This made the anger prone sage Durvasa feel insulted and provoked him to curse her of being forgotten by Dushyanta. The second poem from “Eight poems for Shakuntala” mocks at the way Shakuntala’s sufferings were justified as necessary stages for a woman to become pious and virtuous. The only ‘trick’ to be an ideal woman/wife “is not to see it as betrayal…” Arundhathi Subramaniam retells the epic story of Shakuntala by presenting the character as an archetype, someone like us trying to make sense of life. She negates the concept of an erring woman and pushes the readers to mull over Shakuntala’s character with a different perspective. She discards everything which uses ‘sexual submissiveness’ of a woman as a tool to examine her chastity.
The Court is in Session is mercilessly attacked verbally in the name of mock-trial as she committed fornication and Rani in Nagamandala is accused of adultery while the male culprits in both the plays are not found fault with. Condemning the sexual oppression of female by men, Jandhyala says, “It is desired that female have a choice, control over their bodies and lives”11 This is exemplified in Tendulkar’s play, Silence! The Court is in Session. Benare
The differentiation of the “Old Gay” and “New Gay”lesbian identities. Though these factors are important, she consistently neglects specific fragments of various movements that play their parts as well. For starters, Stein’s writing style is a perfect example of the scenery that displays the pandemonium consuming the mystery of the lesbian movement at the time. She precisely and methodically reconstructs the scenes by dancing around the pages and re-accounting different stories that always tie back to the original themes. An example of this is the second chapter of the book when Stein retells the stories of three different women and their experiences involving the Lesbian movement.
Any act of gendered behavior, is also an attempt to reinforce and catogories. To challenge and claim the idenity Anarkahli resort to an striking practices the transsexual men engage in, that is to creat a sexually gratifying identity. Anarkhali challenges the traditional representation of the vagina as the only sexual means of gratification, by claming “…Go away . After servicing all these sons of whores, my mouth is too tired to talk” (Dattani,8). This is not just symptomatic of sexualy violence or exploitation due to the third sex identity but also an attmept to catogorise onself into an complete sexual identity.
Solomon adds another aspect to this analysis of Romeo and Juliet. Adding that he flaws the “liberal American sexual mythology,” which he claims Nagel relies heavily upon (Solomon, 338). According to Solomon, the liberal American sexual mythology titles that the vital aim of sex is orgasm, and that intercourse is a private matter. Its evident that Nagel believes the sexual act between Romeo and Juliet to be private, since he never examines it. Also, since he is never open about the act it can be deemed that the type of act would be acceptable if it ends in orgasm.
Women and Men 's Portrayal in Carol Ann Duffy 's "The world 's wife" The world 's wife is a collection of poetry which is written by Carol Ann Duffy. She wants to show in her poems that men always want to disregard women through history. In her poems, Duffy tries to change women from an object to a subject that has many rights, such as freedom of speech, and not being restricted by men. In World 's wife, she is revising some famous Greek myths, and fairy tales. While she revises these myths, she tries to change the idea of the original story in order to show her points that she is against or with.
Introduction Chick-Lit novels have been criticized for their portrayal of anti-feminism in the recent past. Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones, one of the most popular chick lit nov-els, does not seem to be a perfect example of a feminist novel, she does not even want to be linked to being a feminist. Her close friend Sharon, “Shazzer”, though, is a representation of a feminist. Feminists are often presented as very loud, angry and man-hating women in the media and literature and it will be discussed if and in which way Shazzer’s character fulfills this stereotype of a feminist cliché. First, the terms feminism and post-feminism are going to be defined.
Known for her confessional mode of writing, Kamla Das’s (1934-2009) poetry offers an aesthetic of resistance to the phallocentric codes and conventions. What sets her poetry apart from the other Indian women poets writing in English is the brutal honesty with which she handles the issue of women’s search for subjectivity and autonomy in the face of patriarchal prohibitions. Her choice of a free poetic mode instead of regular metrical form suits her tone of anger and protest resulting from the marginalization of women. However, while hitting out at the deeply entrenched patriarchal prejudices, she does not forget her own femininity. Das’s individuality lies in evolving a new language of protest.
The medical terms signified how women were idealised, as according to Chamberlain (2013), orgasm was labelled as “hysterical paroxysm” because women were socialised to believe that “ladies” had no sexual desires, and thus; fulfilling their primary roles as housewives and home-makers, required them to tolerate sex in order to satisfy their husbands and bear children. This allowed men to classify and medicalise women, who did not fit within that ideal of society (White, 2008). According to Russell (2013), in extreme cases, the treatment of hysteria would lead to genital mutilation in which the female’s clitoris is surgically removed. As a result, women who were deemed as outcasts from the rest of the norm-abiding women in society were to be trapped in the asylum for the rest of their lives (Russell, 2013). These treatments, however, did not help treat female hysteria.
It is this power, a dreaded one, that patrilineal filiation has the burden of subduing.” (Kristeva, 1982, p.77) Freud argued that woman terrifies because she is castrated. “Castration fear plays on a collapse of gender boundaries” (Creed, 1993, p.54) She suggests, that Freud misread Han’s fear in the Little Hans and that Han’s viewed his mothers as the castrator not his father, that his mother’s lack of phallus is seen not as a castrated organ but that of a castrating organ. The mother-child border is entangled in the complex and multi-faceted image of the castrating mother. According to Freud, man fears that of the mother as castrated and as that of the cannibalistic all devouring mother. “Construction of a patriarchal ideology unable to deal with the threat of sexual differences as it is embodied in the images of the feminine as archaic mother and is seen as the castrated mother.” (Creed, 1993, p.22) Kristeva suggests that the notion of the castrated women is to ease mans fear of woman, who has the power to psychologically and physically castrate him.