The Role Of Eve In Boys And Girls By Ani Difranco

The Role of Eve The female gender has come a long way. They conquered and triumphed over gender discrimination in the society. A woman is now a symbol of strength and love. This has not always been the case. The poem “Adam and Eve” by Ani Difranco illustrates how unfairly a woman can be treated. The poem elucidates the arrogance of men, putting women in a position where they do not feel appreciated. Also, the story “Boys and girls” by Alice Munro delineates the stereotypes of being a girl. The story talks about how a little girl and her brother were treated differently because of their genders. The male gender is believed to be better and more elegant. Men are more respected in the society. A man is given power and dominance over a woman.

The moment the narrators, who are both female, tries to act on their emotions, they get discriminated. The narrators in both the poem and story get constant reminder of their place in the society. Also, they know what role they should play as “female.” The society uses the word “female” like any other curse words. “You can’t do that because you are a girl.” In the story “Boys and Girls” the narrator defines the word girl. “It was a definition, always touched with emphasis, with reproach and disappointment.” (Munro 144). The narrator feels like a failure. Nobody seems to appreciate her so she feels like she is disappointing everybody. She has no self-appreciation for herself. People would agree that men have an inborn advantage over women. Some women are considered strong. It might even seem that they possess the characteristics of a man. Yet, they are just aspirants who want to be like a man. Women emotions are heightened. Whereas, men are capable of withstanding dreadful situations. “Emotionality remains a strong and independent force in human affairs, influencing perceptions, coloring memories, binding people together through attraction, keeping them apart through hatred, and regulating their behavior through guilt, shame, and pride” (Lively, Heise 115). People act on their emotions. Sometimes their actions are unreasonable. The poem “Adam and Eve” shows the reader that narrator’s emotion is

Psychology is the state of a human’s mind and how it affects them as an individual. Self-esteem is defined as the level of confidence people have in themselves or their abilities and skills. Emotion can trigger psychological unstableness. In the poem “Adam and Eve”, the narrator is losing her mind. She relates her situation to occurrences in the bible. “I just happened to like apples and I am not afraid of snakes.” (Difranco 1256). She is having anxiety. It is causing her to have hallucinations that she is Eve, and lives in the Garden of Eden with her husband Adam. She also apologies to the man numerous times even though she did not do anything wrong. Her psyche is confused on what is right or wrong. The man is successful in his endeavor of torturing her mind and ridiculing her gender. This causes her to think everything is her fault. “When it does go wrong, our failing (low) self-esteem can get us to make self-destructive decisions such as tolerating mistreatment or harming ourselves or harming others in an effort either to make others love us or to numb us to the pain of our own worthlessness.” (Chowaniec 400). Men have the advantage of command. This makes them in a more controlling position, giving women a disadvantage. “To primitive man, egoism, as instinctive self-preservation, was neces- sary if the individual were to survive the rigors of his existence; but since brain has led man to