Saturday, October 13, 2007

With a Feminist Eye

Let me start by saying when I first read "Things Fall Apart" I was in the 8th grade. Never did I stop to think I was reading it from one point of view and that I could read it from several. In order to read literature as a feminist based o what I read, one has to be able to cite the pangs of women in the book. According to the text "women's experience, many feminist critics claims, will lead them to value works differently from their male counterparts, who may regard the problems women characteristically encounter as of limited interest." though this was noted as a tool needed to read the material as a woman it seemed slightly sexist and derogatory to me. Yes it is correct that on a personal level as a woman you would be able to relate to the experiences of female characters better than men would but the way the author has referenced them makes it seem like they are solely there for just for the sake of being there as nothing more than to help their husbands and produce suitable Aires. Furthermore after he cites them he goes on to blame women themselves for the state of how they are represented in literature. This was seen in the quotation
women have been steeped in self-derogatory societal stereotypes...while being constantly pitted against each other for the favors of the reigning sex
This brought me back to the Ekwefi's resentment towards the first wife. Since Ekwefi is unable to produce male children that can survive child birth she resents her. It is a well known notion that in certain cultures boys hold more value than girls and are used to carry on their father’s name. This idea was most likely perpetuated by patriarchal societies which would make originally a man's idea. So the stereo type that woman have supposedly been "steeped" with isn’t necessarily their fault but an expectation of men. Culler referenced this as "the phallocentric notion that women must produce many hardy male progenies to be valued within their cultural milieu" So far based on the first reading in order to read like a Feminist you must be able to cite female problems where they may have been over looked by a male reader, sympathize with what the female characters my go through, and understand that circumstantially female characters and women as well are prone to or supposed to experience certain things in order to be identified as such. Now with the second reading "His Coy Mistress" one of the clear themes in this text to me before it was even mentioned was the objectification of the mistress. Supported by the quote
a verbal inventory of a woman’s physical attributes, is certainly problematic for the way in which it objectifies the female body, and Marvell takes this objectification further by negating even the pretension of romantic sincerity that exists in the Petrarchan tradition
He isolates and discusses each of her body parts while using her virginity and comparing it to morality making the mistress itself seeming disposable since they are not in "deserts of vast eternity" this ultimately made the idea of women in texts seem frivolous and devalued. Though the poem may have been meant to praise the mistress in some aspects it ends up dehumanizing her, going back to "Things Fall Apart" the overlooking of females as a male reader and the place of women in the book makes them just as drone like as the mistress. Using everything I have learned so far in order to properly critique literature as a feminist, I do have to wonder why was this particular reading chose to be examined with that lens? The author "mocks contemporary notions of virginity and expresses disgust at the female body as a symbolic place of death" One would think that if you were going to read something from a different point of view that particular point of view would paint its chosen subject in a better light. Instead no matter where I seem to look I still see the same archetype being portrayed in different ways. Women are either disposable and at the sexual mercy of men, or seen as baby making drones used to fill a quota based on the sex of children. In the "The Marxist-Feminist Collective" The idea that most cemented my ideas on the treatment and classification of women as writers, and examining text as a feminist was "gender criticism" which according to the text was defined according to the author it was written by. Automatically there is a label placed on the work, which limits how it can be viewed. Viewing a work as feminist would mean that we are looking at it one way and discarding another, I don’t want to be deemed bias but by looking at it this way aren’t we excluding other views and playing favorites with this particular one?

Marxist-Feminist: 'Things Fall Apart' & 'To His Coy Mistress'

When looking at a literary text, details that feminist critics are drawn to, or are interested in, seem to be the dominance of the male character over the female character (or characters), as well as the need of women and their role in society.

Simply stated in the 'Reading as a Woman: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Feminist Criticism', "women are viewed as child bearers and help mates for their husbands" (para. 6). A feminist critic would read this and be drawn to the fact that in this specific quote, women only seem to be viewed as baby making machines. For centuries, not only in African culture, as shown in 'Things Fall Apart', but in virtually every culture in the world, women have been viewed as such, and nothing more than just that. It is only recently that women have begun to emerge in society (and still struggle to do so) and receive the same level of respect as men by obtaining equal jobs and educations. Men seek to find an attractive woman in their life that will be useful to them in providing a son to keep the family name alive for generations to come, and this was exemplified in Achebe's novel through the main character Okonkwo and his second wife Ekewfi, who was only able to give birth to a daughter after several losses. Therefore, in this aspect, women really serve no other purpose.

In 'To His Coy Mistress', instead of portraying "the mistress" as a baby making machine like women seemed to be portrayed in 'Things Fall Apart', "the mistress" (or one could assume women in general) are viewed as pieces of meat, or as 'The Marxist-Feminist Collective' better puts it, "as a desiring subject, a sexual subject seeking personal fullfillment..." (p. 171); love does not seem to matter in either at all. In his poem, Marvell uses beautiful language to describe this mistress of his but alternately symbolizes her as his death, or just death in general. In other words, he must use these luring words to grasp this mistress' attention so he can fullfill his needs with her, and later confront their inevitable death; her beauty was the death of him.

