One key archetype which is significantly highlighted by both writers is that of female beauty. One way in which this is explored is by presenting the female protagonists through the lens of ‘Male Gaze’ in order to articulate the way in which women are typically portrayed as objects, products or art to be desired due to the assumptions and perspectives of the heterosexual male. Claire McEwan therefore argues that Duffy’s poetry challenges “the masculinist representations of female identity that pervade history and literary discourse […] in order to reject the rendering of women as an aesthetic construction” , a view which corresponds well to Duffy’s poem “Pygmalion’s Bride”. Within which Pygmalion’s goal appears to be creating the ideal woman, with no concern paid towards her identity, rendering her as only aesthetically valuable. The narrator thus describes having her “stone cold lips” kissed, her “marbled eyes” thumbed and told “blunt endearments [of] what he’d do and how.” Yet when Pygmalion “let his fingers sink into [her] flesh” Galatea states that she “would not bruise” which can be seen as her refusal to conform to what he wants, instead she “played statue” refused to “shrink” and rejects the identity which has been constructed for her. Therefore as she transforms from “stone” to “stone cold”, a vision of beauty suspended, inanimate and susceptible to Pygmalion’s absolute power, into a woman who “screamed [her] head off”, Pygmalion’s attraction to his sculpture dissipates as his conceptualised image of her beauty becomes tarnished.
On the other end of the spectrum Duffy, in her poem “Mrs Quasimodo”, presents a female who goes against this conventional archetypal beauty. In the poem the narrator analyses her own features st...
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...ack as that bird's feather", the girl exists only as an object of the Counts desire and is given no other value than that of a sexual object. Just like the Marquis of “The Bloody Chamber” the Count therefore assumes the role of the pornographer, fully clothed, whilst "the child of his desire" appears naked, yet once he “thrusts his virile member into the dead girl", taking her virginity and desecrating her corpse, she “melts” into the snow, having fulfilled her purpose. The death of the Snow Child as Elaine Jordan argues does not represent "a killing of women” but rather of “masculine representations” , as a construct of his un-maintainable masculine ideals the girl is weak, and just as in “The Bloody Chamber” becoming a product of the male ideal is as tantamount to death, suggesting that an authentic female identity/existence lies in the rejection of such ideals.
Both Vanity Fair and A Room of One’s Own explore and challenge the idea that women are incapable of creating a name and a living for themselves, thus are completely dependent on a masculine figure to provide meaning and purpose to their lives. Thackeray, having published Vanity Fair in 1848, conforms to the widely accepted idea that women lack independence when he makes a note on Ms Pinkerton and remarks “the Lexicographer’s name was always on the lips of the majestic woman… [He] was the cause of her reputation and her fortune.” The way that a man’s name was metaphorically “always on the lips of the majestic woman” and how he was the source of “her reputation and her fortune” expresses this idea, especially through Thackeray’s skilful use of a sanguine tone to communicate that this cultural value, or rather inequality, was not thought of as out of the ordinary. From viewing this in a current light and modernised perspective...
As we progress further into the poems, the different ways Duffy presents gender dominance becomes obvious. In LRC, Duffy develops the budding romantic relationship between the persona and the wolf, deviating from the original tale because the persona is a willing, complicit participant in her own seduction:
In The Descent of Alette Alice Notley has created an epic poem that confronts male hegemony. The tyrant symbolizes the corrupt patriarchy while Alette symbolizes the capabilities of a female to overcome their gender specific personality traits placed on them by society. Notley addresses the thesis continuously throughout the poem using form, symbolism, and historical context.
First, no matter what is represented on stage, the fact that boys are actually playing cross dressing men and women is insistently metaphorical; the literal fact of trans-vestism (that is, the boy actor impersonating either a woman, a woman cross dressed as a man, or a man cross dressed as a woman, not the represented character) is divided between the homoerotic and the blurring of gender. On the other hand, the represented female character who cross dresses functions literally to relieve the boy actor, at least for a time, from impersonating a woman. Represented characters who cross dress may pre-sent a variety of poses, from the misogynist mockery of the feminine to the adroitly and openly homoerotic. In the case of the title character of Jonson's Epicoene, the motif is utilized as disguise intended to effect a surprise ending for Morose and his heterosexual audience, for whom the poet also pr...
The roles and definition of gender and its implications have been and still are complex and often times confusing depending on the circumstance. What really defines masculinity/femininity and can they be interchangeable in the sexes? Can a woman act like a man and vice versa without it somehow going against nature? With this ever changing definition and implication of gender, it is interesting McEwan sets us up in a world seeming to have black and white view of this debate. Throughout Atonement the divide between masculinity and femininity is un-doubtfully present and is almost always hard and fast. The fact that this representation of gender creates ideal circumstances, within the world McEwan’s characters inhabit, and the fact that Briony
“There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles,” George Eliot. Beauty has caused men to move mountain, and jump through countless hoops. It is a quality that is subjective and affects the beholder differently. In Poe’s Ligea and Hawthorne’s The Birthmark, Ligea, Rowena, and Georgina all had different orders of beauty that similarly affects how their husbands saw them. In these two pieces of literature there was an exaltation of beauty as an abstraction that hid the depth of the women and led to deceit and the sense of superiority in their husbands.
