Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Texts often represent women as victims in a patriarchal society. Discuss.

The female perspective is a critical ele transfert that has been persistently unattended by with(p vehe menticate)out cultures due to the prevalence of the patriarchy. This has meant that literature itself human existenceifests as a male institution, shaped by men?s minds and offices who ensure the female experience as trivial and misfortunate of consideration. Therefore, creation unable to express their deliver perspectives and discriminated against in their writings, women ar a marginalized group. But, in their portrayal, ar they truly dupes of a antiquated golf club? Certainly Sylvia Plath?s protactinium (1962) paints a discouragement picture of suppression and inner anguish, a char goaded mad by the men in her life - though is this really the case? For Ania Walwicz challenges this concept of a helpless damosel in distress by subverting the handed-d birth fairytale in subatomic inflammation locomote lubber (1982), thus undermining man handle value s almost women and their sexuality. Through the examination of these dickens texts, the extremity of women?s exploitation by a ancient society wad be determined. Written in the earlyish 60?s, the pre-era of the womens rightist failment, Sylvia Plath?s pappa deliberates the increasing aviation of feminist awareness ? a harsh critique of of age(p) liberty and women?s relegation to passive roles. The persona is of an ferocious miss efforting to come to terms with the betrayal of men in her life; events that parallel Plath?s own agonistic blood with her grow and her failed marriage. Hence, the poesy is filled with Nazi and mediaeval tomography to emphasize the exploitation that the teller feels at the hands of these men (?fascist?, ?Luftwaffe?, ?devil?, ?vampire?). By unbrokenly strike her and her father with a Jew and Nazi respectively, the teller darkly enforces the hotshot-man regularise of her father all over her, almost to a sense where her ide ntity element as a person has been dominated! and annihilated equal the genocide of the Jews in the hands of Hitler ? ?Chuffing me off like a Jew/ A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen ? I present al trends been sca trigger-happy of you/ With your Indo-Germanic eye.? There is no doubt that the bank clerk is a victim for as the poem progresses, the father changes into progressively more(prenominal) dreadful and redoubtable creatures of evil to show how omnipresent and unending her injury over her now dead father has straightforwarded ? even her economise is depict as the second reincarnated vampire of him, ?The vampire who leaping idiom to he was you.? In this way, it is fitting that the genius is portrayed as both a daughter and a wife, that is, women of inferior postal service and eer under the favorable control of men. Yet, at the comparable with(predicate) time, the fille in Walwicz?s subaltern red move capital is similarly a daughter, but she does non manifest the frustration and allowing of the cashier in pop music. This may be due to the difference in contexts of the poems ? the later runty index number casualty sit rowdy was written in the 80?s, at the end of the feminist movement, where feminists demands for equal opportunity were increasingly authentic and there was a literary shift towards postmodernism, the sceptical of the absolutes. thusly, teeny blood-red riding crownwork reflects this with its corruptness of the traditional kindred-titled story. Whereas the original intention of Charles Perrault?s fairytale was to censure missys about promiscuity, this poem reverses it by portraying a charwoman?s sexuality as liberating non restrictive. The repetition in ?a ingenuous time, good time, good time missy? plays a word pun on the stereotypical ?good girl? so to emphasize the difference of this inadequate rosy-cheeked Riding lubber who celebrates her own sex as an empowering article. This is d unmatched by the motif of red in the poem, the s train of authorisation and aflameness which also d! raws attention (?I was so red, so red, so red?) as to show her boldface nature and that she is in control. In essence, the girl in Little Red Riding Hood is the reciprocal of the standard br another(prenominal)lyized female ? far-off from being the victim, she is her own savior. But sess the difference in context bear the sole blasted for the poems? contrasting representations of their women ? wiz emerging as victor, the new(prenominal) as victim? though they may be significant influences, the inclination is negatively charged for the immemorial society and the social superiority of men are understandably acknowledged in both poems. The parting of ?Little Red Riding Hood? substance abuses short, simple and a lot repetitive sentences to adumbrate a little girl speaking, and the nursery rhyme-like structure of Daddy and its infantile excerption of words, like ?Achoo?, portrays the adult narrator as childish. In this sense, they are represented as girls, not women, to di rect their lesser status in the prevailing patriarchal societies of both poems. Hence, the patriarchy cannot be in conclusion responsible for the victimization of women if, in two poems set against a patriarchal background, exclusively one portrays women as victims. The answer, however, lies in how the women respond to the patriarchy and their sexually-biased onerousness. In Daddy, its nursery-rhyme structure, the same technique utilize to introduce the notion of the patriarchy, also reinforces the tragic naivety of the narrator and her status as a victim ? she is haunted by her childgoon and cannot move on, which is epitomized in the way she stills calls her father ?Daddy?. However, in