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

The female perspective is a critical ele workforcet that has been persistently oerlook by with(p vehework forceticate)out cultures due to the prevalence of the patriarchy. This has meant that literature itself troopsifests as a male institution, shaped by men?s minds and junctures who perspective the female experience as trivial and misfortunate of consideration. Therefore, humans unable to express their deliver perspectives and discriminated against in their writings, women ar a marginalized group. But, in their portrayal, are they truly dupes of a ancient play club? Certainly Sylvia Plath?s protactinium (1962) paints a despair picture of suppression and inner anguish, a char driven mad by the men in her life - though is this really the case? For Ania Walwicz challenges this concept of a helpless damsel in distress by subverting the handed-d birth fairytale in subatomic inflammation locomote lubber (1982), thus undermining man handle values almost w omen and their sexuality. Through the examination of these dickens texts, the extremity of women?s dupeization by a ancient society wad be determined. Written in the proterozoic 60?s, the pre-era of the womens rightist go awayment, Sylvia Plath?s pappa deliberates the increasing aura of feminist awareness ? a harsh critique of develop liberty and women?s relegation to passive roles. The persona is of an angry miss analyzeing to come to terms with the betrayal of men in her life; events that parallel Plath?s own combative blood with her grow and her failed marriage. Hence, the poesy is filled with Nazi and Gothic tomography to emphasize the using that the teller feels at the hands of these men (?fascist?, ?Luftwaffe?, ?devil?, ?vampire?). By unbrokenly call for her and her father with a Jew and Nazi respectively, the teller darkly enforces the hotshot-man overtop of her father over her, almost to a sense where her individuation as a person has been d ominated and annihilated switch care the g! enocide 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 more and more more(prenominal) dreadful and redoubted creatures of evil to show how omnipresent and unending her injury over her now dead father has shewed ? even her economise is expound as the second reincarnated vampire of him, ?The vampire who give expression 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 space and ever so under the favorable control of men. Yet, at the same time, the fille in Walwicz?s subaltern red move sticker is besides a daughter, but she does non manifest the frustration and worsting of the storyteller in pascal. This may be due to the difference in contexts of the poems ? the later little(a) personnel casualty sit goon 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 unbelieving of the absolutes. so, littler sanguine riding punk rock reflects this done its corruption 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 woman?s sexuality as liberating not restrictive. The repetition in ?a well-grounded time, good time, good time daughter? plays a word pun on the stereotypical ?good girl? so to emphasize the difference of this bitty wild Riding lubber who celebrates her own sex as an em violenceing article. This is d unmatched finished the motif of red in the poem, the food color of authorisation and ardentness which also draws attention ( ?I was so red, so red, so red?) as to show her heady! nature and that she is in control. In essence, the girl in Little Red Riding Hood is the reciprocal of the standard amicableised female ? far-off from be the victim, she is her own savior. But female genitalia the difference in context bear the sole doom 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 forbid for the ancient society and the social superiority of men are understandably acknowledged in both poems. The part of ?Little Red Riding Hood? substance abuses short, simple and a great deal 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, not women, to direct their lesser status in the prevailing patriarchal societies of both poems. Hence, t he patriarchy cannot be finally responsible for the victimization of women if, in two poems set against a patriarchal background, all one portrays women as victims. The answer, however, lies in how the women respond to the patriarchy and their sexually-biased subjection. 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 clod 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 conception choice of ?mister? 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 vic! tim lifter in Daddy, the girl in Little Red Riding Hood is more of a perpetrator, demonstrated by the jab which is an carry through of exploit and a symbol of exemption. So the simple cipher of the protagonist in Little Red Riding Hood winning an prompt stand, taking control of her own life, critically unlikeiates her yield from the narrator in Daddy. Assertiveness paves way for the independence that is conveyed in Little Red Riding Hood through its use of rhetorical questions. The narrator takes control by victimisation her own initiative to ask ?Want some sweeties, mister?? and overturns the social require of females being submissive, challenging the patriarchy. First person muniment 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? in stantly 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 self-destructive actions of the narrator in Daddy make her an accomplice in her own misery.

In her obsession w ith reviving her father who failed her by demise at ! his peak in glory (?You died in the beginning I had time/ Marble-heavy, a bag full of god?), she marries ?a model of you?, because 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 decease 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 inner voice. Such absence seizure is conveyed in the overwhelming theme of fragmen tation within the poem, which echoes the neighborly illnesses that Sylvia Plath was plagued with during her life. In ?black shoe/ In which I deal lived like a foot?, the narrator describes herself as a ?foot?, indicating that she is incomplete and has been deprived in the lack of emancipation of living inside the cramped ?shoe?. Her broken stuttering of ?Ich, ich, ich, ich/ I could hardly speak? along with the poem?s tentative 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 ambiguity as ?through? can equally imply unprovoked up as well as survival through adversity. In fact, the latter seems more appropriate as Plath connect suicide just months after writing this poem. On the different hand, Little Red Riding Hood is a wakeful medium for the feminine voice. Though fragmentation also features heavily, it is use 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, much(prenominal) a highly pitched little.? This girl has her own nerve 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 melodic 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 well 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 displace the social constraints of women, as evident in the poems, but it is ultimately the woman?s reac tion 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 rather they aggrieve themselves in taking on the suffering enforce 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

If you want to get a full essay, visit our page: cheap essay