Oppression Marilyn Frye Summary

Marilyn Frye, in her article Oppression, explores the pervasive presence of oppressive forces and the resultant inequality from which women suffer. She presents qualifiers and subsequent situations that outline her interpretation of the subjugation of women. Frye’s views may be seen as radical due to their extremist nature and unwillingness to conform, but undeniably present valid points and successfully rebels against the social construction she so strongly despises. Frye argues that the root cause of gender inequality derives from what she calls ‘oppressive structures’ and the inability or unwillingness of society to recognize these restrictive forces. Frye’s perspective differs from that of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in many ways but also shows

In her article, Frye uses a variety of examples and hypothetical situations to describe to the reader how oppression is hard to recognize, difficult to understand, and that the full impact on the oppressed cannot be realized fully by those outside the barriers of oppression. Frye uses the example of the birdcage to comment on the social blinders and what she refers to as microscopic view of “the cage”. The birdcage is built of many wires that all work together to hold the bird in, and one must look at the cage as a whole, not just each individual wire, to understand what constrains the bird. Frye summarizes this by saying, “one can study the elements of an oppressive structure with great care and some good will without seeing the structure as a whole”. In a later analogy she describes a prison, establishing that a person can see the bars from both the inside of the cell and the outside, but the impact of the bars on the imprisoned is far different than the impact of the bars on the free man. These analogies serve to exemplify the oppressive structure surrounding women. Frye argues that to determine if someone