Jane Austens Emma Essays - British Films, Emma Woodhouse, Emma

Jane Austen's Emma Essays - British Films, Emma Woodhouse, Emma Jane Austen's Emma Jane Austen's Emma is a novel of courtship. Like all of Austen's novels, it centers around the marriage plot: who will marry whom? For what reasons will they marry? Love, practicality, or necessity? At the center of the story is the title character, Emma Woodhouse, a heiress who lives with her widowed father at their estate, Hartfield. At the beginning of the novel, she is a self-satisfied young woman who feels no particular need to marry, for she is in the rather unique condition of not needing a husband to supply her fortune. At the beginning of the novel, Emma's governess, Miss Taylor, has just married Mr. Weston, a wealthy man who owns Randalls, a nearby estate. The Westons, the Woodhouses, and Mr. Knightly (who owns the estate Donwell Abbey) are at the top of Highbury society. Mr. Weston had been married earlier. When his previous wife died, he sent their one child (Frank Churchill) to be raised by her brother and his wife, for the now-wealthy Mr. Weston could not at that time provide for the boy. Without Miss Taylor as a companion, Emma adopts the orphan Harriet Smith as a protg. Harriet lives at a nearby boarding school where she was raised, and knows nothing of her parents. Emma advises the innocent Harriet in virtually all things, including the people with whom she should interact. She suggests that Harriet not spend time with the Martins, a local family of farmers whose son, Robert, is interested in Harriet. Instead, Emma plans to play matchmaker for Harriet and Mr. Elton, the vicar of the church in Highbury. Emma seems to have some success in her attempts to bring together Harriet Smith and Mr. Elton. The three spend a good deal of leisure time together and he seems receptive to all of Emma's suggestions. The friendship between Emma and Harriet does little good for either of them, however. Harriet indulges Emma's worst qualities, giving her opportunity to meddle and serving only to flatter her. Emma in turn fills Harriet Smith with grand pretensions that do not suit her low situation in society. When Robert Martin proposes to Harriet, she rejects him based on Emma's advice, thinking that he is too common. Mr. Knightly criticizes Emma's matchmaking, since he thinks that the dependable Robert Martin is Harriet's superior, for while he is respectable, she is from uncertain origins. Emma's sister, Isabella, and her husband, Mr. John Knightly, visit Highbury, and Emma uses their visit as an opportunity to reconcile with Mr. Knightly after their argument over Harriet. The Westons hold a party on Christmas Eve for the members of Highbury society. Harriet Smith, however, becomes ill and cannot attend. During the party, Mr. Elton focuses his attention solely on Emma. When they travel home by carriage from the party, Mr. Elton professes his adoration for Emma, and dismisses the idea that he would ever marry Harriet Smith, whom he feels is too common for him. Mr. Elton obviously intends to move up in society, and is interested in Emma primarily for her social status and wealth. Shortly after Emma rejects Mr. Elton, he leaves Highbury for a stay in Bath. Emma breaks the bad news to Harriet Smith. As of this time, Frank Churchill has not yet visited his father and his new wife at Randalls, which has caused some concern. Emma, without having met the young man, decides that he must certainly be a good suitor for her, since he is of appropriate age and breeding. Another character who occupies Emma's thoughts is Jane Fairfax, the granddaughter of Mrs. Bates, an impoverished widow whose husband was the former vicar, and the niece of Miss Bates, a chattering spinster who lives with her mother. Jane is equal to Emma in every respect (beauty, education, talents) except for status, and provokes some jealousy in Emma. Jane will soon visit her family in Highbury, for the wealthy family who brought her up after her parents had died has gone on vacation. There is some indication that Jane might be involved with Mr. Dixon, a married man, but this is only idle gossip. Mr. Elton returns from Bath with news that he is engaged

