In Mrs Beast, Duffy takes a strong feminist stance by encouraging female dominance through taking control of her own sexuality. This is portrayed through the sexual imagery and language used by the protagonist of the poem. The voice of the poem boasts about her intellectual and sexual dominance over her partner, who she names “The Beast”. Her bragging about her sexual experiences is akin to that of a school boy; she describes “the grunts, the groans, the yelps” of her sexual partner, and takes pride in stating that she “had the language”. This suggests that the combination of sexual awareness and higher intelligence in women allows them the power to dominate men. However in this context this feels uncomfortable and somewhat abusive, as her …show more content…
The verb “had” in the past tense has connotations of something that has been lost, or that something has been cumulatively built up. In this context she seems to be a teacher imparting her knowledge of “language” onto her students. How she addresses her audience as “girls” suggests that she considers herself to be a more mature and superior woman in comparison to the “girls” she is addressing. This superior attitude toward others is also observed in her romantic relationship with the Beast through the adjectives she uses to describe him such as “mongrel” and “pig”. From a feminist perspective this does not communicate the message of feminism (women being equal to men) at all, but rather suggests that the speaker is aggressive, entitled and arrogant, perhaps to reverse the ancient gender roles between men and women. The Beast is treated the same way a woman would have been treated before the suffragette’s movement with him being kept “out of sight” when he is not needed. His only value is that his partner gives him. To an audience this feels incredibly uncomfortable as the gender norms that are prevalent in society and traditional narratives are being subverted within Duffy’s poetry, however no societal issues are being solved, the issues of inequality of one gender are simply shifted to the other. Duffy’s poetry seems to not be calling …show more content…
Minor declarative sentences such as “Harder.” Suggests a dominance in her tone, but also the word “harder” has sexual connotations in the context it is used in. This is also shown through her stanza structure as she breaks the first and second stanza mid-sentence, the first ending with “the sex” the second opening with “is better”. The way the sentence is broken across the two stanzas is designed by Duffy to emphasize “sex” as sexuality is a central means of dominating the opposite gender within the poem. The audience is forced to focus on the single word “sex” to emphasise it importance in the power dynamic between herself and the Beast. Emphasising the sex being “better” suggests that she is comparing other members of the opposite sex, suggesting that intrasexual competition is not only between women as suggested by the poker game but is imposed onto men by women based upon how well they sexually gratify their
A pornographic world [What is normal] by Robert Jensen takes an inside look at the culture of masculinity and what role pornography takes in shaping that culture. Jensen describes how he was forced to play a “macho” role as a child out of fear of being bullied and ridiculed for not being manly enough. Pornography use started for him and his friends in grade school – they would steal magazines and hide them to share in a group later. He talks of how he learned of a social concept, called the “ideal of prostitution” (the notion of men “buying” women in various forms of undress, solely for their pleasure), at a young age. While there has always been a stigma around pornography, whether stemming from moral or religious reasons, Jenson continued to use porn until his 30s.
The author faces both gender and religious oppression in her home. At first, the author seems like she was a young and immature child, getting an occasional whipping every so often, that she is “used to.” This was partly due to the fact that the author did not act like what a girl should. The author states that she was
Baron Richard Von Krafft-Ebing, a 19th century German psychiatrist, was quoted as having said, "We find that the sexual instinct, when disappointed and unappeased, frequently seeks and finds a substitute in religion." This may have been the condition of Margery Kempe when she desired to cease all sexual activity with her spouse because of her devotion to God. Instead of performing her duties as a wife, she chose instead to spread her knowledge of God to her community and did so not only in speech, but also in literature. Whatever her motivation for creating such descriptive language, it is evident that her faith in God conquered both her fear of public opinion and the constraints placed upon all women during the period. Living in the 1400s, she steps out of a woman's role and into the territory of a man by living her life publicly, abandoning her position of mother and wife, and recording her life in writing. Fortunately, because she was writing for religious reasons, her work was both permitted and accepted. In The Book of Margery Kempe, she describes her experiences with brilliant imagery, some of which is sexual, all of which is sensual. By using her own senses to portray her spiritual...
In The Introduction to the History of Sexuality, Foucault explains how during the 19th century with the raise of new societies, the discourse or knowledge about sex was not confronted with repulsion but it “put into operation an entire machinery for producing true discourses concerning sex” (Foucault 69). In fact, this spreading of discourse on sexuality itself gives a clear account of how sexuality has been controlled and confined because it was determined in a certain kind of knowledge that carries power within it. Foucault reflects on the general working hypothesis or “repressive hypothesis,” and how this has exercised power to suppress people’s sexuality. It has power on deciding what is normal or abnormal and ethical or unethical about sexuality. Through discourses of life and sexuality, power is exercised because humans learned how to behave in relation to sexuality, which method keep individuals controlled and regulated. This explains why people experience that sense of behaving inappropriate when we talk about sex in a different way than the whole society. Foucault points up how sexuality is not just treated in terms of morality, but it is a matter of knowledge and “truth.” However, these discourses, including sexual discourses are not true or false, but they are just understood to be the truth or falsehood to control society. As a result, sexuality begins to be explored in a scientific way, developing the “truth” science of sex (Foucault 69). For Foucault, he asserts that sexuality has developed as a form of science that keeps us all afraid of such phenomena, which people think to be true, thus this science helps society to discipline and control individuals’ behaviors.
