Women's Social Revolution

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Archives for November 2013

Lady Godiva

I just wanted to address the new background image of the blog. It’s impossible to see the full picture as you scroll down, so I decided to make a post for it as well. As you have probably guessed from the title, the picture is of a painting of Lady Godiva. She is famous from the legend in which she rides naked through Coventry in protest of her husband’s oppressive taxation.

I think she is an important figure to observe. She is a woman who lived in a time when female sexuality was stigmatized. It was a time in which society was completely patriarchal, and when women were mere objects belonging to their husbands. What is so great about Godiva is that even with such force and stigma fighting against her, she still followed what she believed to be right. She is the ideal strong woman, who took major risks to achieve her goals. What’s even better about her, is the way she fought. She used society’s norms and stigmas to strengthen her impact. By playing up her sexuality she forces all attention on her, and the perceptions of her are then reflected on her husband because of her social standing. Instead of relying on guilt as her persuasive tool, she creates an overbearing sense of shame and embarrassment to hang over her husband. Of course the sense of guilt is still there, it just is not her main weapon. A fictional Strong woman, that is Godiva. However she isn’t the stereotypical Strong woman; she fights according to the rules of the world she lives in, in a realistic way. This is unlike the stereotypical Strong women, who seem indestructible and infallible.

Question Time

Now, it’s taken some time but I want to finally address the title of the blog. The reason I went for Women’s Social Revolution, is because I view history in a way that puts women in a constant state of revolution. They are the one group of people who have been constantly, throughout history, oppressed. All major societies have  been patriarchal from the beginning leading to this phenomena, and women have fought for their power and voice throughout (especially in western cultures).

So, what is it I’m trying to get at?

I want to know whether you think women have progressed enough for the revolution to be over. Is the revolutions still going on?

Let’s take a look at what we have so far. We know that in Moliere’s time that the model woman was one like his Mariane, the opposite of Dorine and Elmire. They were tame and timid, objects to be seen and not heard. They were dependent children who couldn’t think for themselves. However, because of the characters Dorine and Elmire, we know that at least some people held opposing views of this ideal. It was a tiny minority, but some people did believe women to be capable of the same logical reasoning as men of the enlightenment. This is proof that the revolution has been going on since, latest, the 16 hundreds.

Jumping to Sor Juana, we can see that men are still holding enough social power to force an ideal on women. They are strong enough to shift their behavior to match their wishes. At this point we are introduced to another imbalance; men hold the social power as well as the intellectual and political power. They have such great influence that they are able to get away with the same sins that women are stigmatized for committing, without anyone question them or calling them out for their hypocrisy.

Now, if we skip a few dozen years and look at the women found in Sealed Off and The Perforated Sheet, we can compare societies beyond time.In both works, the women are acting out the roles given to them by society’s pressures. Now what do these roles tell us? Women are still viewed as beings meant to be ruled by men, that they must listen to the will of their father. That their most important duty is to be a “good daughter” which means remaining keeping chaste, keeping face in public, and most importantly marrying up. They are still tools for the meant to be abused however they wish. Between the four works, it doesn’t seem any progress has been made at all except for the exception of education in one example. However, even with an education the woman is still not respected by the people around her.

Finally let’s move on to the current day. I want to leave out the Beyond, and Mononoke bits for now. They represent a more realistic image of women than what society perceives. It is true that women, now, are more respected, have equal education chances, and other equivalent rights. However, what about socially. Have we made any social progress? The double standard Sor Juana speaks about still exists today, even stronger today. What’s worse is that some of these women are smart enough to recognize the existence of it, but choose not to act in an attempt to rectify it; they accept it and move on. Of course the minority that now view women in ways that Jodie and Mononoke are portrayed have increased, but the social ideal remains wholly unchanged; only the smallest details are different. All this can be attributed to the deep ingraining of feminine ideals from generations and societies long past. However, these ideals are constantly being upheld and strengthened by the media, whether it is the sexualization of models and actresses, or the photoshopped pictures surrounding us at every corner.

The Revolution continues, no?

Old Habits Die Hard

I just read The Perforated Sheet for class and it got me thinking about the cross-cultural differences in how women are treated and viewed. The setting of the story is India, almost a century before. In the story there is a young woman by the name of Naseem. She is a sickly girl who’s frailty forces the main character Aadam, a doctor, to frequent her house.

Now the reason I thought this story is interesting is in how Naseem is treated, and how the other two women are described. Naseem is treated in quite a stereotypical way, by her father. Even though she must be inspected by the doctor, Aadam must stay behind a sheet so as not to see her body. It’s quite clear that the father is very protective and that it is expected of Naseem to be chaste and innocent. This seems to play on the cultural ideal of femininity. It is something that is weak and frail, like the health of Naseem, and must be protected and shielded from the world.