So to finalize, a feminist critic, (I would assume) would take great pleasure in criticizing both 'Things Fall Apart' and 'To His Coy Mistress' for their continuous mentions of women and their degrading stances in society.

Identity Crisis

After reading the Marxist-Feminist collective, I think that critics tend to be drawn to the female identity in their readings. More specifically they have an interest in the male perception of the female identities in the characters themselves. Additionally, Linda Strong-Leek believes that "before beginning this feminist analysis, we must review the historical and cultural context in which Things Fall Apart was written." I agree with her in that history plays a very important role in how we judge things. Women's roles in society have changed tremendously over the last hundred years, and so reviewing a literary work in 1920 would be very different from a review of the same piece in 1990. "The tradition into which the woman novelist entered in the mid-19th century could be polarized as at once that of Mary Wollstonecraft and of Jane Austen, with the attendant polarization of politics-between revolutionary feminism and conservatism-and of genre-between romanticism and social realism." In Things Fall Apart, "Culler (1982) writes 'For a woman to read as a woman is not to repeat an identity or an experience that is given but to play a role she constructs with reference to her identity as a woman, which is also a construct..." This is where history does come into meaning when feminist critics are reviewing literature. I think it's natural. You cannot help or deny what you've learned over the course of your life and I think that it is always in your subconscious. The criticism must incorporate this to a certain extent (however big or minute).

Thursday, October 11, 2007

10/10 Wrap Up

As stated in class, the new drafts of essay one will be due on Wednesday the seventeenth. Remember to staple the new draft to the old draft (new one on top), remember to work on it everyday between now and then for at least an hour, and feel free to contact me at any time. I'm also usually on campus the hour or so before class, though not necessarily in my office. If you would like to meet before class on Monday, email me and we'll meet. Of course, everyone is free to meet with me after class during regular office hours.

I'm still working out a conference schedule. Check back here for updates.

For Monday's class, read The Marxist-Feminist Collective's 'Women Writing: Jane Eyre...' found in Modern Literary Theory, the Angela Carter piece found to the right, as well as all of the Feminist literary readings (we will get to 'Feminist Thematics and Shakespearean Tragedy' soon, so read as much of that as you can). Then in a 250-400 word response, use specific examples from one of these readings (including the Marxist-Feminist, but not including the Carter, though we'll discuss that one in class quite a bit) to answer the following question: When looking at a literary text, what kinds of details are feminist critics drawn to/interested in? Again, be sure to quote specific examples from the feminist readings.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Room and Money?

“All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction…” Virginia Woolf also states “I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money”

My question is, Is she really talking about a room and money, what does the room and money really symbolize?

Virginia Woolf states that a woman needs a room and money a couple times in the text but what does it all really mean? She even gets angry at her mother for not leaving money for her “What had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us? Powdering their noses? Looking in at shop windows?” But she probably wasn’t really angry with her because she knew” in the first place, to earn money was impossible for them, and in the second, had it been possible, the law denied them the right to possess what money they earned” I think that the room and money is something like education and power. It is possible that she referred to money in the first place because you need money to receive an education and the room symbolizes your accomplishment. Of course you need money to get a room but having these two items means that you are out of the house and in the real world. You can get a job and earn money and hope to have a better live and a good career. Woolf was fortunate enough that her aunt a pretty nice inheritance. So she is a little freer in making decisions, like she is right now traveling around to all these prestigious places and doing research and all kinds of stuff. I don’t know why but I have a feeling that she is talking about more then a room and money but I may be mistaken.

The New Dress

"We are all like flies trying to crawl over the edge of the saucer, Mabel thought, and repeated the phrase as if she were crossing herself, as if she were trying to find some spell to annul this pain, to make this agony endurable. Tags of Shakespeare, lines from books she had read ages ago, suddenly came to her when she was in agony, and she repeated them over and over again. "Flies trying to crawl," she repeated. If she could say that over often enough and make herself see the flies, she would become numb, chill, frozen, dumb. Now she could see flies crawling slowly out of a saucer of milk with their wings stuck together; and she strained and strained (standing in front of the looking-glass, listening to Rose Shaw) to make herself see Rose Shaw and all the other people there as flies, trying to hoist themselves out of something, or into something, meagre, insignificant, toiling flies. But she could not see them like that, not other people. She saw herself like that -- she was a fly, but the others were dragonflies, butterflies, beautiful insects, dancing, fluttering, skimming, while she alone dragged herself up out of the saucer. (Envy and spite, the most detestable of the vices, were her chief faults.)"

Is she saying that women are like the flies? She wouldn't include the men right? And who makes her see herself this way, men or other women, or both?

Self-esteem or confidence is a big issue with women in society. Still today in women who are 12 and women who are 52, they are always comparing themselves to other people and continually see themselves in a worse light than the other. I would assume here that only women are the flies and the men are the ones that push them to the ground. Later in the story she says the man pushed her to the middle of the bowl to drown so to speak. I would say that she sees herself this way because of her lack of self worth, because the way men objectify women, and other women out of their own insecurities keep her down and feeling this way.