Unlike sex, the history of sexuality is dependant upon society and limited by its language in order to be defined and understood.
Not only does this personification alter the pace of the poem, but the fact that the woman’s breasts – important sexual organs and symbols of female sexuality – are portrayed as sleeping conveys a lack of arousal and general desire, particularly on the behalf of the woman. This sense of a lack of desire between the gypsy and the woman is communicated later in the poem through the description of the characters’ undressing before they begin to have sex:
The most difficult part of any modern theological debate is choosing the authority. With the variety of Christian denominations, individual thinkers, and outside influences, and it is often difficult to reach a general agreement. In her essay, “Homosexuality: A Case Study in Moral Argument,” Catholic theologian Lisa Cahill examines four major authorities and different ways to determine how they work together to produce a cohesive Christian ethic. Though she fails to give a definitive, quantifiable method of describing the interactions between the authorities, her final judgment, approval of some aspects of homosexuality, indicates that she values modern cultural context and general biblical themes over church tradition and specific biblical texts.
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
"They turn casually to look at you, distracted, and get a mild distracted surprise, you're gone. Their blank look tells you that the girl they were fucking is not there anymore. You seem to have disappeared.(pg.263)" In Minot's story Lust you are play by play given the sequential events of a fifteen year old girls sex life. As portrayed by her thoughts after sex in this passage the girl is overly casual about the act of sex and years ahead of her time in her awareness of her actions. Minot's unique way of revealing to the reader the wild excursions done by this young promiscuous adolescent proves that she devalues the sacred act of sex. Furthermore, the manner in which the author illustrates to the reader these acts symbolizes the likeness of a list. Whether it's a list of things to do on the weekend or perhaps items of groceries which need to be picked up, her lust for each one of the boys in the story is about as well thought out and meaningful as each item which has carelessly and spontaneously been thrown on to a sheet of paper as is done in making a list. This symbolistic writing style is used to show how meaningless these relationships were but the deeper meaning of why she acted the way she did is revealed throughout the story. Minot cleverly displayed these catalysts in between the listings of her relationships.
The essay, Why Shouldn’t Tommy and Jim Have Sex? A Defense of Homosexuality by John Corvino addresses a topic that has long been controversial for more years than people can count. This topic, like a never-stopping debate, often brings various opinions onto the table, including religious morals, human future and procreation. Homosexuality has been seen as a serious sin through many people’s eyes and is often accused by others of being “immoral” and “unnatural” (Corvino). People often have a hard time accepting couples who practice relationship with the same sex. In the article, Corvino rejects the idea that homosexual sex is unnatural and immoral. He defended for his gay friend’s rights throughtout
In the book History of Sexuality: An introduction, Volume 1 by Michel Foucault, he discusses the “repressive hypothesis” which he had developed. Sexual repression was due to the rise of the bourgeois. He suggests that the repressive hypothesis is important for discourse on the revolution of sexuality. Foucault has recognized the repressive hypothesis as a form of discourse. The repressive hypothesis has power to repress the debate of sexuality. Foucault mentions that society has created control over how people talk about sex over time. In the 17th century with the rise of the bourgeoisie, there had been control on the discourse of sex. In the 18th century, sex was studied for the means of regulating the demographic of the population. Sex lives
De la Cruz starts off her poem calling out men for laying misplaced blame on women. She begins stating, “You fight their stubbornness, then, weightily, you say it was their lightness when it was your guile.” De la Cruz directly infers men force themselves on women, proceeding after to blame the woman for seducing them. She implies the men don’t own up to their lust, instead they shift the focus away from themselves in a form of self preservation. De la Cruz belittles men claiming, “In all of your crazy shows you act just like a child who plays the bogeyman of which he’s then afraid.” De la Cruz implies men play a game
Some linguists, as Lanser notes, have argued that there is a woman's language or discourse of the powerless 'speech that is polite, emotional, enthusiastic, gossipy, talkative, uncertain dull and chatty' in contrast to men's speech or powerful speech. We may not agree that women's speech is essentially like this, but The Yellow Wallpaper suggests that there is certainly a particular way that men expect women to speak and behave. As Ford notes 'There can be no doubt that the narrator dwells in the middle of a Patriarchy ' ( Gilman , 1997, p. 309) She is living in 'ancestral halls', has just given birth to a baby boy and is...
In chapter two, the narrator goes to the British Museum in search of answers. During research, she uncovers that women are common topics of literature. However, none of the literature written about them is penned by women. When she reveals her findings for the definition of woman, she uses words such as weak, inferior, vane, and etc. that define woman. I think the narrator uses these words to emphasize the way men perceive women as being the weaker sex.
To what extent does Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Medusa’ challenge stereotypical masculine and feminine attributes?