Seventy years after his death, Tom Stoppard's masterly and underrated play The Invention Of Love sought to compare the repressed existence of Housman with the fin-de-siècle of Wilde and the Aesthetic movement, giving Housman a sympathetic hearing as a passionate, brilliant man unable to break out against the strictures of society.
It is a noir crime thriller, a character study, an existential nightmare, a metaphor for modern life, a struggle against the strictures of society, and a book about the futility of humanity's desire to control its outlaw nature.
Azhar Ramadan, a woman and a journalist chafing under the strictures of Iraqi society, should, at least in theory, be a supporter of American-led Westernization.
Both groups share the view that the Internet is not subject to the strictures of traditional society, and that it can, and should, foment revolution.
Collectively, he suggested, they had escaped the strictures of modern society, "no longer the humdrum and harassed little personalities with names, addresses and social security numbers".
The American doctor is a caricature, a supposed idealist who has taken the time to learn fluent Hindi yet seems oblivious to the customs and strictures of local society — she wears skin-tight jeans and curses in casual conversation.
Jane Austen's novels (which are being rewritten by modern authors for contemporary audiences) rely on the strictures of Regency society to explore interpersonal relationships, social pressures, individual longing and moral virtues.
Believing that she was on "a holy mission to bring democracy to her country," she understood that in order to co-exist with the religious factions -- and gain their support -- she needed to abide by certain strictures of Pakistani society.
Loneliness is at the American core, a by-product of a long-standing national appetite for independence: The Pilgrims who left Europe willingly abandoned the bonds and strictures of a society that could not accept their right to be different.
Mika Risikio (AKA Ziúr) has a refreshingly open-minded approach to the strictures of club music.
We all yearn for a stable and morally intact society, but I have less faith in the narrow strictures of a closed society (whether it is Smalltown, U.S.A., or Smalltown, Somalia) than I do in the rich, though more unsettling, possibilities presented by a democratic and diverse society that upholds these values.