I also think that this is a way in which women can be quite secrective. The whole story she is very worried about her dress and her appearance, although it seems to be a metaphor for her deeper feelings of just being an outcast in this paticular party. But also the other people from the party are seemingly nice and sweet to her, but she is always saying how they really have mean feelings toward her and don't like her. She is very concerned the whole story with being judged, this comes from a society that constantly judges and objectifies woman.

From Introduction

Despite the repetitive degrading self description by Mabel, she describes the moment she sees Bob Brinsley as follows:
"What had she to oppose to this massive masculine achievement? An essay on the character of Dean Swift! And as she came up to the group, which Bob Brinsley dominated, (with his heel on the fender, and his head back), with his great honest forehead, and his self-assurance, and his delicacy, and honour and robust physical well being, and sunburn, and airiness and direct descent from Shakespeare, what could she do but lay her essay, oh and the whole of her being, on the fllor as a cloak for him to trample on, as a rose for him to rifle, Which she did, emphatically,...."
Why underestimate self so much and not for others, especially this man?
She's being introduced to him and his group by Mrs. Dalloway, so I know that Mabel does not know this man very well, and yet, her words on him are overly generous. There she stands before the group of men and one dominating man, in one hand holdeing her essay on the character of Dean Swift, a great achievment, a joy that she shared with others at her house. And she feels endlessly so small. Also, she was so being self-conscious about her hair and dress that I thought she was having a panic attack of some sort. I don't think her dress is necessarily misfitting, neither her hair. I think she could wear the most beautiful dress in the world and unsatisfied. Not if she's dressing up for men to see.

Feminism

After reading these different stories, "The New Dress", and "A Room of One's Own",by Virginia Woolf, 1927, and "TheIntroduction". All these relate to the topic we are starting to learn, but are familiar with, that is 'Feminism'. Although, we are not familiar when it really started, but based on the readings of Viginia Woolf, I would say it started around 1969, when women started to have different ideas that led them to be heard. BUt it was also by the hand of certain leaders that women were able to play a higher role as men in society.

There is a passage in the story "A Room of One's own" by Virginia Woolf, it said,"Moreover, it is equally useless to ask what might have happened if Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had amassed great wealth and laid it under the foundations of college and librar, because, in the first place ,to earn money was impossible for them, and in the second, had it been possible, the law denied them the right to possess what money they earned. It is only for the last forty-eiht years that Mrs Seton has had a penny of her own. For all the centuries before that it would have been her husband's property- a thought which, perhaps, may have had its share in keeping Mrs Seton and her mothers off the Stock Exchange." My question for this passage was : Why were women's wealth not considered? why where only men educated? what were the different ways women felt discriminated? There are many questions that can be asked, but by answering these questions is a good way of starting.
Women were not considered to have a fortune because they had all there earnings taken by there husbands to dispose of them as they would like, this was not fair because women deserve what they got after there hard work. Women where not considered to possess importance due to the fact that men where the ownes considered to bring home economic wealth. Men where considered the only ones who could accomplish the hard works, that involved the construction of difficult arquitectural designs, buildings, churches, columns, etc. This is why they received the greater power over women, due to the fact that women where not taken into consideration in accomplishing any of these works. The other problem was that men where the only owns who would get educated, attending colloge where they would become scholars, fellowships, and lectureships, where women didn't achieve any of these professions. Therefore, women's money was used to fund such programs to teach men at different ages. Consequently, by women not being considered superior to men, not receiving education, or any money for their hard works, they felt discriminated by men, women would care what other people think of themselves and this making them feel inferior, and without much knowledge. Although , things will later change for the well being of women when they had different ideas, that made them react to the discriminations, and would work hard to be considered with the same respect as men.

“What had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us?”

After describing the great pomp and circumstance that surrounds a luncheon at Oxbridge, a fictional male university, the narrator of Virginia Woolf's A Room Of One’s Own goes on to paint a bleak picture of dinner at Fernham, the female counterpart to Oxbridge. Furthermore, just to raise a small amount of money for the basic needs of a women’s University is a seemingly impossible task, while the fellows at Oxbridge never have to worry over monetary matters. Why can’t Fernham have the same amenities as Oxbridge? This is the question I would like to address in my response.

The answer lies in what Woolf refers to as the “reprehensible poverty” of the female sex. Women have always been poor, while men have accumulated wealth for centuries, which has allowed them to give back to their sex. Successful graduates of Oxbridge contribute to the school’s splendor with donations and gifts, however there are no successful graduates of Fernham that could be looked to for financial support, and the wealthy men certainly weren’t going to help since most deemed women unfit for education. This predictive leaves the narrator to ask, “What had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us?”

While the great graduates of Oxford and the men of the business world got their education and amassed their fortunes, their sisters and wives gave birth to, fed and raised the future students of these universities. Women did not have the time or luxury to learn “the great art of making money…like their fathers and their grandfathers before them.” They had obligations to family. And even if they did manage to make money, the law would prevent them from controlling it. Society simply did not allow women to make money or leave a legacy. But although these poor mothers have no money to leave behind to their daughters, they are responsible for their lives and memories, something much greater than a stuffy university library.

