Texts often represent women as victims in a patriarchal society. Discuss.

The female perspective is a critical ele handt that has been persistently pretermit by with(p vehe handsticate)out cultures due to the prevalence of the patriarchy. This has meant that literature itself spellifests as a male institution, shaped by men?s minds and gos who escort the female experience as trivial and misfortunate of consideration. Therefore, man unable to express their deliver perspectives and discriminated against in their writings, women ar a marginalized group. But, in their portrayal, atomic number 18 they truly dupes of a antique golf game club? Certainly Sylvia Plath?s protactinium (1962) paints a despair picture of suppression and inner anguish, a char goad mad by the men in her life - though is this really the case? For Ania Walwicz challenges this concept of a helpless damozel in distress by subverting the handed-d birth fairytale in subatomic inflammation locomote lubber (1982), thus undermining man handle values almost women and their sexuality. Through the examination of these twain texts, the extremity of women?s dupeization by a ancient society wad be determined. Written in the premature 60?s, the pre-era of the womens rightist shinement, Sylvia Plath?s pappa deliberates the increasing standard atmosphere of feminist awareness ? a harsh critique of corned liberty and women?s relegation to passive roles. The persona is of an stormy miss yielding to come to terms with the betrayal of men in her life; events that parallel Plath?s own agonistical blood with her grow and her failed marriage. Hence, the rime is filled with Nazi and mediaeval tomography to emphasize the development that the teller feels at the hands of these men (?fascist?, ?Luftwaffe?, ?devil?, ?vampire?). By unbrokenly break down her and her father with a Jew and Nazi respectively, the teller darkly enforces the hotshot-man regularization of her father all over her, almost to a sense where her identity e lement as a person has been dominated and an! nihilated wish the genocide of the Jews in the hands of Hitler ? ?Chuffing me off like a Jew/ A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen ? I present al trends been sca trigger-happy of you/ With your Indo-European eye.? There is no doubt that the bank clerk is a victim for as the poem progresses, the father changes into increasingly more(prenominal) dreadful and redoubtable creatures of evil to show how omnipresent and unending her injury over her now dead father has bareed ? even her economise is draw as the second reincarnated vampire of him, ?The vampire who depart saliva to he was you.? In this way, it is fitting that the genius is portrayed as both a daughter and a wife, that is, women of inferior business office and continuously under the favorable control of men. Yet, at the parallel time, the fille in Walwicz?s subaltern red move street fighter is to a fault a daughter, but she does non manifest the frustration and captivateing of the narrator in soda po p. This may be due to the difference in contexts of the poems ? the later lower-ranking forcefulness casualty sit roughneck was written in the 80?s, at the end of the feminist movement, where feminists demands for equal opportunity were increasingly authentic and there was a literary shift towards postmodernism, the teasing of the absolutes. so, tiny rosy riding pileus reflects this by its subversive activity of the traditional kindred-titled story. Whereas the original intention of Charles Perrault?s fairytale was to chasten missys about promiscuity, this poem reverses it by portraying a cleaning lady?s sexuality as liberating non restrictive. The repetition in ?a beloved time, good time, good time girl? plays a word pun on the stereotypical ?good girl? so to emphasize the difference of this myopic blushful Riding capital who celebrates her own sex as an em federal agencying article. This is d unmatched by dint of the motif of red in the poem, the coloratio n of authorisation and ablazeness which also draws! attention (?I was so red, so red, so red?) as to show her vaporous nature and that she is in control. In essence, the girl in Little Red Riding Hood is the reciprocal of the standard kindize female ? far-off from organism the victim, she is her own savior. But washstand the difference in context bear the sole cull for the poems? contrasting representations of their women ? wiz emerging as victor, the new(prenominal) as victim? though they may be significant influences, the inclination is veto for the aged society and the social superiority of men are understandably acknowledged in both poems. The vowel system of ?Little Red Riding Hood? substance abuses short, simple and practically repetitive sentences to adumbrate a little girl speaking, and the greenhouse rhyme-like structure of Daddy and its infantile excerption of words, like ?Achoo?, portrays the adult narrator as childish. In this sense, they are represented as girls, non women, to direct their lesser statu s in the prevailing patriarchal societies of both poems. Hence, the patriarchy cannot be at long last responsible for the development of women if, in two poems set against a patriarchal background, solitary(prenominal) one portrays women as victims. The answer, however, lies in how the women respond to the patriarchy and their sexually-biased subjugation. In Daddy, its nursery-rhyme structure, the same technique utilize to introduce the notion of the patriarchy, also reinforces the tragic naivety of the narrator and her status as a victim ? she is haunted by her child chapiter and cannot move on, which is epitomized in the way she stills calls her father ?Daddy?. However, in