Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body and Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine
In Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body and Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine differences between male and female roles in society become distinct. Through these differences, an intricate web of male and female characters seems to be woven, and we can see the clarity between gender roles. With the support of Churchill’s Cloud Nine by Jeffrey Barber, “You see, I am no stranger to love”: Jeanette Winterson and the Extasy of the Word by Celia Shiffer, and “Body Languages: Scientific and Aesthetic Discourses in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body,” the idea of love and gender roles present in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body and Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine become alive, and we see how these characters both form to and break from their assigned roles. The roles of the characters are exemplified by distinct differences between the genders through the presence of love and gender stereotypes, the dominant idea of nature, and the struggle between male and female characters with specific reference to sexual relationships and marriage.
Gender stereotypes seem characteristic in both Written on the Body and Cloud Nine. Clearly the women are expected to be submissive, while the men are to be assertive. The first time we see the idea of these gender stereotypes in Cloud Nine is with Edward and his sister Victoria’s doll. Dolls are clearly not toys for boys; they are only for little girls. And so, when Edward is caught playing with the doll, his father and mother show disappointment in him because it is not proper for a boy to play with a doll. Edward gives the doll up unwillingly. The second time Edward is caught playing with the doll Betty says ...
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...tinguishable, often seems figures as a condition of being human rather than coded with female specificity” (Shiffer 33). Schiffer draws our attention to a very important concept brought about throughout the two novels; the concept of loss. Love can only be measured by loss, and in Written on the Body the narrator realizes the importance of Louise and the impact she had on her life only after she is gone. However, when Betty leaves Clive in Cloud Nine she realizes all that she can do for herself, which furthermore signifies Clive’s irrelevance to her life. Both of these works explicitly work for and against one another both forming to and breaking from very intricate connections. Through both texts, we can see how each of the characters wants to conform to certain stereotypes, and how ultimately, many of the characters end up breaking from the stereotypes set forth.
Bordo, Susan. "Beauty (Re)discovers the male body." Bordo, Susan. Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Ninth Edition. Bedford/St.Martin's, 2011. 189-233.
After her diagnosis of chronic kidney failure in 2004, psychiatrist Sally Satel lingered in the uncertainty of transplant lists for an entire year, until she finally fell into luck, and received her long-awaited kidney. “Death’s Waiting List”, published on the 5th of May 2006, was the aftermath of Satel’s dreadful experience. The article presents a crucial argument against the current transplant list systems and offers alternative solutions that may or may not be of practicality and reason. Satel’s text handles such a topic at a time where organ availability has never been more demanded, due to the continuous deterioration of the public health. With novel epidemics surfacing everyday, endless carcinogens closing in on our everyday lives, leaving no organ uninflected, and to that, many are suffering, and many more are in desperate request for a new organ, for a renewed chance. Overall, “Death’s Waiting List” follows a slightly bias line of reasoning, with several underlying presumptions that are not necessarily well substantiated.
In the stories “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin both women suffer through expectations brought on by society and the ideas of marriage. Emily loses her sanity trying to obtain love and live up to the expectations of society. Emily kills the man she loved so that he would never leave, and so that she could maintain her reputation. She was put on a pedestal, and that pedestal would end up being her destruction. Louise is a woman afflicted by heart problems, which could relate her unhappiness. After losing her husband she starts to feel free; however when her husband walks through the door she dies. Louise was a prisoner of societies making, she was never given a voice. She could never explain her unhappiness because women were expected to love and obey their husband’s without complaints. Marriage to these women meant different things, although the idea of marriage damaged both women. Louise and Emily were women damaged by the pressures of who they are expected to be.
The treatment of females from the 18th century through the 21st century have only gotten worse due to society’s ignorant judgment of the gender. Of which, is the change from the previous housewife like actions to the modern day body figure. This repulsive transaction is perceived throughout literature. From the 19th century’s short story, “The Story of an Hour” written by Kate Chopin in 1894 and the 20th century’s poem, “Barbie Doll” composed by Marge Piercy in 1971.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek to find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
There are many aspects for my mind to conceive while reading the articles why I write by George Orwell and Joan Didion. There are many different factors in triggering an author’s imagination to come up with what they want to write, and why they want to write it. In most writings a purpose is not found before the writer writes, but often found after they decide to start writing.
