Вопрос № 992354 - Английский язык

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                                                 Sex Roles in America
1. Historians have argued that the early colonists in this country granted women a higher status than they had held in England. One reason for the break with English custom was the importance of women's labor in colonial times. Each family had to be virtually self-sufficient, so the work of both sexes was vitally important.
2. In the nineteenth century middle-class women did not work outside the home. Economic and political doings were men's responsibilities; the domestic side of life was the domain of women. The family was regarded as a kind of retreat from the stress and tension of the workaday world; a good wife provided an atmosphere of tranquility, affection, and warmth.
3. During the mid-nineteenth century the western migration, the abortion and social-reform movement, the Civil War, missionary activity, and industrialism had the combined effect of undermining the cult of True Womanhood by involving women in activities outside the home. Yet despite the departure of many women from family-centered concerns, our gender ideals and attitudes about sex roles are still rooted in the nineteenth-century belief in the «rightness» of man-as-provider, woman-as-homemaker.
4. Today, although these stereotypes persist, they have been weakened by several forces. One of the truths that has emerged from psychological research is that there is no such thing as a «pure» masculine personality or a «pure» feminine personality. There are traits of autonomy and dependency, aggression and passivity, in all of us, male and female. Any given personality is a complex mix of all these traits. Another factor that has weakened stereotypes about the sexes is the realization that the stereotypes are not «natural» but, rather, are created by the society.
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How have gender stereotypes been changed since the 19th century?

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                                                 Sex Roles in America
1. Historians have argued that the early colonists in this country granted women a higher status than they had held in England. One reason for the break with English custom was the importance of women's labor in colonial times. Each family had to be virtually self-sufficient, so the work of both sexes was vitally important.
2. In the nineteenth century middle-class women did not work outside the home. Economic and political doings were men's responsibilities; the domestic side of life was the domain of women. The family was regarded as a kind of retreat from the stress and tension of the workaday world; a good wife provided an atmosphere of tranquility, affection, and warmth.
3. During the mid-nineteenth century the western migration, the abortion and social-reform movement, the Civil War, missionary activity, and industrialism had the combined effect of undermining the cult of True Womanhood by involving women in activities outside the home. Yet despite the departure of many women from family-centered concerns, our gender ideals and attitudes about sex roles are still rooted in the nineteenth-century belief in the «rightness» of man-as-provider, woman-as-homemaker.
4. Today, although these stereotypes persist, they have been weakened by several forces. One of the truths that has emerged from psychological research is that there is no such thing as a «pure» masculine personality or a «pure» feminine personality. There are traits of autonomy and dependency, aggression and passivity, in all of us, male and female. Any given personality is a complex mix of all these traits. Another factor that has weakened stereotypes about the sexes is the realization that the stereotypes are not «natural» but, rather, are created by the society.
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                                              Historical Archaeology
1. Archaeology has long been an accepted tool for studying prehistoric cultures. Relatively recently the same techniques have been systematically applied to studies of the more immediate past. This has been called «historical archaeology», a term that is used in the United States to refer to any archaeological investigation into North American sites that postdate the arrival of Europeans.
2. Back in the 1930's and 1940's, when building restoration was popular, historical archaeology was primarily a tool of architectural reconstruction. The role of archaeologists was to find the foundations of historic buildings and then take a back seat to architects. The mania for reconstruction had largely subsided by the 1950's and 1960's. Most people entering historical archaeology during this period came out of university anthropology departments, where they had studied prehistoric cultures.
3. They were, by training, social scientists, not historians, and their work tended to reflect this bias. The questions they framed and the techniques they used were designed to help them understand, as scientists, how people behaved. But because they were treading on historical ground for which there was often extensive written documentation, and because their own knowledge of these periods was usually limited, their contributions to American history remained circumscribed. Their reports, highly technical and sometimes poorly written, went unread.
4. More recently, professional archaeologists have taken over. These researchers have sought to demonstrate that their work can be a valuable tool not only of science but also of history, providing fresh insights into the daily lives of ordinary people whose existences might not otherwise be so well documented. This newer emphasis on archaeology as social history has shown great promise, and indeed work done in this area has lead to a reinterpretation of the United States past.
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                                           Realism and formalism
1. Even before the turn of the century, movies began to develop in two major directions: the realistic and the formalistic. Realism and formalism are merely general, rather than absolute, terms. When used to suggest a tendency toward either polarity, such labels can be helpful, but in the end they are still just labels. Few films are exclusively formalist in style, and fewer yet are completely realist.
