Description In Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences, and Narrators in the Odyssey, Lillian Eileen Doherty shows us that the attitude of Odysseus, as well as of the Odyssey, is highly ambivalent toward women. Odysseus rewards supportive female characters by treating them as privileged members of the audience for his own tales. At the same time, dangerous female narrators--who threaten to disrupt or revise the hero's story--are discredited by the narrative framework in which their stories appear. Siren Songs synthesizes audience-oriented and narratological approaches, and examines the relationships among three kinds of audiences: internal, implied, and actual. The author prefaces her own reading of the Odyssey with an analysis of the issues posed by the earlier feminist readings on which she builds.
As an example two influential short stories will be discussed in depth in order to shed light into the lives of the two authors and their stories. The short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) and Angela Carter (1940–1992) both sideway the same idea; the confinement of women in particular roles and positions in both personal and professional lives, posed on them by patriarchal figures. Toril Moi quotes in her examination of feministic criticism, Sexual/Textual Politics (2002), Elaine Showalter’s idea that “women writers should not be studied as a distinct group on the assumption that they write alike, or even display stylistic resemblances distinctively feminine” (Moi, 2002: 49), which comes across when reading the two stories which are stylistically already very different. It might be so that a feminist reader of both times (there’s some 80 years difference between the two stories) did not only want to see her own experiences mirrored in fiction, but strived to identify with strong, impressive female characters (Moi, 2002: 46), and looked for role-models that would instil positive sense of feminine identity by portraying women as self-actualising strong identities who were not dependent on men (Moi, 2002, 46). The two stories bring out two female characters, very different by position and character; the other a new mother, scared and confused of her own role, and the other a young newly-wed girl, still a child, being fouled by a much older man, mainly as a mark of his authority over women in general.
There was one particular quote in the novel that seemed out of place in my opinion. The quote depicts women in a very negative way. The beginning of the quote is as followed: “Experience will teach you the real characters of the beings who chiefly compose your species” (86). The statement was made by a male character from the novel. Then the quote continues and states: “You will find them, [women] a set of harpies, absurd, treacherous, and deceitful—regardless of strong obligations, and mindful of slight injuries…” (86).
Atwood discusses the several genres of fiction that are available in this time and explains how this is not only a time of gender crossover but of genre crossover. By using the comparison she shows how literature has evolved as well as gender relations. In conclusion Margaret Atwood’s speech “spotty handed villainess” is a speech that explores the flaws in extreme feminism, challenges the patriarchal order and examines the intentions of literature and fiction. The speech still has relevance today as it examines gender roles and expectations in modern day
Contrary to its putatively gender-normalizing conclusion, Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina generates a narrative of sexual subversion and female authority. The repetitive occurrence of female protagonists inverting gender hegemonies from the prostitute to Fantomina’s mother to the convent, produces a ‘gynocratic’, or woman-centered novel. When juxtaposed alongside the nameless, beguiled admirers and the named, yet four-flushed BeauPlaisir, the narrative constructs a hierarchy of female over male, contradicting the possibility of its reinstating archetypal gender roles through its questionable inclusion of assault. While acknowledging seemingly anti-feminist sections, this essay will articulate how Haywood’s text empowers its atypical heroine through Haywood’s syntax and plot, her covert theme of naming and the conclusion itself. Despite her antithetical ideologies, Haywood remains centuries ahead while incorporating the very themes of contemporary pop culture: Woman Power.
(18) * Indeed, the term “queer” itself has been precisely the the discursive rallying point for younger lesbians and gay men and, in yet other contexts, for lesbian interventions and, in yet other contexts, for bisexuals and straights for whom the term expresses an affiliation with anti-homophobic politics. The term “Queer” will be revised, dispelled, rendered obsolete to the extent that it yields to the demands which resist the term precisely because of the exclusions by which it is mobilized. (21) * Gender Performativity and Drag: * Gender norms operate by requiring the embodiment of certain ideals of femininity and masculinity, ones which are almost always related to the idealization of the heterosexual bond. (22) * Melancholia: Drag is allegorized to heterosexual melancholy, the melancholy by which a masculine gender (feminine gender) is formed from the refusal to grieve the masculine (feminine) as a possibility of love. (25) * Drag: is the “normal” constitution of gender presentation in which the gender performed is in many ways constituted by a set of disavowed attachments or identifications that constitute a different domain of the “unperformable.” Indeed, it
In Ragga Music: Dis/Respecting Black Women and Dis/Reputable Sexualities, Denise Noble struggles with whether or not ragga music is overtly racist toward Black women’s bodies or celebratory of them. This topic in itself is widely controversial in that women seem to argue two sides. One side vying for the belief that the music is sexist and should change while the other argues that the music is something that gives black women a chance to explore their sexuality. She begins the discussion with an excerpt from Angela Davies about the blues and Back women’s freedom to assert themselves sexually through it. Initially, it seems as though Noble is giving the pros and cons of ragga music while also interpreting what they could mean for herself.
Simone was referring to how females of the female sex assume the feminine gender-gender meaning the restrictive, socially prescribed attitudes and behaviors that we associate with femininity. Not the same but similar….. 1. Feminist and gender criticism are not exactly the same, but also are not opposites. They exist along a line of attitudes towards sex and sexism, sexuality and gender, language and the literary canon. Distinctions of Difference…… 2.
As to be expected, this thesis opened up a multitude of hugely controversial sub-topics, and in dealing with such controversial and heavy subject matter, Woolf utilized a writing style and used to her advantage the ‘liberties and licences of a novelist’ that allowed her more literary freedom. She did this by exploiting the narrative voice of her invented character of ‘Mary Beaton, Mary Seaton, or Mary Carmichael’ to lead us through the elegantly meandering journey that was her stream of consciousness. In writing in this semi-fictional narrative style, Woolf was able to merge deeply political, and philosophical views expressed in a partially illusory voice, which afforded her the freedom to subtly uncover ‘some nugget of truth’ and put across her powerful message. In a time where women writers’, and indeed women, were not afforded the liberties of equality and freedom of speech. A time where female writers’ had to be guarded, and confined, in expressing their opinions, the narrative voice, ‘Call me Mary Beaton, Mary Seaton…’ aided the conveying of Woolf’s argument, as it engaged with women on a more personal level, through making her character a universally identifiable ‘every-woman’, rather than an individual displaying her anger towards the system of patriarchy.
Kenya N. Luciano Rivera Dr. Mary Sefranek INGL3104-096 28 February 2013 Homophobic Issues In these days, the LGBTIQ1 (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Questioning) community is judged because of their sexual preferences or identities2. In the readings “Hum” by Luis Rafael Sanchez and “50% chance of lightning” by Christina Salat, both authors use the characters and conflicts in the stories to address LGBTIQ issues and homophobia through the plots. They employ the heteronormative3 of the society in relation to both of the protagonist’s sexual orientations2. On one hand, in the short story “Hum” by Sanchez we perceived a story of homophobia where the protagonist, who is a transsexual4, finishes dead because of the marginalization of the LGBTIQ community where he used to live before the tragedy. “The men, already sure of their game, would wait by the coconut grove to attack him with words” (Sánchez, 55).