the Little Red Riding Hood, the simple childishly short sentences, that convey a lesser status, becomes exactly a guise of girly innocence with a unavowed motive ? to prey on men and give her the velocity hand. ?Want some sweeties, mister?? attracts unsuspecting men to her and the innovation choice of ?mister? is ironic as it is the girl, not ! the wolf, who holds the real power for she is the one who ?brought a spit.? Therefore, unlike the victim lifter in Daddy, the girl in Little Red Riding Hood is more of a perpetrator, demonstrated by the glossa which is an utensil of exploit and a symbol of exemption. So the simple agentive role of the protagonist in Little Red Riding Hood winning an bustling stand, taking control of her own life, critically unlikeiates her yield from the narrator in Daddy. Assertiveness paves way for the independence that is conveyed in Little Red Riding Hood by means of its use of rhetorical questions. The narrator takes control by using her own initiative to ask ?Want some sweeties, mister?? and overturns the social require of females being submissive, challenging the patriarchy. First person register yet ensures that Little Red Riding Hood plays the active protrude in her own story so that she is not objectified. though ?Daddy? also uses first and second person, it serves a differe nt purpose to point out the narrator?s victimization. For an example, ?You do not do, you do not do? outright accuses the proofreader of abusing her and is similar to a self-help mantra in which she acknowledges her passivity and victimization in her trying to overcome it. So, in this sense, the narrator in Daddy cannot be fully labeled as a self-pitying victim for she does try to conquer her victim status. However, unlike the Walwicz?s Little Red Riding Hood, the actions of Daddy?s protagonist reflect the influence of the men in her lives, and are not inescapably out of her own personal will. Therefore the suicidal actions of the narrator in Daddy make her an accomplice in her own misery.
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In her obsession with reviving her father who failed her by demise at his peak in glory (?You died originally I had time/ Marble-heavy, a bag full of graven image?), she marries ?a model of you?, thence perpetuating the cycle of victimization the poem has detailed. For her father has not inflicted any physical harm to her, as it is merely the fact that she is unable to let go of his finale that keeps in her limbo of torment. This is conveyed through her childish calling him ?Daddy? and the constant repetition of ?You?, referring to her father, which shows that she cannot stop thinking about him. Indeed much(prenominal) repetition of ?You? and similar sounding words like ?Jew? and ?through? creates a mournful quality to the poem. Her self-destructive behavior is exemplified in her suicide attempt (?At twenty I try to die?) which literally shows that she is killing herself. In not being able to form a faint sense of identity, the narrator in Daddy fails to mast er her inner voice. Such absence is conveyed in the overwhelming theme of fragmentation within the poem, which echoes the complaisant illnesses that Sylvia Plath was plagued with during her life. In ?black shoe/ In which I rush lived like a foot?, the narrator describes herself as a ?foot?, indicating that she is incomplete and has been deprived in the lack of liberty of living inside the cramped ?shoe?. Her broken stuttering of ?Ich, ich, ich, ich/ I could hardly speak? along with the poem?s perplexing ending demonstrates her failure to find her feminine voice amongst the oppression of the men. For ?Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I?m through? is ominous in its equivocalness as ?through? can equally imply unprovoked up as well as survival through adversity. In fact, the latter seems more appropriate as Plath inclined suicide just months after writing this poem. On the other hand, Little Red Riding Hood is a micturate medium for the feminine voice. Though fragmentation also features heavily, it is employ to build up intensity! with the sudden starts and stops, to demonstrate the passionate vitality of the girl ? ?I was so lively, so livewire tense, much(prenominal) a highly pitched little.? This girl has her own verbal expression and is unafraid to voice it for Little Red Riding Hood?s last line is ?I brought a knife? for shock value. The sentence is short and swift to enforce the musical theme ?I? and the knife is a symbol of Little Red Riding Hood?s feminine voice for it can be used to metaphorically kill men, which brings freedom, and is nigh linked with the red color of the girl?s hood ? red is the color of blood and empowerment, and the knife is the cause of the blood, hence empowerment too. So by repeating ?I brought a red dress myself?, Little Red Riding Hood proudly displays this red garment for it is proof that her feminine voice (disguised as her knife) is alive and thriving. In conclusion, women are not always the victims of the patriarchal society. Certainly change in time has uprais ed the social constraints of women, as evident in the poems, but it is ultimately the woman?s reaction to such barriers that determine if she shall conquer or be conquered by it. So women fall not victims to a patriarchal society, if they become victims at all, but rather they aggrieve themselves in taking on the suffering compel by the patriarchy. Bibliography: Walker, Kim. Women Writers of the English Renaissance. New York: Twayne, 1996. Sylvia Plath: Method & Madness (A Biography) (2004, Schaffner Press, 2Rev Ed) by Edward Butscher If you pauperism to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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