Social Possibilities in The Female Man, by Joanna Russ

1308 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The role of women in patriarchal society

Often when looking at issues that involve the politics of socialization, the counter-response is often an archetypal polarization of a given personal philosophy. Good examples of this occur across the board – someone arguing for feminist principles can be labeled a man-hater, but someone who is more moderate in their views could be labeled as being too compromising, or weak. These polarized views are a good way to compartmentalize different ideals and social orders if used to separate. In Joanna Russ’ The Female Man there are many ways to take the fragmentation of the four main characters of the story, the potential outcomes of each social possibility. I will look to show that these fragmented characters represent the incompleteness of any one “absolute” vision, highlighted by the utopian world of Whileaway, arguing that none of the potential outcomes are the “right answer”, displaying the incompleteness of answering questions definitely when everything is based on perspective and the relational value of power. Plenty of examples abound in the text, displaying how “incomplete” each vision of the world can be. This commentary could be seen as a display of how there is no “one” answer to any of the questions posed by the book. Specifically though, in Janet’s future world of Whileaway, it seems utopian a balance between the natural and scientific, where things are scientifically and rationally decided to the best possible outcome for everyone. There is no room for the absurdity of life, which you could glean from her lack of understanding in other realms of questioning that don’t follow the Whileawayan “rational” thinking. The fact that repeatedly there are “tenets” of what Whileawayans do, even down to generalizations of what they... ... middle of paper ... ...e reversal of patriarchal gender roles, which is a benefit to no one. Having all of the strength and beneficial qualities it takes to usurp power from the oppressor, Jael’s representation is also incomplete, as she only gains power by oppressing another, much in the same way the male roles oppress Jeannine. In summary, since the four characters could represent the fragmentation of identity due to external pressures, we can suggest that Russ may be displaying the incompleteness of following one particular method of dealing with the world. As we discuss in class with the “lenses” of critical theory, we cannot construct a whole image of the world from one view – much as we cannot construct gender from only the traditional or radical, or inclusive or exclusive “solutions” to problems. WORKS CITED Russ, Joanna. The Female Man. New York: Bantam, 1975. Print.

Show More
Related

  • With attention to women’s and gender history’s appropriation of an androcentric framework, discuss the significance of the ‘public and private sph...

    1508 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...t for specificities such as class, race, ethnicity or sexuality. Similarly, within gender history, the separate spheres were used to create a complementary division of male and female/public and private; a harmonious narrative which unsettlingly lessened male domination as a political problem. In both gender and women’s history, the appropriation of the separate spheres framework indicated a proximity to the phallocentric world-view of the very bourgeois with whom it claimed to analyse. This appropriation initiated reductive generalizations which undercut history’s disciplinary sense of the complexity of social causation, and destabilized feminist commitments to analyses meant to inspire change. Consequently the appropriation of the spheres framework in both cases, can be seen as potentially obscuring as well as revealing how women actually lived their lives.

    Read More

  • Herland

    496 Words  | 1 Pages

    The novel is described as a feminist novel. Yet, this is not exactly acurate. The absence of men in the utopian society may seem extreme to some, and it is. This is how Gilman makes her point. She does not create a world without men because men are terrible creatures who have corrupted the world. The utopia which lacks men is a clean peaceful place, which surpasses in almost every way the competitive societies that we live in. But, it is neither the absence of men nor the presence of women that makes this to be the case. Gender, in this novel, is symbolic for the most part. Gilman does separate the two genders to destroy stereo types, but also to establish a concrete difference between the two worlds. The male world is not bad, and the female good is not good. The world in which people are defined by others and limited is bad, while the world in which people are free to grow without being defined or compared to others, and are able to see the unity of all people is good. Comparing Herland to the real world, Gilman begins destroying gender based stereotypes. Because there are no distinctions of gender in Herland, nor any superficial characteristics which accompany gender, Herland women take on the roles of all people without considering any limitations. These women are strong, agile, nurturing, intelligent, cooperative, and able to rely on themselves. They are not "typical" females. As Gilman explains through the male character Van, "Those 'feminine charms' we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process" (p59). In the same way, stereotypes about men can be thrown up as well. Gilman shows the reader that if people stop basing their identities on what others want, they will no longer be slaves to limitations. They will be free to discover their true selves and will allow others to do the same. Gilman shows readers that men and women are distinct people, but reminds us that they are people first. This can be seen when one of women of Herland named Somel, questions the men by saying, "But surely there are characteristics enough which belong to People, aren't there?