10/10/07

Reading Annette Kolodny's essayI felt a little bewildered in reading her statement that (as a feminist) "our task is to initiate nothing less then playful pluralism, responsive to the possibilities of multiple schools and methods, but captive of none, recognizing that the tools needed for our analysis will necessarily be largely inherited and only partly of our own making."
(p165) I believe what she is trying to say that as a woman, as a feminist we are able to adapt to different ideas and philosophy's, but never becoming one minded in one specific train of thoughts, and we are able to make reason pulling from the different ideas and thoughts utilizing our God given abilites. When she discusses the the tools being inherited, I can only gather that as a woman, let alone a human being, we all have this innate sense that we are all born with . It is with our "intuition" that we are able make careful and accurate analysis', however, when she says that, " partly of our own making", it leads me to believe that she means only as a woman are we able to truly understand the point wholeheartedly and we fashion ideas, just as Mabel fashions her dress that she looks horrible in, that only we, as woman, will be able to grasp at.

Ms. Kolodny also says, " All the feminist is asserting, then is her own idea equivalent right to liberate new (and perhaps different) signifigances from these same texts; and at the same time, her right to choose which features of a text she takes as relevant because she is, after all, asking new and different questions of it." (p164) To me, this basically means that everything is based on perception, and obviously a woman, let alone every individual, has different views and opinions. I agree with there being a femininst movement in the idea of being treated fairly and equal as a man, but the idea of a movement and a specific way of trying to critique literature in a feminists voice baffles me because just a s Ms. Kolodny says basically as a feminist we are using our own ideas and thoughts and reflecting on what we think is important. Doesn't everybody do that already in some form or another?

Trapped like flies

Why is it that, in Virginia Woolf’s “The New Dress”, Mabel keeps comparing herself and the others at the party with flies struggling to free themselves from a saucer of milk but unable to do so?

The story centers on this very self-conscious woman who, upon arriving at a certain soiree, notices how all the other invited guests, her supposed friends, are acting very strangely towards her. They seemed pleasant and gentle on the exterior. But these pretenses of manners and politeness were nothing but skin-deep, sneers and mockeries hidden behind false smiles. They were making fun of her dress, of her “outdated” sense of style. Did it matter to them that she did not come from as privileged a family as they did? “But it was not her fault, altogether after all. It was being one of a family of ten; never having money enough, always skimping and paring;…” (p.4)
It was all because of society really, all it’s fault. Considering her status as a woman, the others expect her to have a “better” judgment in clothing, disregarding all fairness towards her. They were all bound… trapped by the tedious little stereotypes “civilization” had established, trapped like flies in a bowl of milk, their wings stuck together by those damn social rules. And she, in turn, coming from a poor upbringing and already being unsure of herself, so much so that she began envisioning the others as elegant insects such as butterflies and dragonflies while she remained “like some dowdy, decrepit, horribly dingy old fly” (p.2), she is trapped by their unsympathetic considered opinion of her. Her fly is on the verge of drowning, as she stated her self in the middle of the passage, struggling out every now and then, but, ultimately, always sinking

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

10.10

“Glancing at her essay, the three red stars dulled to obscurity, but peacefully, pensively, as if yielding to the pressure of unquestionable might, that is the conviction that it was not hers to dominate, or to assert; rather to air and embellish this orderly life where all was done already; high towers, solemn bells, flats built every brick of them by men’s toil, churches built by men’s toil, parliaments too; and even the criss-cross of telegraph wires she thought looking at the window as she walked. What had she to oppose such massive masculine achievement? An essay of the character of Dean Swift! And as she came up to the group, which Bob Brinsley dominated, (with his heel on the fender, and his head back), with his great honest forehead, and his self-assurance, and his delicacy, and honour and robust physical well being, and sunburn, and airiness and direct descent from Shakespeare, what could she do but lay her essay, oh and the whole of her being, on the floor as a cloak for him to trample on, as a rose for him to rifle.”

My question for this passage is why was this group, with Bob Brinsley in particular, able to get under her skin and shake the core of her foundations so easily?

My answer being, though I’m not so sure of it, that she thought of all the “achievements of men” listed above as if they had been great tasks completed by singular individuals, rather than what they are; task completed by groups of people, by communities, not just the male portion of them either. The old saying “behind every great man is a woman supporting him” proves itself to be quite accurate. Unfortunately, she’s not thinking this. Instead, she is looking at Mr. Brinsley, who does indeed have the attributes she listed to his name, as if he’s done all these great things himself, which he has not. The time period and general situation in society also plays a role, as women were very downtrodden and underappreciated back then.

What is femininity ?