In fact Naseem does have protectors; these protectors are two strong women who are described as being built like wrestlers. This is truly interesting, the role of protector does not fall on the father, but other women. It suggests to me, that only women can be trusted with protecting other women in that society. The contrast between Naseem’s obvious frailty and the protectors’ strength raises some questions as well. Why is it that the protectors are not treated the same way Naseem is, why can they accept this, seemingly, masculine job. Is it suggestive of western influences leaking into India; Aadam is a doctor who has just recently returned from Germany after all.

Finally at the end of the story, when Naseem and Aadam finally get to see each other’s faces and joke, there is this strange moment where Naseem’s father laughs and smiles in this somewhat disturbing manner. It makes me think back to when Aadam first arrives to treat Naseem, and he says that he should have listened to his impulse telling him to run. It made me think that the father had planned everything out to make Aadam fall for his daughter.

Pushing the creepy aspect of this interpretation aside, it definitely brings up the tradition of arranged marriages in India. It has been a long standing tradition, and even now, many people are being forced into loveless marriages in India. Even the young immigrants who come to the States to earn an education, often are forced by tradition and pressure to marry someone arranged by their parents. As someone who is born and raised in an individualist culture, it is quite shocking that people are still forcing marriages and treating them as merger tools.

The traditional feminine ideals of how a women should act and be viewed haven’t all gone away. Every Indian girl that I have met comes from a family where they are to show the bare minimum of skin. They are not allowed to date (some still can’t even after entering college). They have to listen to their father, since he is the patriarch of the family. There are very strict rules on their behavior and dress; it all seems very ridiculous to me.  Then considering that arranged marriages are still common events in Indian households, can we say that much has changed? Just as old habits die hard, old traditions do as well.

Sor Juana’s “Man”

There is one poem by Sor Juana, that I fell in love with upon first read. It is the one titled “You Foolish Men” and is the one that discusses the influences of men on women. I love it because of the clear parallels that can be made between the society in which she lived and our own society. I just thought it was interesting how Sor Juana is railing against men for forcing their ideal of a woman onto them and then blaming and accusing them of being loose, even though that is what they drove the women to behave as. It seems as though during Sor Juana’s time, a lady who was kind and friendly was viewed as loose. I think the mindset is similar to how girls are portrayed in today’s teen dramas; there’s always a girl who is ostracized by the other gils because she is seen as being too friendly or too nice to the school’s idol. Then to teach her a lesson, the other girls and boys start spreading rumors like, “look at her chatting up Clay, what a slut,” even though it’s just in her nature to be sociable.

However, Sor Juana then makes a valid point about what girls do to avoid this misinterpretation. She observes that women then choose to be aloof as to avoid being labeled as “loose” or “slut”. However, because they are being distant the men then complain about how cruel the woman is. They can’t seem to realize that it is their own fault for creating such unrealistic images of women that the actual ones can only try and fail to achieve. I’m not sure why people keep saying, “men love a chase.” because it’s just not true. Any straight man out there would be happy, if not ecstatic, for a girl to be forward, walk up to him, and say, “I like you.”

Perhaps society has changed in some respects after all. In this time, it isn’t just the men who are causing this behavioral change in women, the women are just as guilty now. I’t become a lot more acceptable for girls to make the first move now, but outside of cities the social norms are still a little dated. You’ll notice that barely any girls will make the first move, if at all. And even though I did say that cities are better in this respect it still isn’t saying much. A lot of girls, in cities, still hold the belief that it is the men who should be making the first move.

Woah, I guess guess girls also have this foolish contradiction as well. They have this belief that the men need to initiate romantic relationships based on long since dead codes of conduct, and when the boys don’t, the girls get frustrated and hurt. The women aren’t just victims of social contradictions anymore. I don’t know if women were like this back in Sor Juana’s time, but if they weren’t, wouldn’t that mean society’s actually taken a step back? Considering that women are expecting to be treated certain ways for being female and yet calling for equality, I would say that somewhere along the line someone made a misstep.

Sealed Off

So the most recent work we read for class is Sealed Off, by Zhang Ailing. It started off so randomly; it just spent the first half of the story describing the different things and people on the tramcar in Shanghai. Then is finally got to the two main characters. I want to focus on the girl called Wu Cuiyan. She is an English instructor at her alma mater, and yes she has a college degree.

She is described as a good daughter and a good student. She’s done everything in her life properly and according to the wishes of her parents. This is all well and good for any child, especially for a daughter of a more reserved Shanghainese family. Her first introduction was one that made me respond with the thoughts, “Oh, another classic case of the perfect daughter stereotype, I really don’t want to read about that.” Her reaction to a student’s paper, however, rives away the fear I had. Apparently she gave a student an “A” for a poorly written essay because of the way he treated her through his paper. He was the only man who treated her enough as an intelligent person to be unafraid in using terms like, “painted prostitutes,” and, “low-class bars and dancing halls.” It was from this that I got the sense that Cuiyan is a REAL woman.