2. There is also an important difference between realism and reality, although this distinction is often forgotten. Realism is a particular style, whereas physical reality is the source of all the raw materials of film, both realistic and formalistic. Virtually all movie directors go to the photographable world for their subject matter, but what they do with this material – how they shape and manipulate it – determines their stylistic emphasis.
3. Generally speaking, realistic films attempt to reproduce the surface of concrete reality with a minimum of distortion. The filmmaker tries to suggest the copiousness of life itself. Both realist and formalist film directors must select certain details from the chaotic sprawl of reality. But the element of selectivity in realistic films is less obvious. Realists try to preserve the illusion that their film world is unmanipulated, an objective mirror of the actual world. Formalists, on the other hand, deliberately stylize and distort their raw materials so that only the very naive would mistake a manipulated image of an object or event for the real thing.
4. We rarely notice the style in a realistic movie; the artist tends to be self-effacing. Some filmmakers are more concerned with what is being shown than how it is manipulated. The camera is used conservatively. It is essentially a recording mechanism that reproduces the surface of tangible objects with as little commentary as possible. A high premium is placed on simplicity, spontaneity, and directness. This is not to suggest that these movies lack artistry, however, for at its best the realistic cinema specializes in art that conceals art.
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                                           American Penny Press
1. The penny press, which emerged in the United States during the 1830's, was a powerful agent of mass communication. These newspapers were little dailies, generally four pages in length, written for the mass taste. They differed from the staid, formal presentation of the conservative press, with its emphasis on political and literary topics. The new papers were brief and cheap, emphasizing sensational reports of police courts and juicy scandals as well as human interest stories. Twentieth-century journalism was already foreshadowed in the penny press of the 1830's.
2. The New York Sun, founded in 1833, was the first successful penny paper, and it was followed two years later by the New York Herald, published by James Gordon Bennett. Not long after, Horace Greeley issued the New York Tribune, which was destined to become the most influential paper in America. Greeley gave space to the issues that deeply touched the American people before the Civil War – abolitionism, temperance, free homesteads, Utopian cooperative settlements, and the problems of labor. The weekly edition of the Tribune, with 100,000 subscribers, had a remarkable influence in rural areas, especially in Western communities.
3. Americans were reputed to be the most avid readers of periodicals in the world. An English observer enviously calculated that, in 1829, the number of newspapers circulated in Great Britain was enough to reach only one out of every thirty-six inhabitants weekly. Pennsylvania in that same year had a newspaper circulation which reached one out of every four inhabitants weekly. Statistics seemed to justify the common belief that Americans were devoted to periodicals. Newspapers in the United States increased from 1,200 in 1833 to 3,000 by the early 1860's, on the eve of the Civil War. This far exceeded the number and circulation of newspapers in England and France.
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                                                    Public Spirit
1. Each nation has its own peculiar character which distinguishes it from others. But the people of the world have more points in which they are all like each other than points in which they are different. One type of person that is common in every country is the one who always tries to do as little as he possibly can and to get as much in return as he can. His opposite, the man who is in the habit of doing more than is strictly necessary and who is ready to accept what is offered in return, is rare everywhere.
2. Both these types are usually unconscious of their character. The man who avoids effort is always talking about his «rights»: he appears to think that society owes him a pleasant, easy life. The man who is always doing more than his share talks of «duties»; he feels that the individual is in debt to society, and not society to the individual. As a result of their views, neither of these men thinks that he behaves at all strangely.
3. The man who tries to do as little as he can is always full of excuses; if he has neglected to do something, it was because he had a headache, or the weather was too hot – or too cold – or because he was prevented by bad luck. At first, other people generously accept his stories; but soon they realize what kind of person he is. When his friends become cool towards him and he fails to make progress in his job, he is hurt. He blames everyone and everything except himself. He feels that society is failing in its duties towards him, and that he is being unjustly treated.
4. His public-spirited opposite is never too busy to take on an extra piece of work: that is the strangest thing about the whole business. If you want something done in a hurry, don't go to the man who has clearly not much to do. He will probably have a dozen excellent excuses for not being able to help you, although he claims he would like to. Go to the busiest man you know, particularly if you are sure that he has not a spare minute in the week. If your work is really important, he will make time for it.
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