The struggle with woman hood is an apparent them in all of the Wolfe pieces. The main characters struggle with the concept of being a woman, and what that means for them, and how society dictates womanhood at that particular time. It is a struggle that has been shared for hundreds of years, and it is an issue that De Beauvoir and other feminist try to address.
A room of one’s own by Virginia Wolf addresses the role of the woman in society. Here we see the distinct interaction between the main character and the role of women in her natural environment. When she is run off the road usually occupied by male scholars, shows that there is a separate world that men exist in that women are not a part of. De Beauvoir states the “this one, the myth of woman sublimating an immutable aspect of the human condition namely, the division of humanity into two classes of individual”. Society creates this separation between man and women, two different realms from which they interact, there is nothing inherent about the differences but we assume that there is some truth to these myths and therefore validates them through our actions.
The beadle, whose status is below the average male citizen, is examples that not only are women subordinate to men, they are subordinate to all men no matter the class.
Wolfe goes on to speak about the woman position as land owners, everything that they own any wealth that they were to incur belongs to there husbands, meaning that Women were inherently property of there husbands, to do with as they please. As De Beauvoir said “to identify woman with Altruism is to guarantee to man absolute rights in her devotion, it is to impose on women a categorical imperative.” The fact that a woman’s earning are the property of her husband, deterred many woman from going after lives of wealth and preferred to take on roles of common housewives or mothers.
In the Introduction and the New Dress, the two main character struggle with their identity and self confidence they look for consolation in others to redeem there accomplishments or bold decisions.
In the Introduction Lily is proud of her essay, three red stars, but she also struggles with being inferior to other people which results in her shyness. She uses her accomplishment on the essay as a morale booster, putting the concept in her head that maybe she is just as good as anyone else. It is not until Lily meets Bob Brinsley that she convinces her self that she will never compare to him as man, her meager essay is nothing compared to his Shakespearian lineage. In my opinion it seems as if Bob metaphorically rapes Lily, stripping her of her character, or as she says “she felt like a naked wretch who having sought shelter in some shady garden is turned out...” . Bob strips her of who she is, strips her of her accomplishments and makes her want to recede back into her reclusive hermit ways.
In The New Dress Mabel tries to be more feminine, more woman like compared to the rest of the conformist of the time who try to hide what they have, hide there womanhood under tons of makeup. Mabel wants to do the opposite she wants to let it all out, but the problem is, to me, Mabel is unhappy because she does not look like the other woman. She does not have the prowess that she was hoping the dress would have given her. The dress also plays as a façade, what woman hood and femininity are supposed to look like. This may play into another of Mables problem, the dress is not fulfilling her desire to be a woman, that even with the dress she is still missing that extra piece that will truly make her a woman.
So the Question that I seem to find in all the readings is what is feminism and who is decide what it is to be feminine ?

What femininity is would be hard for me answer, I think I would best be able to answer what it is not. Being feminine is not determined by man, the standards for being a woman should not and can not be determined by man because it constantly puts woman at a disadvantaged. Instead of being described by what they can do, they are described by the functions of men that woman can not do. It was once said that men are the positive and the neutral, woman are just the negative, and it is on this scale that womanhood is graded, everything that man is not.

P.s. I can not remember who coined the line men are the positive and the neutral, I think it was Adrian Reich, or Firestone.

Post for Ten.Nine.Zero Seven

The passage that I am choosing that confused me is in The Introduction by Virgina Woolf. I picked this passage mainly because after reading this piece and The Dress, I saw that they both used flies. The particular paragraph in The Introduction is on page 187 and it’s the second last paragraph. The narrator says that she would not let horror posses her, and that the man speaks as if he is killing flies. At first I didn’t know what was going on or what was being talked about. I didn’t understand why she was scared or why she used such a farfetched analogy. She had previously mentioned that as she was walking she noticed the telegraph wires, churches, parliaments, towers, bells, and flats. She says that these were all made by the toil of men. I think the fear she has is sort of being overburdened by the sheer enormity of the things men have done and she hasn’t done anything. The fear is a pressure. As for speaking as if he is killing flies, I think that he is talking as if he is inhibiting or disabling her just by talking to her. She refers to herself as a fly and he could be plucking her wings off with his words.

The New Dress

In the readings of Virginia Woolf's The New Dress compared to the readings of S. De Beauvoir's The second Sex had a specific view a long with others that particularly caught my eye. There's importance when body image comes into play with women and their feminine appeal.

Thus shown in the story of "The New Dress" "Mabel's got a new dress!" he said, and the poor fly was absolutely shoved into the middle of the saucer. Really, he would like her to drown, she believed. He had no heart, no fundamental kindness, only a veneer of friendliness. Miss Milan was much more real, much kinder. If only one could feel that and stick to it, always. "Why," she asked herself -- replying to Charles much too pertly, letting him see that she was out of temper, or "ruffled" as he called it ("Rather ruffled?" he said and went on to laugh at her with some woman over there) -- "Why," she asked herself, "can't I feel one thing always, feel quite sure that Miss Milan is right, and Charles wrong and stick to it, feel sure about the canary and pity and love and not be whipped all round in a second by coming into a room full of people?"

Why does Mabel feel like she's worthless?

Constantly through out the reading the writer shows Mabel as being weak. Mabel lacks self confidence, character which is important as a person as well a female because at the end of the day you have to separate yourself from the rest with your own identified personality created by you. Mabel such as many other woman worry about what a man is going to think about them instead of just making her own rules of what looks good such as her new dress that some found to be ugly. It was up to Mable to make her dress known as something wonderful yo look at as well as the person wearing the dress.