Ancient Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro

Ancient Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro is what generations of besotted archaeologists have named a 10.8 centimeter (4.25 inch) tall copper-bronze statuette found in the ruins of Mohenjo Daro. That city is one of the most important sites of the Indus Civilization, or more accurately, the Harappan Civilization (2600-1900 BC) of Pakistan and northwestern India. The Dancing Girl figurine was sculpted using the lost wax (cire perdue) process, which involves making a mold and pouring molten metal into it. Made about 2500 BC, the statuette was found in the remains of a small house in the southwestern quarter of Mohenjo Daro by Indian archaeologist D. R. Sahni [1879-1939] during his 1926-1927 field season at the site. The Dancing Girl Figurine The figurine is a naturalistic free-standing sculpture of a nude woman, with small breasts, narrow hips, long legs and arms, and a short torso; her genitals are explicit. She wears a stack of 25 bangles on her left arm. She has very long legs and arms compared to her torso; her head is tilted slightly backward and her left leg is bent at the knee. On her right arm are four bangles, two at the wrist, two above the elbow; that arm is bent at the elbow, with her hand on her hip. She wears a necklace with three large pendants, and her hair is in a loose bun, twisted in a spiral fashion and pinned in place at the back of her head. Some scholars suggest that the Dancing Girl statuette is a portrait of a real woman. Individuality of the Dancing Girl Although there have been literally thousands of figurines recovered from Harappan sites, including over 2,500 at Harappa alone, the vast majority of figurines are terracotta, made from fired clay. Only a handful of Harappan figurines are carved from stone (such as the famous priest-king figure) or, like the dancing lady, of lost-wax copper bronze. Figurines are an elaborate class of representational artifact found in many ancient and modern human societies. Human and animal figurines can give insight into concepts of sex, gender, sexuality and other aspects of social identity. That insight is important for us today because many ancient societies left no decipherable written language. Although the Harappans had a written language, no modern scholar has been able to decipher the Indus Script to date. Metallurgy and the Indus Civilization A recent survey of the use of copper-based metals used in Indus civilization sites (Hoffman and Miller 2014) found that most of the classic Harappan aged objects made of copper-bronze are vessels (jars, pots, bowls, dishes, pans, scale pans) formed from sheet copper; tools (blades from sheet copper; chisels, pointed tools, axes and adzes) manufactured by casting; and ornaments (bangles, rings, beads, and decorative-headed pins) by casting. Hoffman and Miller found that copper mirrors, figurines, tablets, and tokens are relatively rare compared to these other artifact types. There are many more stone and ceramic tablets than those made of copper-based bronze. The Harappans made their bronze artifacts using a variety of blends, alloys of copper with tin and arsenic, and varying lesser amounts of zinc, lead, sulfur, iron, and nickel. Adding zinc to copper makes an object brass rather than bronze, and some of the earliest brasses on our planet were created by the Harappans. Researchers Park and Shinde (2014) suggest that the variety of blends used in different products was the result of fabrication requirements and the fact that pre-alloyed and pure copper was traded into the Harappan cities rather than produced there. The lost wax method used by Harappan metallurgists involved first carving the object out of wax, then covering it in wet clay. Once the clay was dried, holes were bored into the mold and the mold was heated, melting the wax. The empty mold was then filled with a melted mixture of copper and tin. After that cooled, the mold was broken, revealing the copper-bronze object. Sex and the Dancing Girl Most of the images of women from Harappan-period sites are from hand-modeled terracotta, and they are primarily curvaceous mother goddesses. Many of them have explicit sexual organs and navels, heavy breasts and broad hips; most wear a fan-shaped headdress. Male figurines appear later than the female ones, with early male motifs represented by male animals- bulls, elephants, unicorns- with explicit genitals. The dancing girl is unusual in that although her genitals are explicit she isnt particularly voluptuous- and she is not hand-modeled, she was created using a mold. American archaeologist Sharri Clark suggests that the process of making hand-modeled terracotta images was ritually or symbolically meaningful to the maker, that the manufacturing of the figurines was as important or perhaps more important than the figurine itself. It is possible, then, that the manufacturing technique chosen by the maker of the Dancing Girl had some specific meaning that we dont have access to. Possible African Origins The ethnicity of the woman depicted in the figure has been a somewhat controversial subject over the years since the figurine was discovered. Several scholars such as ECL During Casper have suggested that the lady looks African. Recent evidence for Bronze Age trade contact with Africa has been found at Chanhu-Dara, another Harappan Bronze Age site, in the form of pearl millet, which was domesticated in Africa about 5,000 years ago. There is also at least one burial of an African woman at Chanhu-Dara, and it is not impossible that the Dancing Girl was a portrait of a woman from Africa. However, the figurines hairdressing is a style worn by Indian women today and in the past, and her armful of bangles is similar to a style worn by contemporary Kutchi Rabari tribal women. British Archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, one of many scholars besotted by the statuette, recognized her as a woman from the Baluchi region. Sources Clark SR. 2003. Representing the Indus Body: Sex, Gender, Sexuality, and the Anthropomorphic Terracotta Figurines from Harappa. Asian Perspectives 42(2):304-328. Clark SR. 2009. Material Matters: Representation and Materiality of the Harappan Body. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 16:231–261. Craddock PT. 2015. The metal casting traditions of South Asia: Continuity and innovation. Indian Journal of History of Science 50(1):55-82. During Caspers ECL. 1987. Was the dancing girl from Mohenjo-daro a Nubian? Annali, Instituto Oriental di Napoli 47(1):99-105. Hoffman BC, and Miller HM-L. 2014. Production and Consumption of Copper-Base Metals in the Indus Civilization. In: Roberts BW, and Thornton CP, editors. Archaeometallurgy in Global Perspective: Methods and Syntheses. New York, NY: Springer New York. p 697-727. Kennedy KAR, and Possehl GL. 2012. Were There Commercial Communications between Prehistoric Harappans and African Populations? Advances in Anthropology 2(4):169-180. Park J-S, and Shinde V. 2014. Characterization and comparison of the copper-base metallurgy of the Harappan sites at Farmana in Haryana and Kuntasi in Gujarat, India. Journal of Archaeological Science 50:126-138. Possehl GL. 2002. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek, California: Altamira Press. Sharma M, Gupta I, and Jha PN. 2016. From Caves to Miniatures: Portrayal of Woman in Early Indian Paintings. Chitrolekha International Magazine on Art and Design 6(1):22-42. Shinde V, and Willis RJ. 2014. A New Type of Inscribed Copper Plate from Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilisation. Ancient Asia 5(1):1-10. Sinopoli CM. 2006. Gender and archaeology in south and southwest Asia. In: Milledge Nelson S, editor. Handbook of Gender in Archaeology. Lanham, Maryland: Altamira Press. p 667-690. Srinivasan S. 2016. Metallurgy of zinc, high-tin bronze and gold in Indian antiquity: Methodological aspects. Indian Journal of History of Science 51(1):22-32.

