Toni Morrison gives clues that leads the reader to formulate their own guesses about the girls’ ethnicities by saying that they are “like salt and pepper” (Morrison 140). Although the fact that the two girls are different races is an essential part of the story, Morrison makes it obvious that the difference in color is not the most important part. Through various clues about each of the girls’ race the reader is put in a situation where assumptions are made based on racial stereotypes. With hints throughout the whole story, the reader’s assumptions are either being changed or second guessed. As the story goes through the intertwining lives of Twyla and Roberta the fact that there is tension in their relationship is made obvious.
So, it would be interesting to explore how Walker uses this blackness to her advantage. Even the very title of Walker’s essay “Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and Partisan View,” intimates that she goes beyond being a mere Hurston enthusiast, she’s a fervent supporter. The word partisan indicates more. For example, it can also be taken to mean Walker is aligning herself to Hurston in terms of being female, a writer, but also, a sister in blackness. Hurston had this to say in Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Casebook: I dislike insincerity, and most particularly when it vaunts itself to cover up cowardice.
Good observations about this story Hamdi. Let’s consider some elements and themes found in this story. How are gender issues treated in this story? Is Silko a feminist or is she merely reinforcing patriarchal stereotypes? Is the narrator breaking free from oppression or merely giving in to a new oppressor?
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.
Further to this, it would also depend on at which point in the play we are making our judgement. For example, Katherina may be offending against her society’s expectations about women at the start of Taming of the Shrew, but does not necessarily do this towards the end of the play. It could be argued that in Much Ado about Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare presents Beatrice and Katherina as offending against their society’s expectations of women – the expectation that women should be submissive and act somewhat inferior to the male members of society; this also includes the view that women should not be outspoken. One of the only female characters who speak in the first scene of Much Ado is Beatrice, which portrays her to the audience as an outspoken character, and in this way she would be offending against her society’s expectations of women. Beatrice is a woman who openly defies both the courtly and bourgeois traditions of this time, ‘No, uncle, I’ll none: Adam’s sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred’, (II i, 431-55) in this speech to Leonato, Beatrice explains why
The matter of whether race and gender identities negate each other among Black women has not garnered much research in the social sciences. To some degree, this issue has primarily been addressed outside of academia, in the realm of practical politics. Black civil rights organizations, such as the Black Panther Party, and their predominantly male leadership have historically been less than receptive to gender issues of concern to Black women. Underlying this reluctance has been an assumption that gender identification among Black women is at best ‘irrelevant” and subversive. Hostility toward feminism has been further encouraged by the myth of the emasculating “black matriarch” hampering the progress of Black men.
In Katherine Wilson’s “Dude Looks Like a Lady,” she begins with a powerful introduction saying “this is about hair, breasts, and identity” (Wilson 21), insinuating it is going to be a gender identity piece. Reading more of the first page, you assume the thesis is about the common misconceptions of how a woman is supposed to look and how not looking that way could take away from a woman being a woman. Wilson gives the example of her hair being buzzed and people looking at her differently. Although she tries to argue the hardships of not looking like the normal female, Wilson’s argument fails to meet the rest of her story. She claims her argument is about “hair, breasts, and identity,” she is really just ranting and raving her being disrespected and her own issues of being black.
A feminist theory approach might have one interpret “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” as a clarion to the sexual ambiguity in the text. As Marilyn French points out re: the witches, “They are female, but have beards,” in itself pointing to the gender ambiguity in the play. (91). French goes on to suggest deeper issues with regard to gender roles in a male dominated society when she notes of women, “They are aggressive and authoritative, but seem to have power only to create petty mischief.” This all seems to suggest that the witches represent members of a society, (read here: women) characterized as having no true power, and with a penchant for wrongdoing. Lady MacBeth’s wish to shed her sexual identity, as seen through the “unsex me here” line, stamps an even greater importance on the notion that traditional male qualities alone are of any
Addie's genuine character as a living human will be a mystery; a few may view her as someone who was playing with the devil and others might see her as someone with admiration because she was one to believe that actions speak louder than words. The different characters throughout the novel and the difficulty stream-of-consciousness method all work together to create a novel that is open-ended and a matter of understanding. There is no intent truth to the narrative any more than there is any ideal certainty to the events that happen in it. The way that Faulkner uses the multiple narrators serves the purpose of trying to figure out what is the truth of these events that took place throughout the story and this is what makes this novel such a success. Faulkner desires to enchant his audience and grasp their mind.
Marylin Farwell offers a detailed response to the complicated genre of lesbian literature. Farwell recognizes the need to “’read against the grain’” in order to establish the encoded meanings and forms in lesbian writing that are not clearly placed across a fictional tale. It is with this type of reading perhaps that a lesbian narrative space is created by Cather in My Ántonia. Cather illustrates a story of Jim Burden and his relationship with Ántonia within a backdrop of events that can be appropriated as forming a lesbian narrative space. Cather’s characterisation, with effective use of binary oppositions, a male narrative voice and critique of conventional gender/norms and roles allows this lesbian narrative space to be drawn out from the main text.