Butler, Judith. "Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion." Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge, 1993. 121-140.
The comparison and contrast between these two stories is evident. They both developed as characters in similar settings but have different situations and outcomes. They differed in their goals and how they would achieve their goals and their mental health status sets them apart. These stories have contrast and similarities, over all the differences outweigh the comparisons.
...ing: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion." Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." 121-156.New York: Routledge, 1993.
The short stories “The Ninny” by Anton Chekov and “Mrs. Bertha Flowers” by Maya Angelou both have similar themes that explore power and privilege. Both stories explore the theme of power and privilege because there are characters who have power and privilege and characters who do not, the benefit and usefulness of having power and privilege, and both stories teach a similar lesson.
Volpe, Edmond L. "James's Theory of Sex." Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Portrait of a Lady: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Peter Buitenhuis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968.
Throughout history society has been controlled by men, and because of this women were exposed to some very demanding expectations. A woman was expected to be a wife, a mother, a cook, a maid, and sexually obedient to men. As a form of patriarchal silencing any woman who deviated from these expectations was often a victim of physical, emotional, and social beatings. Creativity and individuality were dirty, sinful and very inappropriate for a respectful woman. By taking away women’s voices, men were able to remove any power that they might have had. In both Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”, we see that there are two types of women who arise from the demands of these expectations. The first is the obedient women, the one who has buckled and succumbed to become an empty emotionless shell. In men’s eyes this type of woman was a sort of “angel” perfect in that she did and acted exactly as what was expected of her. The second type of woman is the “rebel”, the woman who is willing to fight in order to keep her creativity and passion. Patriarchal silencing inspires a bond between those women who are forced into submission and/or those who are too submissive to maintain their individuality, and those women who are able and willing to fight for the ability to be unique.
There has been a long and on going discourse on the battle of the sexes, and Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex reconfigures the social relation that defines man and women, and how far women has evolved from the second position given to them. In order for us to define what a woman is, we first need to clarify what a man is, for this is said to be the point of derivation (De Beauvoir). And this notion presents to us the concept of duality, which states that women will always be treated as the second sex, the dominated and lacking one. Woman as the sexed being that differs from men, in which they are simply placed in the others category. As men treat their bodies as a concrete connection to the world that they inhabit; women are simply treated as bodies to be objectified and used for pleasure, pleasure that arise from the beauty that the bodies behold. This draws us to form the statement that beauty is a powerful means of objectification that every woman aims to attain in order to consequently attain acceptance and approval from the patriarchal society. The society that set up the vague standard of beauty based on satisfaction of sexual drives. Here, women constantly seek to be the center of attention and inevitably the medium of erection.
There is no doubt that the literary written by men and women is different. One source of difference is the sex. A woman is born a woman in the same sense as a man is born a man. Certainly one source of difference is biological, by virtue of which we are male and female. “A woman´s writing is always femenine” says Virginia Woolf
Simone de Beauvoir, the author of the novel The Second Sex, was a writer and a philosopher as well as a political activist and feminist. She was born in 1908 in Paris, France to an upper-middle class family. Although as a child Beauvoir was extremely religious, mostly due to training from her mother as well as from her education, at the age of fourteen she decided that there was no God, and remained an atheist until she died. While attending her postgraduate school she met Jean Paul Sartre who encouraged her to write a book. In 1949 she wrote her most popular book, The Second Sex. This book would become a powerful guide for modern feminism. Before writing this book de Beauvoir did not believe herself to be a feminist. Originally she believed that “women were largely responsible for much of their own situation”. Eventually her views changed and she began to believe that people were in fact products of their upbringing. Simone de Beauvoir died in Paris in 1986 at the age of 78.