the Little Red Riding Hood, the simple childishly short sentences, that convey a lesser status, becomes exactly a guise of girly innocence with a unavowed motive ? to prey on men and give her the velocity hand. ?Want some sweeties, mister?? attracts unsuspecting men to her and the realness choice of ?mi ster? is ironic as it is the girl, not the wolf, who ! holds the real power for she is the one who ?brought a spit.? Therefore, unlike the victim booster unit in Daddy, the girl in Little Red Riding Hood is more of a perpetrator, demonstrated by the prod which is an go finished of exploit and a symbol of exemption. So the simple doer of the protagonist in Little Red Riding Hood winning an ready stand, taking control of her own life, critically unlikeiates her yield from the narrator in Daddy. Assertiveness paves way for the independency that is conveyed in Little Red Riding Hood through its use of rhetorical questions. The narrator takes control by using her own initiative to ask ?Want some sweeties, mister?? and overturns the social require of females being submissive, challenging the patriarchy. First person news report yet ensures that Little Red Riding Hood plays the active protrude in her own story so that she is not objectified. though ?Daddy? also uses first and second person, it serves a different purpose to point out the narrator?s victimization. For an example, ?You do not do, you do not do? straight accuses the proofreader of abusing her and is similar to a self-help mantra in which she acknowledges her passivity and victimization in her trying to overcome it. So, in this sense, the narrator in Daddy cannot be fully labeled as a self-pitying victim for she does try to conquer her victim status. However, unlike the Walwicz?s Little Red Riding Hood, the actions of Daddy?s protagonist reflect the influence of the men in her lives, and are not inescapably out of her own personal will. Therefore the unsafe actions of the narrator in Daddy make her an accomplice in her own misery.
In her obsession with reviving her father who failed her by demise at his peak in glory (?You died forwards I had time/ Marble-heavy, a bag full of beau ideal?), she marries ?a model of you?, thus perpetuating the cycle of victimization the poem has detailed. For her father has not inflicted any physical harm to her, as it is merely the fact that she is unable to let go of his shoemakers last that keeps in her limbo of torment. This is conveyed through her childish calling him ?Daddy? and the constant repetition of ?You?, referring to her father, which shows that she cannot stop thinking about him. Indeed much(prenominal) repetition of ?You? and similar sounding words like ?Jew? and ?through? creates a mournful quality to the poem. Her self-destructive behavior is exemplified in her suicide attempt (?At twenty I try to die?) which literally shows that she is killing herself. In not being able to form a faint sense of identity, the narrator in Daddy fails to master her inn er voice. Such absence seizure is conveyed in the overwhelming theme of fragmentation within the poem, which echoes the kindly illnesses that Sylvia Plath was plagued with during her life. In ?black shoe/ In which I down lived like a foot?, the narrator describes herself as a ?foot?, indicating that she is incomplete and has been deprived in the lack of independence of living inside the cramped ?shoe?. Her broken stuttering of ?Ich, ich, ich, ich/ I could hardly speak? along with the poem?s questionable ending demonstrates her failure to find her feminine voice amongst the oppression of the men. For ?Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I?m through? is ominous in its equivocalness as ?through? can equally imply faint up as well as survival through adversity. In fact, the latter seems more appropriate as Plath given over suicide just months after writing this poem. On the former(a) hand, Little Red Riding Hood is a sort out medium for the feminine voice. Though fragmentation also f eatures heavily, it is utilize to build up intensity! with the sudden starts and stops, to demonstrate the passionate vitality of the girl ? ?I was so lively, so livewire tense, such a highly pitched little.? This girl has her own expression and is unafraid to voice it for Little Red Riding Hood?s last line is ?I brought a knife? for shock value. The sentence is short and swift to enforce the tuneful theme ?I? and the knife is a symbol of Little Red Riding Hood?s feminine voice for it can be used to metaphorically kill men, which brings freedom, and is fast linked with the red color of the girl?s hood ? red is the color of blood and empowerment, and the knife is the cause of the blood, hence empowerment too. So by repeating ?I brought a red dress myself?, Little Red Riding Hood proudly displays this red garment for it is proof that her feminine voice (disguised as her knife) is alive and thriving. In conclusion, women are not always the victims of the patriarchal society. Certainly change in time has lift the social constrain ts of women, as evident in the poems, but it is ultimately the woman?s reaction to such barriers that determine if she shall conquer or be conquered by it. So women fall not victims to a patriarchal society, if they become victims at all, but instead they aggrieve themselves in taking on the suffering impose by the patriarchy. Bibliography: Walker, Kim. Women Writers of the English Renaissance. New York: Twayne, 1996. Sylvia Plath: Method & Madness (A Biography) (2004, Schaffner Press, 2Rev Ed) by Edward Butscher If you pauperism to get a full essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

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