Taylor Swift uses the position of a victim in order to claim the right to retaliate. It encourages violence as opposed and oppression as opposed to the equality that the feminist movement intended. IV. How the Current State of the Market Encouraged Taylor Swift’s Feel-Good Feminism Selling sex to selling activism as a strategy Taylor Swift wasn’t always the ‘feminist’ that she claims to be, before her ‘empowering’ award speeches and squads, the young icon said in an interview that she does not want to be called a feminist. Marketplace feminism, based on Zeisler’s book, We Were Feminists Once, is a form of “branding feminism as an identity that anyone can and could
336). With the many similarities and allusions du Maurier makes to Brontë’s work, Rebecca lends itself particularly well for this feminist reading as well. As was explored above, the readers’ only way to gather more information about Rebecca, her deviant sexual proclivities, and madness is through the unreliable narration from residents of Manderley as well as the novel’s editorial protagonist. As was suggested by both Williams and Pons, the narrator uses her editorial position to further distance herself from the madness of her predecessor by highlighting her own naiveté and upholding the norms of patriarchy and passive femininity. To keep her position as both Maxim’s living wife and the narrator to the tale, the unnamed heroine had to adhere to these norms to avoid being marginalized in the way that Rebecca seemingly is.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd claimed the novels were “all chick and no lit” and lamented that the novel “once said to be a looking glass of its time [has been] reduced to a makeup mirror” (qtd. in Harzewski 2011, 2). Women writers are worried that chick lit will be viewed as a representative of women’s writing. Some even go as far as to comparing the label of chick lit to “calling another woman a slut”(Harzewski 2011, 6). The disgruntlement reached its peak with the anthology This is not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America’s Best Women Writers, which was meant to “celebrate serious writers” and “expand our imagination” as opposed to chick lit which “shuts down our consciousness” (Merrick 2006, ix).
However, according to Anne Koedt, from there came confusion between personal solution and political solution. She denounces that; there is a crucial difference between a lesbian personal engagement and a lesbian political engagement. That is the origin of the famous Slogan: “The personal is political!” There, Anne Koedt joins Kate Millett, an author with some different ideas, who wrote “Sexual Politics” in 1969. Like her, she denounces the women subordination to men. The society is sexist.
Even though there have been many gains in women’s’ freedom, the fact still remains that biasness based on gender happen to be the norm throughout the society (Hooks and Bell 642). Hooks points out that Sandberg has offered no insight on what men should do in order to do away with sexist thinking as this mentality is the cause of most problems feminists are fighting against. Sandberg is not offering any new ideas, but she is taking old and preexisting ones and gives them a twist (Sandberg and
“People are always ready to see the lesbian as wearing a felt hat, her hair short, and a necktie; her mannishness is seen as an abnormality indicating a hormonal imbalance” (De Beauvoir, 479). With this quote French feminist writer, Simone the Beauvoir, starts her chapter on “The Lesbian” in her book The Second Sex (1949). It is peculiar that the stereotype of the masculine lesbian can still be found in contemporary popular culture and literature, yet slightly altered to a more contemporary version. This chapter will explain what lesbian literature is, give some historical background on how lesbian literature developed from 600BC to present day, and show various lesbian identities and stereotypes that recur in lesbian fiction. As stated in the introduction of this thesis, identity is defined as collection of individual characteristics by which someone is recognised, so if we want to examine how the representation of lesbian identity in literature has changed over time, it is necessary to look at the root of lesbian literature.
In her essay, Quindlen uses a personal experience all too familiar to most, the first mixed-sex dance, to show that both sexes often misjudge the other, yet in the end must work together in spite of their differences. I can appreciate how both essays reveal how the misunderstandings of the opposite sex implicitly affect their relations. Specifically, I will discuss my view on Woolf’s claims regarding the devaluation of female intellect, disparity of women’s roles in fiction and of those in real life, the fictional sister to Shakespeare, Judith, and in what way they exemplify the improbability for women to prosper in writing literature during the golden age of English history: the Elizabethan era. First, I value Woolf’s argument of the undervaluation
It wasn’t until after thirty years later that her work resurfaced and began to get the recognition it deserved. In the time the novel was written, divorce was not allowed, much less having an affair outside of the marriage and neglecting of womanly duties was not acceptable. “Her novel also served as ammunition in the fight to bring insight and awareness to women's issues” (Sprinkle, 1998). Today, The Awakening is seen as a brilliant piece which reveals various themes and topics, while lending itself to be explored through numerous lens, within this essay, the primary focus will be looking at the novel through a feminist lens and the transition that Enda makes within her
This essay endeavours to explore the connections between female sexuality and women’s writing in Possession. Molly Hite wrote that the female body “becomes a text that must be read in order to be dismantled and reassembled by an emergent female aesthetic” (123). With this in mind, the essay will carefully analyse three of the major female characters featured in the novel, Val, Christabel and Maud. Each character will be individually examined with particular attention to her writing and to what extent her sexuality impacts upon her publications in the male dominated academic realm. Val occupies perhaps the least influential role in the novel; she is the long term girlfriend of the main character Roland Mitchel.
Madhavikutty (Kamala Das) explores the innermost recesses of the female psyche in her uninhibited portrayals of man-woman and woman-woman relationships, says K.Sachidanandan, the poet-editor. The political ramifications of the woman-woman relationship posited alongside man-woman relationship has been noted by Rosemary M. George in her essay ‘Queernesses All Mine: Same-sex Desire in Kamala Das’s Fiction and Poetry’. ‘’Chandana Marangal’, written by Kamala Das in 1988 and translated into English as ‘The Sandal Trees’ in 1995 by V.C.Harris and C.K.Mohammed Ummer, charts the complex love life that spans five decades of two Nair women who are unable to ignore the attraction and love for each other even as they fall in and out of love from their heteronormative married life. Kalyanikutty and Sheela fall in love as adolescents in their native place initiating themselves into the sexual landscape. When the nature of their relationship is discovered Sheela is married off to a family friend who is twenty one years her senior.