Analysis Of Levi-Strauss's The Elementary Structures Of Kinship

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Recommended: Language and gender in society

It is perhaps better to start the discussion in the third and last section of this essay with an extract from Levi-Strauss's The Elementary Structures of Kinship which appears at the end of the book. Levi-Strauss concludes his observation of conjugal relations in kinship systems with a deeply-implicative definition of womanhood. Interpreting socio-psychological relations between men and women with the apparatus of linguistics he comes to point to a contradiction in nature of women, since according to studies of kinship systems women are at the same time "speakers" and "spoken": “But women could never become just a sign and nothing more, since even in a man's world she is still a person, and since insofar as she is defined as a sign she must …show more content…

In case of men- women relation it has been mostly women who allow themselves to be signs interpreted by men, let their meanings and implications discovered by men, and are applied as words to be articulated, circulated, and communicated by men. It seems that this amenability and flexibility and tendency to pander to men's wishes are developed in women both by their nature and social conditioning. The whole process of menstruation, childbearing or pregnancy, and laceration which are biologically unique to women make them for at least a certain period of time more caring, affectionate, emotional, and responsible than men as they have direct ties with a new living creature inside their bodies. After going through this physical experience of bearing, having, and feeding a child the social norms expect women to have the main responsibility in taking care of the children and household in a family (the latter one is a conditioned not natural division of labor as both men and women share the same need to become developed not only in the private aspect of life but also in its social-economic

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