The New Dress

Feminism

The main ideas of the stories by Virginia Woolf are women struggling in society. In ‘The New Dress” Mabel arrives at Clarissa Dalloways party and immediately feels inadequate and inferior. She feels that her dress is not appropriate which makes her self-conscious. There are feelings of alienation, insecurity and estrangement present. She constantly puts herself down and compares herself to a fly as in this quote, “I feel like some dowdy, decrepit, horribly dingy old fly”. These are extreme feelings of lack of self-confidence. The concentration in this story is the main character and how she looks at herself because of her awareness of how people around her see her in their eyes. She gets through this by reading which makes her feel she is in a different, better realm.
However, in “A room of one’s own” there are specific events that occur that point out the discrimination women face such as getting kicked out of the library and not being allowed to sit on the grass. Woolf says, “One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold” which is illustrated in this story, which is designed to explain how Woolf arrived at her thesis.
Simon de Beauvoir says, “This one, the myth of woman, sublimating an immutable aspect of the human condition-namely, the ‘division’ of humanity into two classes of individuals-is a static myth. Virginia Woolf gives a good example of this in “A room of one’s own” by demonstrating the division of man and woman throughout her experiences while forming her opinion.

Women In Literature

Taking a look at the feminist view of women in literature, Annette Kolodny says in an excerpt from her essay "Dancing Through the Minefield": "For those of us who studied literature, a previously unspoken sense of exclusion from authorship, and a painfully personal distress at discovering whores, bitches, muses, and heroines dead in childbirth where we had hoped to discover ourselves, could - for the first time - begin to be understood as more than a 'set of disconnected, unrealized private emotions'. With a renewed courage to make public our otherwise private discontents, what had once been 'felt individually as personal insecurity' came at last to be 'viewed collectively as structural inconsistency' within the very disciplines we studied."

This quote basically means that feminists are discontent with the portrayal of women in literature as they feel that the heroines in literature are too stereotypical, and now, united, they have the courage to say so. Given that, one might ask, why not? Why couldn't a woman identify herself with a "whore"?

Perhaps it is because of the immediate connotations behind the term "whore". While I'm not promoting women idolizing whores under any circumstance, I am arguing that a woman who undergoes hardships simply because she is a woman who should be able to identify with a fictional woman who undergoes hardships also because she is a woman, despite whatever title she may have or role she may play in society. Even as a negative role model for women, someone who is a bitch or a whore could be seen as a positive, as the character's presence could provide a hidden role model for women as someone not to become. Someone to take pity upon, as the feminist could look at that as society shaping, molding, and labeling her to the point of despair through promiscuity. Someone that the feminist would fight for simply because she is a woman who is suffering like the feminist herself.

Feminism: Socially Constructed?

According to Wikipedia, “Feminism comprises a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities and discrimination against women. Feminism is also described as an ideology focusing on equality of the sexes. Some feminists, like Judith Butler, have argued that gendered and sexed identities, such as "man" and "woman", are social constructs.” Social construct, once again, is defined by Wikipedia as “any institutionalized entity or artifact in a social system "invented" or "constructed" by participants in a particular culture or society that exists because people agree to behave as if it exists or follow certain conventional rules.” Hence, we invent ideologies and aspects that seem appropriate and important to us. Who invented Feminism? Why do women have to be treated as the “second sex” (Simone de Beauvoir 41).Why was this “social Construct” created in the first place? Annette Kolodny states that “Robert Scholes, from whom I have been quoting, goes so far as to assert that ‘there is no single “right” reading for any complex literary work’ and following the Russian formalist school, he observes that ‘we do not speak of readings that are simply true or false, but of readings that are more or less rich, strategies that are more or less appropriate” (Kolodny 165). She says that a single literary work can be interpreted in many aspects and that we are susceptible to readings that lack true meaning.

This aspect can be observed with Feminism. Feminism can be viewed through two different lights. According to the interpreter, it can be viewed negatively or positively. It can be viewed as a negative aspect because of its sole existence. Some women might believe that this term was never necessary to begin with. Equal rights should have been established from the beginning of time. The term causes unequal differences amongst the genders. The term’s existence illustrates that we as women are inferior and need this establishment to enhance our rights. Hence, as Annette Kolodny stated, we tend to dwell on the negative and less appropriate aspects. However, at the same time, this term can be perceived positively. Other women might believe that this notion was created in order to demonstrate that women deserve and require equal rights in society, work, and political aspects. Hence, just like there is no “right” reading for any complex work, there is no “right” interpretation of a term that is socially constructed. Kolodny demonstrates this notion by further stating that “Because those who share the term ‘feminist’ nonetheless practice a diversity of critical strategies, leading, in some cases, to quite different readings, we must acknowledge among ourselves that sister critics, having chosen to tell a different story, may in their interpretation identify different aspects of the meanings conveyed by the same passage” (Kolodny 165). This statement illustrates that female critics view feminism differently as stated before and that one passage or in other scenarios , a term, can be interpreted in many different lights.

