The 1970’s was a powerful time for oppressed groups. It is a time in which we really see a change in our nation, with a vibrant uprising of oppressed groups. Now, that’s not to say that things got “fixed,” but there was certainly a turn of the tide. In The Female Man, by Joanna Russ, we […]
The Female Man is an important social commentary about women, women’s place in the world, and women’s agency during the Second Wave feminist movement. My favorite passage in the novel is on page 207, when I’m assuming Jeannine says, “Learning to / despise / one’s / self.” Women have been socialized to not only dislike […]
The Female Man is remarkable in that it approaches what it means to be a woman from four distinct worlds – or personalities. Joanna Russ, author of The Female Man, sets up a confusing, hilarious, exhausting, and Utopian narrative centered around gender and feminism. The four personalities follow: Joanna, Janet, Jeannine, and Jael (whom, at this […]
Alexander, Christine. “’That kingdom of gloom:’ Charlotte Bronte, the Annuals, and the Gothic”. Nineteenth Century Literature. Cengage Learning. Inc. March 1993. Author Christine Alexander examines the Gothic experiences that Jane has that can relate to Charlotte Bronte’s own life. Giving evidence showing how Jane is a double for Bronte starts the discussion of the Gothic […]
In Charles Perrault’s legend Bluebeard, the prevailing irony of the legend is that the wife is portrayed as immoral for not obeying her husband’s wishes even though her husband is a murderer, and the her disobedience results in her discovery of her husband’s murderous past and the eventual salvation of her life. Bluebeard finds pleasure in […]
Samuel R. Delany’s novel Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand is providing to be quite a challenge for me. One of the things that has stood out to me in the novel is gender and the use of words that go along with gender. This topic has definitely been covered in class but […]
The Dispossessed is definitely not my favorite novel so far. But, the many themes that are packed into it do intrigue me. In my last post I wrote on the utopia that Le Guin described. But his book is so much more than a study of this ambiguous utopia. It could easily be labeled as feminist science fiction. Le Guin uses the […]
As “A Specter is Haunting Europe” opens readers are introduced to Europe in 1899 at the “site of the world’s first peace conference”. (1) Readers are then invited back further in the century to discover how spectators arrived to this place in history. Within this flashback readers are given a look into the minds and […]
Women in 20th Century Europe were starting to realize that they could finally start stepping in for the men knowingly that the man would be going off to war. Of course as a man you felt it was your duty to go and fight in the war. Women wanted a way to show that they […]