Assignment 1 Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

1 - Assignment Example The double entry system identifies and records all the accounting transactions. Measurement of accounting information involves making subjective judgment about the value of assets or liabilities relating to a business. It also involves measurement of profits or losses made in an accounting period. Accountants also record accounting data which is presented as economic information to users. It is referred to as economic information since it relates to the economic or financial activities of a business. The main financial statements that accountants prepare are the income statement, balance sheet and the cash flow statements (Warren et al, 2008). The balance sheet indicates the resources owned and owed by a business at a particular point in time. It also shows the investments made by the business and the sources of these investments. The income statement shows the profitability of a business while cash flow statement reflects the cash movement in and out of business. The preparation of all financial statements require the accounting professionals to apply all the set accounting processes to the latter in order to ensure relevance, reliability and understandability of the financial statements by the users. This is an indication that too much value of the accounting process is exercised by professionals in the identification, measuring, recording and communication of economic events. Q1. ... For example, Australia has adopted International Accounting Standards (IAS) to oversee accounting regulation in the country. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) in the same country also identifies those priority issues in need of regulation. The following are the reason as to why regulation of the Preparation and presentation of accounting information is necessary in an organization. a) Accountability Accountability is one reason behind accounting regulation. It is based on the fact that the citizens and the stakeholders have the right to know. Financial information presented by accountants enables a business to be accountable. This is because the actions and activities of the business are produced in the reports. Information may be communicated through management reports, annual reports and accounts (Birt and Boland, 2010). Users need the information to make decisions. They get information on the financial position of the business and on its performance. Users of financial informa tion include governments, lenders, employees, shareholders and society at large. b) Transparency and Disclosure Transparency and disclosure of financial statements helps in preventing and detecting errors and fraud (Lee, 2007). Therefore, through preparation and preparation of financial statement errors and frauds can be detected. An auditor through tests can detect any errors or fraud and reflect them in the audit reports. Disclosure in financial statements must include the financial position like the balance sheet, performance like income statement and compliance like the notes to accounts. Investors can only provide funds for any investment in a company if they quite confident of ‘true’ and ‘fair’ presentation of financial statements. Transparency and