The most prominent woman in the novel is Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched exposes the men’s weaknesses by getting each of them to point out each other’s flaws. Kesey shows that when women hold leadership roles, it takes away a man 's ability to be a man and leaves the man with physical damage. In the story, McMurphy explains to Harding about Nurse Ratched and how she is manipulating the men, using her influence to emasculate them. He says, “The hell with that; she’s a bitch and a buzzard and a ball-cutter, and don’t kid me, you know what I’m talking about” (Kesey, 61).
Swine &Das observe in “The Alienated Self; Searching for Space in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Sula” anthologized in Modern American Literature that ”This novel probes deeper into the black woman’s psychic dilemmas, oppressions and tribulations as symbolized by the tragic life of Pecola literally affected by the dominant culture’s beauty standards(Swain and Das89). Pecola, like her mother, equated and standardized beauty with white. Both are haunted by this inferiority complex and self-hatred. Cultural hegemony distorts the true nature of values so that it dominates the subordinate class to believe that they are inferior and the dominating class is the superior; as such, here white is believed to symbolize beauty and black is to symbolize ugliness. Pecola stands for binary opposition ugliness, unworthiness, invisibility and lack of self-esteem.
Both women and children are granted no voice, no bodily integrity, and no inherent worth by the adults who are their care takers. If they are lucky like Claudia and Frieda Macteer, they will learn resistance strategies. If they are unlucky like Pecola Breedlove, they will learn various kinds of disempowered response. The novel also shows not only the suffrage of the horrors of racial oppression, but also the tyranny and violation brought upon them by the men in their lives. The theme of male oppression over the women in the novel reaches its brutal climax during Cholly's rape of his own daughter Pecola.
It could be argued that Rochester’s malevolent wife, Birtha Mason represents the complete oppression of a woman, by patriarchal domination In both novels, there is a prominent power struggle between partiarcle masculine power and famine inferiority. Referring back to their pertinent feminist reading of jane eye, Gilbert and Gubar note that in male-authored books, if women are not categorized as ‘angels’, then they are villainized as a ‘monster’ (Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar, 1979). Alike both female protagonist, the male figure uses zoomorphic diction to describe Birtha, depicting her as an almost primal being, who has lost all intellectual communication, and instead resorted to ‘snarl’ and “crawls like an animal.”(JE). In their pertinent feminist reading of Jane Eyre, Gilbert and Gubar describe bertha mason as Jane’s “truest and darkest double.’ (G&G). Their argument closely relates to the gothic motif of doubling, in which Birtha represents the potential outcome of Jane if she enters the marriage from a subordinated position.
Each woman that Edwards interacts with is more deranged the last. They wail and exhibit personalities synonymous with those of people who have been traumatically tortured. Their conduct is indicative of the debilitating effect the Comanche has had on them, and further portrays the Comanche as so vicious that simply being with them causes a corrosive psychological impact. Consequently, this further contributes to the notion that the Native Americans are so devoid of morals, that they would even be malicious towards young women. Eventually, the remaining daughter is found residing in a Comanche tepee where she seems to have completely assimilated, and lives as a servant fetching scalps for the Comanche chief
A Question of Power is a novel written by Bessy Head in 1973.The novel explores the idea of the strong patriarchal society exploiting the other submissive groups and people. Head has very clearly shown examples of women being exploited by the hands of men to the extent of being driven to madness. By taking the protagonist Elizabeth example,Bessy Head shows how Sello and Dan, who used to have intercourse with her were the ones who were sexually deviant and they used to take out all the frustrations of their life on her, so her experiences with Sello and Dan left her physically and mentally abused and traumatised. The novel, being written from a women’s point of view very clearly shows the oppression of white males (Americans).Her experiences of being sexually abused left her with a very fickle state of mind and at one point she also points out that she has become a “highly collapsible material”.Also, Elizabeth, the young African girl, becomes a symbol of the country South Africa and how it was being stripped of its power because of racism and slavery. Elizabeth also becomes a symbol of several other black women who were tortured sexually and mentally and were not allowed any sort of creative freedom and expression.
Many of his poems explore the ramifications of war, corrupt government and unrequited love, detailing the havoc they wreak on their most vulnerable victims. Auden describes a war-ridden world as one where “girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, were axioms to him, who’d never heard of a world where promises were kept, or one could weep because another wept” (Auden, W. H. “The Shield Of Achilles”). Having experienced World War I, World War II and the Spanish Revolution, Auden is no stranger to war (Yezzi). Pulling inspiration from his experiences during World War II, Auden writes the poem “Refugee Blues.” In this poem Auden depicts the public’s hatred toward Jews, describing a “poodle in a jacket” and “a door opened and a cat let in” (lines 22-23) followed by the realization that these animals were treated with this kindness because, unlike the refugees, “they weren’t German Jews” (line 24). Auden uses this example of animals being treated better than Jews to convey the idea that even seemingly compassionate people are easily influenced against their fellow man.
Madame Defarge reveals her true viciousness when the revolution heavily begins. She had no mercy, her main goal was to kill all descendants of the Evrémonde family, women and children included and even non-blood relatives. Her revenge is directed at the wrong person who is Charles Darnay because he belongs to Evermonde’s family. She doesn’t pay attention for Lucie; her only aim is to express her anger and hatred of the Marquis and all his family. Her whole being is consumed by revenge and she will not rest until her bloodthirsty desires are satisfied.
Indian institute of marriage system changes a chirpy girl to an anxious and nervous woman. Deshapnde is concerned with the middle class and lower middle class where male repression shows a repulsive phase especially within marriage. She also demonstrates marriage as a patriarchal institution to enslave women to a lifetime of male domination. Marriage and so called sacredness that is attached to it, is the strongest weapon in the hands of men to silence women. Marital rape is one form of sexual assault where a husband gets license to rape his wife night after night.
In every situation women has been become the target of exploitation it can be for the sake of family, honour, community and country also. The worst victims of partition were women from both the Hindus and Muslims communities because women were the only weapon for one community to make another community more aggressive. It is a continuous process for the women because they have been exploited, and are still being exploited and they will be exploited in the patriarchal society, unless they will speak against this society. In the Ice Candy Manalmost every female character has been exploited socially, mentally, physically and at the end they doesn’t know whether their family would accept them or not. In this novel BapsiSidhwa highlights the issues of present society and how the female has suffered in the Partition era and represents the extensive featuring of women’s shared experiences of victimization in the communal riots, is complemented by a presentation of their