Myths, Fiction, Feminism, Ideology

Simone de Beauvoir from The Second Sex introduces the female myths as they pertain to literature and ideology, and she introduces a very good question. “The myth of women plays a considerable part in literature, but what is its importance in daily life? To what extent does it affect the customs and conduct of individuals?”(p.282). She introduces a myth that women are a ‘division of humanity into two classes’, but in reality women are nothing more than human beings. This myth becomes clearer in the works of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. This work helps to entail, bridge the myths to reality. Ultimately, creating, what Annette Kolodny considers a ‘Feminist Ideology’.
In A Room of One’s Own the narrator embarks on a journey to define woman and fiction. In search for answer she discovers a myth, or minor point. Such that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved” (Woolf, 4). Woolf creates the dimensions of such a myth, similar to that of Beauvoir. Under the pretense of historical events that occur in the Oxbridge University, lack of resources for women is due to lack of women contributing any wealth to Universities for women. Then, she explains this myth in relation to reality; that women have no money, “because, in the first place, to earn money was impossible for them, and in the second, had it been possible, the law denied them right to posses what money they earned…”(Woolf, 22).
Woolf’s search for the answer to why women in literature cannot create fiction due to money and a room of one own becomes, and helps to create social awareness. Something that Kolodny considers a very significant aspect of Feminist Ideology. In which she focuses on the notion of “[bridging] the gap between the world as we found it and the world as we wanted it to be” further on, focusing to bring ‘personal insecurity’ out to the public sector of the world. Ultimately, it is the significance of such myths that women play in literature, because myths arise and are created for the sole reason, so as to reflect the hardships of reality. Fiction and literature coincide with the very notion of myth, and is used as a vehicle to spread some sort of an Ideology so as to create a change in our everyday life.

'A Room of One's Own' & Femininity

"The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have it to mean, women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in the light" (para. 1).

From Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own', Woolf writes about her experiences while studying in Oxbridge during a time where it is made obvious that women partaking of such an elite education is not common or accepted. Throughout the story, Woolf depicts many encounters and situations she has faced while stuyding at Oxbridge where she was extremely limited to what she could or could not do. In the quote taken from this story, Woolf attempts to look at two controversial terms such as 'women' and 'fiction' in three points of view. All the readings that we were assigned to read somehow fit into this one statement made by Woolf. For example, in 'The New Dress', we read about Mabel who is a young female clothed in a dress she does not feel comfortable in; according to her she feels 'hideous' and most definitely out of place. We see the metaphor of 'flies trying to crawl out of a milk saucer' appear several times throughout, this being a comparison of Mabel in her dress. I believe that in this story, the first part of Woolf's quote taken from 'A Room...' ties in: "women and what they are like"; Mabel's sentiments, discomfort and lack of confidence throughout the party make her the person she is, without her ever really having to say so.

In 'Introduction' (not sure to what), we read about Lily Everit who appears to be a student who wrote an impacting essay worthy of recognition. She too is at a party (possibly) where she encounters many people that know of her and all in all, make her feel out of place, not just for being a woman with an education and the skill to write essays (and not poems as assumed by many), but also because of her location (a big city she does not seem to be familiar with). Here is where two parts of Woolf's quote tie in: "women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them". The first part needs no explanation; Lily's essay about a male character (Dean Swift) is what gave her recognition in the first place. The second portion of the quote however, can be interpreted in a different way; although no one has written anything about Lily in this story, one could say that the judgements and stereotypes created about her during the party is indeed the "fiction written about her".

Assignment 10/10

In Simone de Beauvoirs excerpt, "The Second Sex" there is one passage that i came across that I found interesting and it drew my attention to what he was actually trying to tell us.



"Thus the paternalism that claims women for hearth and home defines her as sentiment, inwardness, immanence. In fact every existence is at once immanence and transcendence; when one offers the existent no aim, or prevents him from attaing any, or robs him of his victory, then his transcendence falls vainly into the past-that is to say, falls back into immanence."



What is he trying to say to the reader about the actual role women play, and how important they are? After reading this passage a couple of times I think he is trying to show the reader how women are the center piece of the house. They are drawn to the role of being the caretaker and is an important figure in a house hold. The women of the house defines that house by remaing with in that home either emotionally or spiritually, which i think is exactly what the first line of this paragraph is telling the reader. The title of this piece is a perfect title because you always hear the term 'man of the house' and they never talked about the women of the house and what a women actually brings to a house hold.

What comes first the Female or the Feminine?

“If the definition provided for this concept is contradicted by the behavior of flesh-and-blood women, it is the latter who are wrong: we are told not that Femininity is a false entity, but that the women concerned are not feminine. The contrary facts of experience are impotent against the myth.” (Beauvoir 41)
I picked this passage because I feel it begs a few questions the first and most interesting is how do we define “a woman”. I chose this question instead of, how do we define femininity, because it is my impression from the readings that it has been the practice of society and literature to consistently define the latter whilst hardly if ever concerning itself with the former. To me this seems somewhat counterintuitive.
As we all grow and learn there seems to be a natural process of association between organisms and behavior. This system of assembling a complex definition of the things around us through observing it’s behavior is natural to the point that we do not need to be scientific empiricists to see it’s simplicity. For example, we all know that a dog barks, a cat meows, a fish swims, and a bird flies. It is my opinion that these attributes were observed and added to the identity after the initial identification was made. In other words I find it hard to believe that human beings got together and decided it was the duty of every dog to bark and then called all mute dogs failures. At the same time human beings, being the cleverest predators and at the top of the food chain were in a very powerful position and could easily look at all other animals as subservient and tasty. Why not use this power the same way we used the societal power of the patriarch. Surely those that would argue the relevance of the patriarch would agree that the societal dependency formed under it was formed just as naturally as, and could be seen as a function of, the “natural order”.
The only solution I see is to embrace a definition based on the attributes of the subject observed. Therefore the woman can be seen as the purest distillation of behaviors and real capabilities rather than a sum of demands placed upon them by the system that requires the stagnancy of the “fairer sex” in order for it to continue to function.

