Postmodernism is fully committed to accommodating the voices of the eccentric and the marginalized. Herein lays the close connection between feminism and postmodernism. The women writer manipulates stances that critique domination and thus lays bare the multivocal worlds of different societies and different cultures. Indian women writers assert that a Feminist theory should be explicitly historical, attuned to the cultural specificity of different societies and periods and to different groups within societies and periods. They wish to analyse the workings of patriarchy in all its manifestations, desire to think in terms of pluralities and diversities rather than unities and universals and articulate ways of thinking about gender without simply reversing the old hierarchies or confirming them.
It is necessary to distinguish the concept of "epistolary novel" of the more common, such as "epistolary literature", "epistolography”, "epistolary fiction", etc., and motivate the need to consider the novel in letters not as a speech form associated with a very different subject, but as a literary genre (Bray 29). Consideration of the epistolary novel as a distinct genre structure will be appropriate to begin with the functioning in its form letters and correspondence. This main and, at first sight, purely f... ... middle of paper ... ...the time it was issued. The novel is dedicated to the position of female in society and the consequences which may follow a young girl who does not submit certain rules of conduct. I believe that this novel is a true child of its time and is perfect when seeing it in retrospective.
Templeton, J. 1997. Ibsen’s Women. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press
World War I was an impetus for the rights of women in and out of the work force. Before the war a woman’s place was in the home and, if she was bold enough to work, in positions said to befit someone with such fickle emotions and meager intelligence. This archaic idea was forced to undergo a transformation when the war drafting started to claim all the working men. Job positions previously seen as “men only” were vacated employers who spurned the idea of hiring females were forced to put their ideology away to keep their businesses afloat. Women were soon left behind to support their families in a way never expected of them before.
As mothers, women promoted themselves through their children. Their offspring’s accomplishments were their own. It was one more excuse, Freidan states, for women to forego defining themselves” (Hart 2). Unfortunately, many women thought that there was something wrong with them for not finding complete satisfaction in motherhood and life in suburbia, and they wanted something else to give their life some greater meaning. Baffled by sexism in the workforce, Friedan also remarks on the inconsistency of the changing expectations and the treatment of women in America throughout the twentieth century.
That included having childcare for working mothers. This prepared women to be more aggressive and be more demanding so society would accept them and so they could continue taking on these nontraditional roles after war (“Women in Society”). Working made women more demanding and they stood up themselves. It did take some convincing to have women join the workforce. The concept of working women was encouraged and advertised during the war because employment was necessary.
. . We need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently than we have ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us. Rich is aware of the importance of revising the historical and the literary heritage as it was exclusive vis-à-vis women, and as it must be rewritten to include women’s (her) story and break up with the old stereotypes that were held on women. Rich adds in the same essay: For writers and at this moment for women writers in particular, there is the challenge and promise of a whole new psychic geography to be explored.
The feminist critics to be considered in this essay are Simone de Beauvoir, Elaine Showalter, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Their arguments about the role of sexual difference, the depiction of females in a binary oppositions to male characters and authors, as well as the sociological statements that these roles make shall be discussed. The écriture feminine scholars Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray shall be drawn upon in order to make the arguments of the feminist critics more clear, but also to offer their own critiques to feminist studies, and how they are manifested within the context of literature. Overall, this paper shall argue that the feminist understanding of the critique of literature is required to further the feminist agenda of equalized understanding not just between the male and female sex, but between all people. The first theorist to discuss is Simone de Beauvoir.
By creating differences between the main characters within a novel those traits that are contrasted become more prominent than those traits which they share, and small similarities are given even more meaning. In the case of The Handmaid’s Tale and Lilac Girls character foils create a diversity in the female characters within the novels that shows the ways in which society may force a woman to take power for herself and those who succumb to the standards that society
I begin with the analysis of the differences; these are the setting’s comparison as well as the social context’s one. I have chosen these two aspects since I consider that the social context was a key factor for the development of the feminist movement as well as the histor... ... middle of paper ... ...r. Some critics, and notably, Elaine Showalter points out that Ophelia has become the symbol of the distraught and hysterical woman in modern culture. Atwood's Lady Oracle is a feminist novel even only for the fact that its central theme is about the formation of gender identity. Joan writes and is written about; if Atwood writes about Joan's childhood experiences, about her interaction with male partners and other woman, then Joan writes about the precariousness of feminine subjectivity in a male-dominated world thanks to her character, Charlotte. All in all, I would like to conclude in saying that both literary works can be analyzed, interpreted and argued about from many perspectives; Hamlet, because of the play's dramatic structure and depth of characterization, and Lady Oralce, because of the complexity of the main character and the novel's form novelty.