Language constitutes a necessary factor in the analysis of a female voice. Femininity in writing can be discerned in a privileging of the voice: writing and voice are in fact woven together. The speaking woman is entirely her voice for she physically materializes what she is thinking: she signifies it with her body. Woman, in other words, is wholly and physically present in her voice and writing is no more than the extension of this self- identical prolongation of the speech act. What we find is that by adopting a feminine mode of writing Anita Desai is trying to create a feminine textual space, for the woman occupies a space in this world and this allows the existence of a female utterance which has been ignored and suppressed in male literature.
Is Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone, "qualified" to write a first-person narrator in a female voice? After all, as a man, what does he know about women's issues? In this essay I will discuss the issue of "gender-bending" writers and discuss Mr. Lamb's use of such tool.
Sharon Kinoshita describes four "widely divergent assessments of the female voice in the work of Marie de France," (265). While some critics believe Marie's feminism lies inherently in her writing style, others believe Marie made strategic moves to reveal her femininity. Each differing opinion holds true in some instances, but fall apart in others. Regardless of the differences of opinion regarding Marie de France's feminism, I can agree with most critics when they say Marie is one of the most celebrated female poets of her time. Marie de France will continue to be celebrated for years as a poet who wasn't afraid to show her female voice.
Gender Matters is a collection of various essays on feminist linguistic texts analysis, by Sara Mills. Mills develops methods of analyzing literary and non-literary texts, in addition to conversational analysis based on a feminist approach. The author draws on data from her collection of essays gathered over the last two decades on feminism during the 1990s. The essays focus on gender issues, the representation of gender in reading, writing, and in public speaking. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of feminists’ analysis of sexism in literature and the relation between gender and politeness. The article is informative for my research paper, as my topic is going to cover language analysis of the text and who women reading and writing differs according to the discourse analysis within linguistic, psychology, case studies audiences and surveys. The book would be helpful, particularly the last three essays that discusses gender, public speaking, the question of politeness and impoliteness in public speaking. Mills’ analysis is not complete without including the idea of global notions of both women and men, to see whether women and men write and read in the same way globally. Therefore, an update would enrich the book’s discussion section. Although, Mills addresses the class and race theme in language and public speaking, I will only look into the role of language that plays a part in doing or reducing gender in literary, non-literary texts and in conversation.
There is no doubt that the literary written by men and women is different. One source of difference is the sex. A woman is born a woman in the same sense as a man is born a man. Certainly one source of difference is biological, by virtue of which we are male and female. “A woman´s writing is always femenine” says Virginia Woolf
`Plays and Poetry by early modern women are primarily concerned with negotiating a position from which women could speak. A concern for ideas of gender, language and silence is, therefore, central, though its expression is sometimes open, sometimes covert.' Discuss with reference to Aemilia Lanyer and / or Elizabeth Cary.
It is the purpose of this essay therefore to demonstrate that there is a profound influence in the use of sound and language in relation to the discrimination of women. By showing that the manipulation of sound and language in regards to the films’ narrative structure is responsible for this apparent persecution, a clearer understanding should be gained as to why the figure of the female is observed in this form.
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar pursue a definition for what it means to be an authoress in a male dominated culture of writers. The central question for Feminists, according to Gilbert and Gubar, is: “Does the Queen try to sound like the King, imitating his tone, is inflections, his phrasing, his point of view? Or does she ‘talk back’ to him in her own vocabulary, her own timbre, insisting on her own viewpoint?” However, I cannot overlook the prospect of a man feeling just as mad and cooped up writing a text that others would view as out of his league. Chinua Achebe is the epitome of this Madman in the Attic. Born and raised in London, and brought up Christian he was as far away from being Okonkwo as I am as a white middle class American female. If Gilbert and Gubar are accusing women of feeling out of place writing in what then was a man’s field of expertise then Achebe masterfully channels the feminine madness into Things Fall Apart by writing a culture of strong independent women masked by silent passive girls.
There is much debate in feminist circles over the "best" way to liberate women through writing. Some argue that a female writer should, in an effort to recapture her stolen identity, attack her oppressive influences and embrace her femininity, simultaneously fostering dimorphic literary, linguistic, and social arenas. Others contend that the feminization of writing pigeonholes women into an artistic slave morality, a mindset that expends creative energy on battle and not production, and inefficiently overturns stereotypes and foments positive social change; rather, one should lose gender self-consciousness and write androgynously.
illuminated her disparity of being a woman in a man's world. As one reads her
...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).
Besides, she highlights that indirection, deviousness, evasion are traditionally covers for femininity and also the meaning of disguising aggression against things they are and she suggest through these attitudes, a woman expresses discomposure about, and subtly subverts, the traditional lots, the classical and traditional powerlessness and the function and power of women and men.
Throughout history, women writers used pen names and pseudonyms to avoid the eyes of the patriarchal society. The female writers were no strangers to harsh criticism from the gender-biased readers regarding their artistic works. However such emphasis on gender discrimination coined the words, feminism and sexism, which now reflect on the past and the present conflicts. In the book A Room Of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf tracks down the history of women and fiction to find the answer. She argues, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. She chants on and on about the topic of “women and fiction”, contemplating the role of women in the traditional domain and the virtues of women writers. Although, Woolf may have contemplated over such awareness that a woman needs an atmosphere of her own in which nobody can intrude, the modern world has prevailed over such hindrances throughout technological innovations that offer freedom of speech. Also, economical affluence is not a necessity for women to engage in the fictional world but rather a sufficient condition in the modern world. Thus Virginia Woolf’s predictions failed to represent the current vantage point revolving around women and fiction.
Ramamoorthy, P. “My Life is My Own: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s Women” Feminism and Recent Fiction in English Ed. Sushila Singh. New Delhi: Prestige, 1991.
In contemporary society, feminism is emerging as a theory of social construct. In literature it is often challenging to discover female characters that go beyond the limits of marginalized female stereotypes and roles as a means to transgress beyond societal norms. Women are characterized as subordinate objects, amid the dominant patriarchal nature entrenched amid the epic. In The Ramayana, women are portrayed as powerless objects that succumb to the manipulation of men as the text portrays a false empowerment of women, which ultimately succumb to common archetypes accustomed to women in literature; implementing a hierarchy of gender that institutionalizes male dominance amid female inferiority. The women of The Ramayana struggle to oppose the systemic patriarchy and pursue a pathway towards attaining dynamic elements of power, that enable their ability to embody autonomous authority. In Valmiki’s The Ramayana, while women appear to be empowered, ultimately they are feeble instruments utilized to fulfill the desires of men.
Many female writers see themselves as advocates for other creative females to help find their voice as a woman. Although this may be true, writer Virginia Woolf made her life mission to help women find their voice as a writer, no gender attached. She believed women had the creativity and power to write, not better than men, but as equals. Yet throughout history, women have been neglected in a sense, and Woolf attempted to find them. In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, she focuses on what is meant by connecting the terms, women and fiction. Woolf divided this thought into three categories: what women are like throughout history, women and the fiction they write, and women and the fiction written about them. When one thinks of women and fiction, what they think of; Woolf tried to answer this question through the discovery of the female within literature in her writing.