    Read More

  • Summary Of Gail Bederman's Manliness And Civilization

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization, she aims to describe the concepts of manliness and masculinity at the turn of the century. Bederman explains that the concept of what it means to be a man is ever changing as a result of the ideology of the time as well as the material actions of the men. During the Progressive Era, many forces were at work that put pressure on the supremacy of white, middle class men. Some of these forces included the growing move toward empowered women, the unionization of the working class, and the move from self-employment to big, corporate business. She delves into the way that both racism and sexism were used to build up the concept of masculinity and the turn of the century discourse on civilization.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Destructive Male By Elizabeth Cady Stanton

    1100 Words  | 3 Pages

    All women should hold rights equal to men because a society governed by men and women as a unit would promote stability and peace. In “The Destructive Male” written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Stanton argues through diction and the employment of ethos, pathos, and logos that giving rights to women, and allowing women to hold positions in politics and government, would be beneficial to the whole of society.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in Society

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    Suggested roles of all types set the stage for how human beings perceive their life should be. Gender roles are one of the most dangerous roles that society faces today. With all of the controversy applied to male vs. female dominance in households, and in the workplace, there seems to be an argument either way. In the essay, “Men as Success Objects”, the author Warren Farrell explains this threat of society as a whole. Farrell explains the difference of men and women growing up and how they believe their role in society to be. He justifies that it doesn’t just appear in marriage, but in the earliest stages of life. Similarly, in the essay “Roles of Sexes”, real life applications are explored in two different novels. The synthesis between these two essays proves how prevalent roles are in even the smallest part of a concept and how it is relatively an inevitable subject.

    Read More

  • Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own

    655 Words  | 2 Pages

    Beton discovers men’s anger toward women by glancing through an apparently well-known Professor von X’s book titled The Mental, Moral, and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex. The mere title makes her angry—outraged that the words could even form the title of a book, which, to Beton, is the natural response to “be[ing] told that one is naturally the inferior of a little man” (32). She does not know at first why men are so critical of women, but she does know that their arguments say more about them than they do about the women they write about. The books “had been written in the red light of emotion,” she says, “and not in the white light of truth” (33), meaning that the men Beton speaks of are responding to something—some feeling or condition that they, as a sex identifying with one another, are sensing, rather than merely expressing a natural fact as their rhetoric seems to suggest.

    Read More

  • Louise Mallard in The Story Of An Hour

    1613 Words  | 4 Pages

    explores not only the way in which patriarchal society, through its concepts of gender , its objectification of women in gender roles, and its institutionalization of marriage, constrains and oppresses women, but also the way in which it, ultimately, erases women and feminine desires. Because women are only secondary and other, they become the invisible counterparts to their husbands, with no desires, no voice, no identity. (Wohlpart 3).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Gender As A Social Structure

    1412 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “Gender as a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism”, the author Barbara Risman explains her theory to readers about how gender should be thought of as a social structure. Thinking of it as such would allow people to examine how gender is ingrained in almost every part of society, thus putting gender on an equal level of importance with economics and politics. In society, gender dictates many of the opportunities and limitations that an individual may face in his or her lifetime. Barbara Risman points out the three aspects of the gender structure that happen at an individual, interactional, and institutional level (Risman, pg. 446). First, gender contributes to how a person will develop themselves in life. This is the “individual level”. At an interactional level, men and women face different expectations that are set by society. The individual and interactional level are linked because sometimes, changes to one level can affect the other. The third level, the institutional level, notes that gender is affected by laws, rules, and organizational practices that dictate what

