In order to express her feminist ideas, Atwood uses criticisms of Offred and Janine’s complacency juxtaposed with positive feminist role models like Moira. When Offred has the affair with the commander, she is helping to sate the loneliness and desires of a man who is part of her oppression. She is therefore partly responsible for her oppression because she is helping her oppressor. As Barbara Ehrenriech¹ said, Offred’s character ‘has sunk too far into the...household she serves’. Although this can be seen as a failure of Atwood to create a strong feminist character, it seems to be more intended as an anti-role model, making Offred’s complicity obviously undesirable.
The dramatic irony in ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ not only adds to the story’s horror, it also creates the illusion that readers have power over the plot and that ideas presented in the story come from the themselves rather than from the author. This final effect—hiding the origin of ideas—is what allows Gilman to present her beliefs on marriage as if they were the reader’s own
While this woman depicted in the wallpaper is in the light, the view of society, she doesn’t move or rebel; equally, when the woman is in the dark, alone, she resents society and the “bars” it places in front of her. In this case, the “bars” are in the form of the stereotype and role society determined for woman; furthermore, society prearranged that every woman was to be the homemaker: cook, clean, raise children, and care for the man of the household. Other
Mrs Dalloway is more a critical portrayal of society than it is of the female protagonist.’ To what extent do you believe this to be true for both Mrs Dalloway and the female characters in The Hours? Writers can often encourage sympathy for characters we would normally despise. To what extent and by what means do Ibsen in A Doll’s House and Nabokov in Lolita achieve this feat? In On Chesil Beach and Revolutionary Road both McEwan and Yates present desire as a disruptive force. To what extent does your reading of the texts lead you to share this view?
The narrator describes the wallpaper as such, “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing” (351). The yellow wallpaper itself signifies women being suppressed by the men in their lives and the inability to break their dominance. She also eventually sees a figure behind the wallpaper in the form of a creeping woman. The woman actually portrays the narrator herself. After staring at the wallpaper long enough, she finds that the pattern moves because of the woman behind it trying to get out.
This aids in leading to her mental condition deteriorating even further due to the fact that she must simply put up with her prison. As the story progressives and the narrator spends more of her time in the room the more she becomes accustomed to her prison. Her obsession with the yellow wallpaper that surrounds her constantly grows to an unhealthy addiction. “I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper.
Both women are contrasting representations of Hedda. From the opening of the play her [Hedda’s] relationship with Aunt Julie is a strained one. Hedda views Aunt Julie as a symbol of what she herself loathes and could at the same time could quite easily become. Aunt Julie epitomises the idea of the domestic, dutiful woman with no true purpose of her own. She instead finds her purpose through the lives of the male characters and the arguably mediocre success that Tessman has had.
Female genital modification or mutilation in the novel was seen more as a purification process. It is never truly stated as to why Firdaus’ undergoes the mutilation but it does go to show that society doesn’t provide much choice for women in that predicament. Women, young or old aren’t given a choice, it’s just an unequal custom of society. This takes me to the next conflict, women and education. Firdaus is later sent to
If you Can't Stand the Sexism, Get Out of Literature According to Edith Sarra “gender is a fictional construct, a matter of textuality rather than of the physiology of a writer” (Sarra 16). This idea of gender performance in writing is put to test in Tsurayuki's “Tosa Journal”, a first person recollection as told through the eyes of a woman. Despite being a man, Tsurayuki is able to convince the reader that he is actually a female writer. However, with the knowledge that the journal is not written by a man, one can start to look critically at the work and see how Tsurayuki views women. In doing so, it becomes clear that Tsurayuki views women as inherently inferior to men in literature and thus in society.
She also states that this leads women to think that men are not listening. She further expands on this issue by explaining that men don’t like to listen because of their insecurities. Contradictory to her theories, I have also found through my experiences that women sometimes don’t effectively interpret the language being used. There are too many variable that determine the meaning of communication and every situation is different. In her essay, Tannen explains the impression that men don’t listen during a conversation is usually wrong.