Eugenides: The Unecided Role Of Women

Language: In On the Equality of the Sexes, there are a few phrases that seem to show some importance. “There is something new under the sun” is italicized in the text. She is saying that there is going to be some change coming soon with women’s education. She also uses the word superior, or superiority, quite a bit in the text. She questions whether or not mental superiority between sexes actually exists. She also talks about imagination a lot. She makes the point that society constricts how women use their imaginations. The way she uses domestication in the text is in a negative way. She uses the phrase “fertile brain of a female” and by doing this she is trying to show that females’ brains are productive and capable of becoming so much

This literary study will define the historical construction of submissive female gender roles in the domestic sphere in Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Existential Paralysis of Women” and in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. Beauvoir’s article defines the suffering that women endure as servants in the home due to the overarching construction of submissive gender roles in the “masculine world.” This construction of gender role relies on male-based institutions that have educated women to believe that are inferior as an innate biological fact, yet these

Middlesex is an outline of the life of Calliope Stephanides who grew to the age of fourteen believing that she was a girl with unnatural thoughts for the same sex. As puberty takes hold of her friends and classmates, both Calliope and her family begin to worry about the growing gap between her and the average teenage girl; this marks the beginning of a new life for Calliope who finds she is really a he. Under the new name, Cal, this individual struggles with identity management as he traces his transformation from female to male and the genetic condition, beginning with his paternal grandparents that caused it. “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smog less Detroit day in January of

For this primary source paper, I decided to write a comparison on the source Women’s Place in Renaissance Italy: Alessandra, Letters from a Widow and Matriarch of a Great Family and The Virgin Suicides written by Jeffrey Eugenides. Immediately reading the first paragraph of Women’s Place in Renaissance Italy, it strongly resonated with The Virgin Suicides in a way. I thought these two would make an interesting comparison due to the way they both address men, death, complexity of being a female, and family.

The most notable aspect of Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides would be its first person-plural narrative voice. Literary scholars have often addressed the issue of the narrative voice and the effect that having multiple narrators has on the story. In her article ‘A story we could live with’ Narrative voice, the Reader, and Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides Debra Shostak addresses how the “we” inadvertently draws attention to the “otherness” of the Lisbon girls. She attempts to dispel the belief that The Virgin Suicides is a misogynistic text by analyzing Eugenides’s complicated use of the word “we”. Shostak’s article gives deep insight into the complexities of the plural narrative and provides a foundation for future analysis of the text. However, what Shostak does not address is how this perception of otherness, by both the narrators and the community in which they reside, ultimately leads to the downfall of the Lisbon sisters. My argument is twofold. Firstly, I will address how the perception by the narrators that the girls are radically different from themselves and their community, combined with the tendency to group the girls as a single monolithic entity serves as one explanation for the girls deaths. Treating the girls as though they are the same person leads to the perceived inevitability of their deaths, which ultimately plays a vital role in their untimely and fatal ends.

Women’s rights in the seventeenth century were distinctive, “Differences of culture, nationality, and historical memory are exacerbated by distinctions of race, class, ethnicity, ability, and sexual preference” (Women’s P.6). Human women equality is important in today’s society because women challenged the notion to fight the Civil Right’s

Many women have experienced discrimination due to their gender. Society views women as inferior beings that cannot achieve greatness. Furthermore, women have acquired a set of rules and expectations to meet within their role in society. In the 1850 romance novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts the beauty and strength of women. Despite society’s strict views of gender roles, women can convert society’s oppression into freedom due to the qualities they possess, which surpass society’s assumed capabilities of them.