The New Dress

Simone de Beauvoir's excerpt from The Second Sex, questions the importance the myth of woman plays in literature and in daily life and in reply must relate this myth to reality. "This one, the myth of the woman, sublimating an immutable aspect of the human condition--namely, the 'division' of humanity into two classes of individuals--is a static myth. It projects into the realm of Platonic ideas a reality that is directly experienced or is conceptualized on a basis of experience; in place of fact, value, significance, knowledge, empirical law, it substitutes a transcendental Idea, timeless unchangeable, necessary. " ..."Thus, as against the dispersed, contingent, and multiple existences of actual women, mythical thought opposes the Eternal Feminine, unique and changeless. If the definition provided for this concept is contradicted by the behaviour of flesh-and-blood women, it is the latter who are wrong: we are told not that Femininity is a false entity, but that the women concerned are not feminine."

In Virginia Woolf's The New Dress, Mabel Waring seemed to hate the fact that she was resigned to a predefined role in life and to go along with expectations. Though she was a grown woman, she had little self esteem and depended on others to build her character. She thought of herself as she did most of siblings being "...poor water-veined creatures who did nothing. " She kept referring to herself as a fly and her struggle to get out of the saucer of milk. "She knew that she was condemned, despised, left like this in a backwater, because of her being like this a feeble, vacillating creature: and it seemed to to her that the yellow dress was a penance which she had deserved, and if she had been dressed like Rose Shaw, in lovely, clinging green with a ruffle of swansdown, she would have deserved that; and she thought that there was no escape for her--none whatever. But it was not her fault altogether, after all. "

I think deBeauvoir supports Mabel's existence in stating that " Few myths have been more advantageous to the ruling caste than the myth of woman: it justifies all privileges and even authorizes their abuse. Men need not bother themselves with alleviating the pains and the burdens that physiologically are women's lot, since these are intended by Nature:..." Mabel refused to drown in that saucer of milk. She would escape to London and lose herself in the library there and transform herself into who she wanted to be. She is looking for her own identity, not what 'Nature' had dictated she must be strictly because of the gender she was born.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Feminism in Literature

After finishing "The New Dress" and "The Second Sex"one thing is clear, the common ideas of what was acceptable when it comes to being a "woman" in most if not all societies. I started by reading the two shortest out of all the readings first. In "The New Dress" the dress itself is not the main issue (How I took it) the main issue to me was the main characters unhappiness with herself. She has some idea that her clothes make her the better person and is trying to fit in. Though I was supposed to read this with a feminist’s eye I couldn't help but hear a little Marxism in this particular text. Mabel the main character seemed to be letting the clothing she wore and the opinions of others define her as a person. This can be seen in such quotations as "And at once the misery which she always tried to hide, the profound dissatisfaction -- the sense she had had, ever since she was a child, of being inferior to other people -- set upon her, relentlessly, remorselessly, with an intensity which she could not beat off, as she would when she woke at night at home, by reading Borrow or Scott; for oh these men, oh these
Women, all were thinking -- "What's Mabel wearing? What a fright she looks! What a hideous new dress!" I took this as besides letting what people say get to her she was allowing what they thought to define what was acceptable to her as far as being a woman or feminine went. In my second reading "The Second Sex” De Beauvoir discusses the 'myth' of what is meant to be feminine and how the ideas impact literature. Also the idea that the whole notion of femininity is something trumped up simply for the sake of argument and for the benefit of men by quoting "The Physiology of Marriage" which refers to women as "a beast of burden" With further reading I tied in De Bouvier thinking on what is meant to be feminine with Virginia Woolf's thesis on what a woman needs in order to be a successful writer. This can be taken in the context of what a woman needs to be "a woman" or "womanly" Virginia Woolf says that "a woman must have a room of her own" if she is going to write fiction. Another connection I made, though outside the text was the idea of "the problem with no name" (Betty Friedan)
Her thinking is limited and leaves "the true nature of women and literature unresolved" much like the place of women in their societies and literature as well. When asked to develop and answer a question from the readings I could only think of one. Why is it even in literature written by women, female characters are subjective?
A: Mabel's dress and what it symbolizes makes her subjective because with the dress even with its hideous nature she is seen as a woman and nothing else. She lets what other people think and say define her as long as this goes on she will be seen as nothing more In a way all her insecurities and what she fears have been culminated into this one thing. It is not until the end of the story that she rejects the traditional ideas of what it means to be a woman and looks to define herself on her own