    Read More

  • Gender Differences throughout History

    844 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through investigations of writers as diverse as Silvia Federici, and Angela Davis, Maria Mies, and Sharon Hays, Judith Butler, and Steven Gregory we have come to understand that confronting the categorization of gender differences is a complex and nuanced project. Whether one is an ontologist, exploring the metaphysical nature of gender differences (that may or may not lead down the road of essentialism) or a phenomenologist exploring how exactly it is that one “does” gender—to the extent that there even exists a concept called gender—one must employ a varied and multipartite approach. Writers such as Federici, Mies, and Davis sketched out a framework of the history of gender roles for us. From what Federici calls a time of primitive consumption through feudalism, to the time of slavery and rapid industrialization and, indeed, through our current technological revolution, we have seen the basic gender differences between the sexes evolve over time. To be sure, our notions of what is expected from both women and men have changed since prehistoric times, and they continue to evolve. Sharon Hays in the chapter “Pyramids of Innequality” of her book Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform shows us how, in the United States, poverty and access to the social safety net have been raced and gendered. She provides a springboard for further investigation.

    Read More

  • Heart Of Darkness Analysis

    1215 Words  | 3 Pages

    A woman's world may be disconnected from the realities of the actual world, but it acts as a safety blanket to secure sanity for not only herself, but also for a man to avoid losing hope. When Marlow, a sailor who sets off to the Congo for exploration, speaks to his aunt before his departure, he sees how women's worlds are “too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset” (77). The world of a woman is set up so that she can bloc...

    Read More

  • The Effects of Femininity

    1573 Words  | 4 Pages

    In order for us to deal with how a consideration of femininity can effect our understanding of a literary text, we must also be able to grasp the notion of `feminism' and `Feminist Literary Theory'. A dictionary definition of `feminism' is: `the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of the equality of the sexes.' Although this leans towards feminism in the historical sense of the word, it still provides the grounds, or foundations, from which feminist literary theories were created. Feminists argue against the stereotyping and social construction of female norms, seeing them as created by men in order to establish their own sense of power. It is thought that while males suggest that gender is sex and not actually a construct, the female role will become much more passive, stereotyped and controlled.

    Read More

  • Social Construction Theory Analysis

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    Almost all of us live daily with the effects of social construction, whereby one is observed through their cultural or social practices. Society discriminates against us depending on skin colour and social class. Carole Vance in her article “Social Construction Theory”, has a unique approach to social construction of gender. She painstakingly points out that these cultural influences affect individuals on a personal basis, but society as a whole.

    Read More

  • Gender as a Social Construct

    1772 Words  | 4 Pages

    Lorber, J. (1994). Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender. Paradoxes of Gender (pp. 54-67). New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles Of Men And Women In Jane Austen's Persuasion

    792 Words  | 2 Pages

    What is within the boundaries of the feminine is always considered to have less status and power and is always subordinate and marginal—women always remain ‘other’. I perceive feminism as a part of the process of challenging the boundaries of the socially constructed role for women in our society—a process which through struggle will create for women a different notion of the normal and natural and a different tradition of being female. (Goodman, Harrop 4)

    Read More

  • Gender Identity Essay

    718 Words  | 2 Pages

    Society’s gender infrastructure has changed since the 1920’s and the nineteen amendment that allowed women the right to vote. Or so we thought, many of the gender expectations that were engraved into our early society still remain intact today. Women for many people still mean an immaterial, negligible, and frivolous part of our society. However, whatever the meaning of the word women one has, the same picture is always painted; that of a housewife, mother, and daughter. Women are expected to fallow the structural identity of living under her husband 's submissions. Threatening the social norm of what is accepted to be a woman in society can put in jeopardy the personal reputation of a woman, such treating her as a whore. But, what happens

    Read More

More about Social Possibilities in The Female Man, by Joanna Russ

Open Document