In Jeffrey Eugenides’s book Middlesex, Calliope Stephanide tells the story of not only her transformation, but also the world’s transformation into a completely different entity. Brother and sister become husband and wife, Greeks become Americans, and, most importantly, a young girl becomes a man. Along with being a transformative novel, Middlesex is also considered a modern epic. It is an epic account that retells the history of a recessive chromosome that made its way into the life of the main character. Cal describes this recessive chromosome’s journey as it travels through many imposing events: “Cal needs to tell the story of his past in order to function in the present” (Cohen). This genetic chromosome survives a fire in Smyrna,

In Middlesex Eugenides also uses language to convey the Stephanides’ cultural heritage and its ever shifting role in their lives. Eugenides examine how assimilation effects a family and the differences between tradition and the modern world. Eugenides sprinkle in words that are specific to Greek culture or derived from Greek throughout the novel. Eugenides writes, “ He’d left one morning dressed in boots, knee socks, breeches, doulamas, and vest . . .” (25). He brings attention to the appearance of this traditional clothing piece by italicizing the word. The connection of the traditional garment emphasizes the Greek culture that Lefty grew up in. The use of real traditional words and pieces of Greek culture create a more realistic narrative

Modernism is the term of deviating from the norm. In the early 1900s, modernism influenced women’s role in society by providing more opportunities, jobs, and role models for girls today, in society.

Just as Pygmalion sculpts Galatea, man sculpts the idea of woman. The consequence of this is that man perpetuates the idea of womanhood, and women obey it. Beauvoir encourages women to fight against this idea of womanhood, arguing that “To pose women is to [deny]… that she is a subject, a fellow human being” (De Beauvoir). Most people unfortunately do not fight back against this idea of womanhood, and remain passive to it.

In many modern societies, a common belief is that women should have equal standing with men politically, socially, and in the workforce (Alesina, Guiliano, and Nunn 1). This support is generally associated with feminism, which advocates for equality between all genders (Issist). In other societies, women are unable to seek opportunities past traditional gender roles, such as domestication and childbearing (Alesina, Guiliano, and Nunn 1). This ideology is often referred to as patriarchy, which expects women to conform to stereotypes that are based on assumptions about femininity and maternal instinct. The influences of traditional gender roles revolve around conditioning, restraint, and submissive characteristics, which can result in women living in boredom and misery (Yildirim 47). To reveal the corrupt nature of the customary expectations of women living during the 1800s, the author illustrates Hedda’s marriage to George Tesman, as the husband expects his wife to devote her life solely to the wellbeing of her household and family. If Hedda decides to conform to the traditional gender roles of the Victorian era, she will not be able to express her individuality or intelligence. The only purpose that she will serve in society will be to raise children and attend to the needs of her husband. This imposes limitations on her basic human rights, as her society views her as inferior and

In fact, man is seen as the universal norm whereas woman is “defined and differentiated with reference to man” (ibid.). Thus, man is defined as the One which entails the submission of woman as the Other (xxiv). This submission, however, is a result of natural condition rather than historical events or social change (xxiv-xxv). Moreover, it is due to the fact that woman do not form an independent unit as they do not have a past or history of their own which differentiates them from men. Hence, woman is the Other in a duality in which both elements - man and woman - are essential, as the division of the sexes is a biological fact not a historical event

De Beauvoir’s “Woman as Other” lays out an elaborate argument on gender inequality; using the term “other” to establish woman’s alternate, lesser important role throughout her work, the author dissects and examines from its origin the female’s secondary position in society in contrast to man. Indeed, from the beginning of recorded history, the duality of man, by definition, positions woman at the opposing end of the spectrum in relation to her male counterpart. Even by today’s modern and accepting standards, the female suffers under the brand of being the sub-standard half of the duality equation; compared to her male opponent, women are paid lower wages, have fewer and limited expression of rights, achieve lower

It may be possible to imagine a place where no one would make a fuss over the differences between a white or a black man, but unfortunately, it is likely impossible to imagine a society that would not comment on the differences between a man and a woman (Heinämaa, 127). Simone de Beauvoir was quite determined to give society a glimpse into what it meant to be a woman within her time period, and did so by writing her novel The Second Sex which brought many controversial topics to light. There are four concepts I will be mentioning in different sections of this paper, and it is best to know how Beauvoir personally defines these terms. Firstly, “alienation” refers to the action of projecting oneself into a different person or object, thereby losing all responsibility for yourself (Moi,