She isn’t some paradigm of a stereotype of women; she is a person with substance, looking for substance. I mean, she seems to hate the idea of just falling into place, marrying for the sake of her family. She wants the kind of spontaneity she experiences with Lu Zongzhen, who suddenly appeared next to her and started flirting with her. She didn’t seem to completely mind the idea of becoming a concubine; in fact she seemed to be thrilled with the fantasy of it as she considered how her family would react.

Now this is a real woman. She is someone who has her own urges and needs. She is someone who both wants to live up to expectations while also wanting to rebel against them. She is someone who romanticizes and can be lost in emotion. she is a person equal to that of a man in such aspects.
I just wanted to thank Zhang Ailing for creating a real person for his female lead instead of following convention and creating a model of social stereotypes.

 

On a separate note, it’s a bit unnerving that, even in the 1900’s, the act of taking concubines was still accepted. Cuiyan’s reaction to Zhongzhen’s suggestion makes it seem as though taking concubines was still prevalent in society even if frowned upon. What’s worse is that the man seems as if he would be unaffected socially, just monetarily. The woman in the other hand, who becomes a concubine, needs to worry of what her family will think or do to her and how she will fit into society outside that role. The double standard of sexual infidelity seems to continue to exist and across cultures.

The mothers of the world

I didn’t really get to finish everything I wanted to say in my last post. Sure, Dorine is an amazing character, and yes she is my favorite character, but we can’t forget Elmire. Elmire is the wife of Orgon, and another strong female lead. Unlike Dorine, who is the leading voice of reason at the start, Elmire shines during the second half of the play. It’s almost as if she sees Dorine’s failure in convincing Orgon through reason, so she decides to follow a different route. She is obviously well aware of her own existence as a beautiful woman, and what that means in society – a dangerous temptation. She is cunning enough and proud enough to use her ax-like beauty to do what Dorine could not. She seduces Tartuffe in front of her husband in an attempt to show him the truth. Even though she has the intelligence and the evidence, she needs to use more if she wants to get past the societal wall labeled “woman”.
In the end she succeeded in revealing Tartuffe’s true nature, but the credit was not given to her. This really made me think of how mothers work so hard for their family and are just taken for granted without proper appreciation. She, the mother of the house, offered up her body to save her family, and yet all the thunder is given to the prince.

It got me thinking of how patriarchal our society is and brings to mind the ending of Lu Xun’s “Medicine” where the mother of the revolutionary and the mother of the sick child meet. Even though they were complete strangers and one of them had even used the death of the other’s child to save her own, somehow a bond between the two of them formed. They were connected simply from their mutual existence as mothers. It was as if Lu Xun was saying that only mothers could achieve such a kind of togetherness in times of strife and violent revolution.

Both cases also really call my attention towards the fact that in both works, the women do not involve themselves in the violence or greed that men seem to engage in. Elmire acts with the family’s safety in mind while Orgon acts out of vanity. The mother acts to save her son while the men are enthralled by the revolution.

A nice opening to the semester

What was very interesting for me is that the first work we read as a class was Moliere’s Tartuffe. This play is written by a male during a time in which women were, basically, still property of the men. However, there is an amazing female character in this play; she is the one who stays level-headed while working to save the family from ruin.

The first of the two is a wet nurse of the house, Dorine. She is my favorite character in the entire comedy. She is the funniest, sassiest, and most intelligent person around. Without her the comedy would be more of a tragedy. Back on point, she is the first person we see who voices opinions against the con artist, Tartuffe. At first it might seem that she is just being paranoid, but we find out that Tartuffe actually is after Orgon’s (the head of the household) money and wife. Dorine, a simple and low class servant is able to see the liar for who he really is from the very start! It must take some level of intelligence and cunning to be able to do that, especially considering those standing at the very top of the food chain couldn’t.
I must admit that there were others who doubted Tartuffe just as much as Dorine. These are the other men of the house. However, there is a clear difference between the two. The men are swayed by their emotions causing their messages to become weak and deluded, while Dorine exemplifies the enlightenment ideals by speaking rationally and using evidence as backing for her claims. Even though she speaks to clearly and eloquently she is ignored because she is a servant, because she is of lower standing, because she is a woman.

I loved this opening to the class. I am always so worried when it comes to entering a new semester of English; you never know what the professor will choose to cover, or how he/she is going to teach it. After reading this and talking about it in class as our first work, all my fears dissolved. It was perfect because it immediately brought up the question regarding women in society. I was able to breathe and had a little celebration in my head that the class was going to be interesting after all.

Hello world!

Hi, and welcome to the Women’s Social Revolution blog!

This blog is all about the different female voices that can be heard in the different works I will be reading for my Great Works class. I will talk about characters and authors. I don’t want to only focus in on how the women think and act but also how they are treated by other characters and how they are portrayed by male authors. Each work provides beautiful insight on the opinions of the times they were written in as well as the author’s own opinions. Hopefully it will shed enough light to reveal some truth about how far women have reached in society since the 1600s.