![]() The Atlanta Constitution cited the claim that male passengers had sacrificed themselves so that women and children could occupy the ship’s lifeboats to bolster a belief in racial superiority: "The Anglo-Saxon may yet boast that his sons are fit to rule the earth so long as men choose death with the courage they must have displayed when the great liner crashed into the mountains of ice, and the aftermath brought its final test." Opponents of woman suffrage used the same evidence to attack feminism: The New York Herald quoted a man who declared: “I suggest, henceforth, when a woman talks woman's rights, she be answered with the word Titanic, nothing more - just Titanic.” The Nazis made a film that depicted the Titanic as a metaphor for evils of British imperialism, and socialists saw it as a symbol of the flaws and excesses of capitalism. It has been interpreted as a metaphor for the end of an era of rigid gender roles and class hierarchies. The ship’s sinking has been viewed as punishment for hubris of the shipowners who dared declare the ship unsinkable and held an unbridled faith in technology, and as an attack on the arrogance and conspicuous consumption of the rich and powerful. Each of these accounts of the disaster sheds light on the time when they were written. Since the ship sank in 1912, the story has been the subject of films, poetry, novels, and even a Broadway musical. James Cameron’s Titanic, the highest grossing film of all time, was only the most recent retelling of the story of the Titanic, the largest movable object at the time it was launched. A higher proportion of first-class cabin mates survived than women and children in steerage. Some 60 percent of the first-cabin passengers survived, but only 44 percent of second-cabin passengers and just 25 percent of steerage passengers. The death toll was not evenly distributed. There were only lifeboats for half the passengers, and 1,503 died. Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg 866 Rescued By Carpathia, Probably 1,250 PerishĪ few minutes before midnight on April 14, 1912, the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic while on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |