inhabit an increasingly subordinated position in relation to hegemonic masculine ideals because of their age. To what extent might this limit or, alternatively, open up the possibilities for sexual expression and subjectivity in later life? Drawing on a subset of findings from Sex, Age, and Me: A National Study with Australian Women and Men Aged 60 and Older, data from qualitative interviews with 27 Australian men were explored in this article. The first Australian study of its kind, we argue that older men who engage in heterosexual relationships draw on a diverse and complex array of discursive positions regarding sex, relationships, and masculinity in making sense of their experiences of sex in later life. Older men are a heterogeneous group, and their experiences and understandings of sex do not simplistically follow "decline" or "success" narratives of aging. The findings of this research build upon and extend emerging research illustrating the centrality of intimacy to older men's sexual lives, while simultaneously highlighting the ways in which the body and discursive constructions of sex intersect to shape older men's sexual subjectivities.

Sexual Function and Quality of Life Before and After Penile Prosthesis Implantation Following Radial Forearm Flap Phalloplasty

To provide sexual function and quality of life outcomes in patients with severe penile deficiency who underwent radial forearm flap phalloplasty with and without penile prosthesis implantation. Patients with history of severe penile deficiency who underwent microsurgical radial forearm flap phalloplasty with and without penile prosthesis implantation between 2007 and 2014 were identified. They completed a set of web-based validated questionnaires including the International Index of Erectile Function, the Pediatric Penile Perception Score, the Sexual Quality of Life for Men, and several items addressing general quality of life. Outcomes were compared between groups. Nine of the 12 identified patients who had prosthesis after phalloplasty and 4 out of the 7 phalloplasty-only patients completed the survey, resulting in an overall response rate of 68%. Among the phalloplasty-prosthesis patients, 66% reported current sexual activity and 78% reported regular masturbation, whereas 1 of the 4 phalloplasty-only patients reported both. Prosthesis patients scored notably higher in all domains of the International Index of Erectile Function except for sexual desire. In contrast, they demonstrated similar scores of penile perception, as well as general and sexual quality of life. Among patients who have undergone flap phalloplasty, the subsequent placement of penile prosthesis appears to effectively allow for both intercourse and masturbation, resulting in measurable improvements in orgasmic function, intercourse satisfaction, and overall sexual satisfaction. Despite these important benefits, prosthesis placement does not appear to result in improvements in penile perception scores, or general or sexual quality of life.

Trajectories of quality of life, life satisfaction, and psychological adjustment after prostate cancer.

BackgroundTo describe trajectories of health‐related quality of life (QoL), life satisfaction, and psychological adjustment for men with prostate cancer over the medium to long term and identify predictors of poorer outcomes using growth mixture models.MethodsOne‐thousand sixty‐four (82.4% response) men diagnosed with prostate cancer were recruited close to diagnosis and assessed over a 72‐month (6‐year) period with self‐report assessment of health‐related QoL, life satisfaction, cancer‐related distress, and prostate specific antigen anxiety. Urinary, bowel, and sexual function were also assessed using validated questionnaires.ResultsPoorer physical QOL was predicted by older age, lower education, lower income, comorbidities, and receiving hormone therapy. Lower life satisfaction was related to younger age, lower income, not being partnered, and comorbidities. Poorer psychological trajectories were predicted by younger age, lower income, comorbidities, and receiving radical prostatectomy or brachytherapy. Better urinary, bowel, and sexual function were related to better global outcomes over time. Anxiety about prostate specific antigen testing was rare.ConclusionsDistinct trajectories exist for medium‐ to long‐term QoL, life satisfaction, and psychological adjustment after prostate cancer; with age and socioeconomic deprivation playing a differential role in men's survivorship profile and the impact of functional status on outcomes increasing over time. These results reinforce the need for an appraisal of men's life course in addition to treatment side effects when planning survivorship care after cancer.

Testosterone and Jamaican Fathers : Exploring Links to Relationship Dynamics and Paternal Care.

This paper investigates relationships between men's testosterone and family life in a sample of approximately 350 Jamaican fathers of children 18-24months of age. The study recognizes the role of testosterone as a proximate mechanism coordinating and reflecting male life history allocations within specific family and cultural contexts. A sample of Jamaican fathers and/or father figures reported to an assessment center for an interview based on a standardized questionnaire and provided a saliva sample for measuring testosterone level. Outcomes measured include subject demographics such as age and relationship status as well as partnership quality and sexuality and paternal attitudes and behavior. The variation in these fathers' relationship status (e.g., married co-residential fathers, fathers in new non-residential relationships) was not associated with men's testosterone. Too few stepfathers participated to enable a direct test of the prediction that stepfathers would have higher testosterone than biological fathers, although fathers who reported living with partners' (but not his own) children did not have higher testosterone than fathers not reporting residing with a non-biological child. Fathers' relationship quality was negatively related to their testosterone. Measures of paternal attitudes and behavior were not related to fathers' testosterone. Consistent with previous ethnography, this sample of Jamaican fathers exhibited variable life history profiles, including residential status. We discuss why fathers' relationship quality was found to be negatively related to their testosterone level, but other predictions were not upheld.

Edith Simcox as Biographer of George Eliot in the Periodical Press

Since Gordon S. Haight published his biography of George Eliot in 1968, Eliot's biographers have assumed that Edith Simcox wanted to write Eliot's biography and was jealous that John Walter Cross undertook the task. However, I suggest that Edith Simcox actually wrote her own biography of Eliot through the articles she published in the Academy and the Nineteenth Century, as well as in her personal journal, Autobiography of a Shirtmaker, and in her fictional Episodes in the Lives of Men, Women, and Lovers (1882). Notably, five of these episodes were published in Fraser's Magazine in 1881.