‘The woman’ of the poem has no specific identity and this helps us even further see the situation in which the woman is experiencing, the lost of one’s identity. Questions start to be raised and we wonder if Harwood uses this character to portray her views of every woman which goes into the stage of motherhood, where much sacrifice is needed one being the identity that was present in society prior to children.
It is easily inferred that the narrator sees her mother as extremely beautiful. She even sits and thinks about it in class. She describes her mother s head as if it should be on a sixpence, (Kincaid 807). She stares at her mother s long neck and hair and glorifies virtually every feature. The narrator even makes reference to the fact that many women had loved her father, but he chose her regal mother. This heightens her mother s stature in the narrator s eyes. Through her thorough description of her mother s beauty, the narrator conveys her obsession with every detail of her mother. Although the narrator s adoration for her mother s physical appearance is vast, the longing to be like her and be with her is even greater.
Eudora Welty writes with feeling and her “Emphasis is on varying combinations of theme, character, and style.” (Kinc...
Adèle Ratignolle uses art to beautify her home. Madame Ratignolle represents the ideal mother-woman (Bloom 119). Her chief concerns and interests are for her husband and children. She was society’s model of a woman’s role. Madame Ratignolle’s purpose for playing the pia...
On the surface, the poems “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti and “The Thorn” by William Wordsworth appear to be very different literary works. “Goblin Market” was written by a young woman in the Victorian period about two sisters who develop a special bond through the rescue of one sister by the other. “The Thorn” was written by the Romantic poet William Wordsworth about a middle-aged man and his experience overlooking a woman’s emotional breakdown. Material to understanding the works “Goblin Market” and “The Thorn” is recognizing the common underlying themes of sex and gender and how these themes affect perspective in both poems.
However, as time has progressed literature has finally come to terms with the feminism theory within literature and its ideologies. In this specific story, we are able to identify the traits of feminism theory with ease; Hurston allowed the world to finally accept the new dominant roles of women, while also allowing the female character to simultaneously possess every innate feminine trait along with those usually associated with the male
Being a women artist, displaying such an installation was not possible years back. Contrary to the opinions of many students new to the study of feminist literary Criticism, many feminists like men, think that women should be able to stay at home and raise children if they want to do so, and wear bras. Bringing such an art piece, reflection of her inner experiences or having sex in bed after having bad relationship could not be possible before. The main female characters are stereotyped as either “good girls” or “bad girls”. These classifications suggest that if a woman does not admit her male-controlled gender role, then the only role left her is that of a monster. Yet Emin’s confessional art- with its confidences of pregnancy, being raped, destructiveness of guilt, emotional stress- has become much common nowadays with feminist consciousness while in early generation, sharing such experiences lead to the destruction of women’s life. Her unmade bed, surrounded by such bric-bracs tells a story of a depressed, emotionally stressed women artist who asks for a sympathetic shoulder from the viewers by being a transparent soul. “For her British critics it [My Bed] expressed Emin’s sluttish personality and exemplified the detritus of a life quintessentially her own; it was, above all, confessional”, Cherry observes. Emin has limited the word ‘feminist; art practices have been the concerned of an early generation. This point seems to be confirmed by Emin herself, who declares to the discerning nature of her work in which she says that she decides to show either this or that part of the truth, which isn't unavoidably the whole story but it's just what she decides to gives us. As a self-motivated set of influences, feminism no longer titles a unitary or merging project infact it is now being the transformation just as feminist biases are perpetually subject to change. Whereas, looking at Tracey’s other work, Tent “Everyone I Have Ever
This, in fact, is an example of “dynamic decomposition” of which the speaker claims she understands nothing. The ironic contradiction of form and content underlines the contradiction between the women’s presentation of her outer self and that of her inner self. The poem concludes with the line “’Let us go home she is tired and wants to go to bed.’” which is a statement made by the man. Hence, it “appears to give the last word to the men” but, in reality, it mirrors the poem’s opening lines and emphasises the role the woman assumes on the outside as well as her inner awareness and criticism. This echoes Loy’s proclamation in her “Feminist Manifesto” in which she states that women should “[l]eave off looking to men to find out what [they] are not [but] seek within [themselves] to find out what [they] are”. Therefore, the poem presents a “new woman” confined in the traditional social order but resisting it as she is aware and critical of
In conclusion, the poem “Medusa” challenges subordinate traits of women. Duffy strips both the female protagonist and the male character of their names and titles in the poem thereby making them equal. She also illustrates women as domineering shown by the defeat of the male personae. This is Duffy conveying the fact that women are as valued as men regardless of stereotypical attributes and concepts of society.