A Study of Woman’s sufferings in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Lutfiyya Al-Duliami's Ladies of Zuhal(Saturn)

As a dystopic satire, both Margret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, and Lutfiyya Al-Duliami's The Ladies of Zuhal (Saturn) portray the present evils in the hope of bringing about social and political change. The former's cautionary tale portrays the physical and psychological oppression of women for the sake of male genes in a state called Gilead. Gilead is a theocratic dictatorship based on Puritanical fundamentalism, rigidly orders every aspect of the daily life of all but those in the most privileged positions. The Handmaid's Tale is Atwood's creation of an imagined society in which women under a futuristic totalitarian regime reduces its female subjects to mere voiceless, childbearing vessels. Recounted by a female narrator, Offred, the story focuses on the handmaids. These women are selected by the state for their potential ability to bear children at a time when infertility is high and live births have reached dangerously low levels. Though the woman's biological function is privileged, she becomes marginalized as an individual – as the prime aim is to find healthy, fertile women who can produce children for those ruling class of men in position of power and influence. The latter is a female's epic portraying the sufferings of Hayyat Al-Babili who set down everything. The tale also depicts the other heroines' sufferings beginning with Hayyat's mother, Rawiyya, Fitnah, Manaar, Amaal, Zinah, Samia, Haalah, Shurouq, Luma, Helin, and ending with Briska Bernard,and other women who appear and disappear throughout this long heroic text such as Nahidah, Sahirah, and Siham. This novel clearly depicts the tragedies of the Iraqis in general, and women in particular. It is an epic revealing the roots of the ruin in man's life; meantime, it aims at collecting the splinter groups so as to to rebuild man with love and to retrieve the situation of the writer's dream as a real Iraqi woman. Sayidat Zuhal is the story of all, all the history of those who are killers and victims, lovers, dreamers, and visionaries. However, in The Ladies of Zuhal, the role of the men is not minor although the female race is dominating. Her miserable and catastrophic life is similar to her husband's, Hazim, who encountered castration from the Saddam's security guards.

John Henry Newman: A Portrait in Letters ed. by Roderick Strange

Reviewed by: John Henry Newman: A Portrait in Letters ed. by Roderick Strange Reed Frey CO. (bio) John Henry Newman: A Portrait in Letters. Edited by Roderick Strange. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pages: 601. Hardcover, $49.50. ISBN: 978-0-19-960414-2. For those who have not taken the time to read through the thirty-two-volume collection of Newman's letters, this handsome collection from Roderick Strange and Oxford University Press offers a welcome introduction. Strange attempts a daunting, yet much-needed, task: selecting from Newman's 20,000 extant letters a manageable volume of representative correspondence. The collection is divided into twelves sections, with the first letter in 1807 and the last letter in 1890, the year of Newman's death. Each section includes a two to three-page introduction to that period of Newman's life, followed by forty to fifty pages of letters. Fr. Strange, former rector of the Pontifical Beda College and author of Newman 101: An Introduction to the Life and Work of John Cardinal Newman, is uniquely qualified to produce this volume, being the only doctoral student ever directed by Charles Stephen Dessain. Fr. Strange noted that his mentor, who oversaw the production of twenty-one of the thirty-two volumes of the Letters and Diaries before his death in 1976, would have been dubious about any editorial selection of Newman's letters. Fr. Strange's volume reflects both the promise and the challenge of such a venture. While commending Strange's attempt to select a representative sample of Newman's letters, he was bound to leave the interested reader of Newman in some sense disappointed. In Newman's 1863 letter to his sister Jemima, Newman wrote that "a man's life lies in his letters." Yet a selection of letters inevitably raises as many questions about the priorities of the editor as the author of the letters. Strange's editorial selection seems aimed at showing a humanized Newman—a sensitive, and sometimes hypersensitive, man who cherished close friendships and experienced anguish and disappointment when those friendships faltered. Newman was a tender and loving man, and his affection for his correspondents often shines through in his letters. Through Strange's selection, we come to see Newman as a deeply integrated person: theological controversies were personal, and personal struggles were viewed through the lens of faith and theology. Strange's portrait of Newman, through his careful editorial selection, also presents a literary master. Every letter, ranging in gravity from an 1867 letter asking Henry Wilberforce to send a small cask of cider to Newman's [End Page 89] responses to Kingsley's accusations, is crafted beautifully, and the letters have an ability to hold one's interest, even if the subject matter seems mundane. In Strange's volume, we see the whole gamut of human emotion. Newman wrote amusing and serious letters, bitter and tender letters, controversial and benign letters. Newman's humanity always shines through, even as his faith shapes his response to life circumstances. This reviewer repeatedly returned to the question: Who is the audience for this book? A neophyte to Newman studies is unlikely to begin his or her study with a 600-page collection of letters, and the brief introductions at the beginning of each chapter do not offer enough context for the new reader to feel comfortable with any phase of Newman's life. On the other hand, the introductions and commentary offer little by way of fresh insight that will satisfy a more experienced Newman scholar. If his intent was to serve the uninitiated reader of Newman, Strange might have provided more context for each section of letters, and reduced the number of letters in each section. A chronology of the main events of Newman's life would have also been helpful. Alternatively, if more experienced scholars had been his target audience, he might have provided more analysis in his introductions, and given the reader more penetrating commentary. Perhaps the book will be most useful to the intelligent nonscholar who has already read the Apologia pro vita sua, or a well-regarded biography of Newman, such as Sheridan Gilley's Newman and His Age. It...