Sondra, By Margaret Atwood

sexual assault, the authors made a few assumptions about the knowledge of the reader. One

The discrimination women have endured for thousands of years has led our society to the normalization of the mistreatment of women. One of the most despicable injustices women undergo is being held responsible for the mistakes of a man. Victim blaming is the act in which a victim of a crime or mishap is found accountable for the unethical conduct inflicted against them. Although Margaret Atwood wrote her reality based novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, in the 1980’s, the issue of victim blaming remains an issue in our current society as it is in the novel.

After being taken sexually advantage of, Esperanza repeats the phrase “you lied” to declare that Sally and the media have lied to her by saying sex is a pleasant experience. Furthermore, constantly repeating “you lied” shows that Esperanza has been traumatized by this experience; Esperanza realizes the women who have been assaulted were not magnifying the devastating psychological effects. Likewise, the statement, “He wouldn’t let me go. He said I love you Spanish girl.” is a statement which is repeated throughout the vignette. A boy saw Esperanza and grabbed her for his own sexual desire. Esperanza repeats the thought of being caressed without her consent and this creates the psychological effect of her seeing men as predators. This illustrates that groping negatively affects the way its victims look at the world. By using these structural elements to describe Esperanza’s first sexual encounter, Cisneros shows the harmful psychological effects sexual assault causes and sympathy for these people is instilled into the readers, because they know the harm that has been

She wants the audience to feel as innocent as she did in the beginning, as shameful and disgusted in the middle, and as nostalgic in the end of her article. In the beginning, she creates the image of what she looks like, “… [b]ell bottom jeans and blue peasant blouses and striped knit shirts that clung to my breasts, ” (Wilkinson). By doing so, readers can vividly imagine what she looks like and feel more attached and involved in the story she is creating. In the middle she takes us through all the times she was sexually abused and by using imagery, she makes the reader feel as beaten down and scared as she was. For example, she creates an image of the church where her first sexual assault occurred, “At the entrance to the church was a small vestibule with two white doors. Behind the doors was a dangling rope attached to the church bell,” (Wilkinson). She goes on to build the tension with her words like “groped,” “accident,” “hiding,” and “secret,” (Wilkinson). These make the reader more and more uncomfortable as she describes her experiences, which was the point, to make the reader feel some semblance of what she did. In the end, she describes her older and present self, looking through old pictures: “ Sometimes in old photographs, I see glimpses of that young woman. Corners of my mouth turned down. Staring into the camera with empty eyes where joy should

The novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin contains content that is highly debatable and easily controversial. In the essay Chopin’s The Awakening by Roger Platizky, the author interpreted from the novel that the depression of Edna Pontellier, the main feminine lead, is created not only from the male oppression of the time period, but is also derived from the idea that Edna is affected by a previous encounter with sexual violence, either as a witness or a victim. While there is some way to infer that this is true, it is not confirmed and is quite a reach, considering her life now and willingness with men. The reason that some readers believe this is due to her “mood changes, boundary problems and suicide” (Platizky, Roger). If Edna was a victim or witness to sexual violence, she would be even more submissive and fragile as a character. This theory is untrue, however, because throughout the novel Edna Pontellier displays a growing strength that is presented to the men in her life and finally gains her the independence she has been desiring, even if it isn’t in the most predictable way.

Throughout the poem, Pages Matam explores the key ideas and issues of victim-blaming and silencing rape victims due to society’s taboo of speaking out about sexual, physical, and verbal assault. Matam effectively outlines the harmful idea that beauty determines your likelihood to get sexual assaulted, which society inflicts upon victims, as a constant motif throughout the poem in the lines “Tell Elisabeth Fritzl, how pretty the flame of her skin was”, using sophisticated imagery within an allusion to explore this idea, applying satire to show society’s glorification and romanticisation of sexual assault as society manipulates getting sexually abused to be perceived as a compliment, ignoring the true meaning and aspects of the issue. This idea

At this point in the story, Jeannette is being assaulted by a boy in her neighborhood named Billy Deel. It marks her first non consensual sexual experience. She tries to cope with it by cutting him off but he hammers home the point that she was taken advantage of with a spiteful “I raped you!” Throughout the novel, she has been abused more than a few times.and it reaches to a point where it doesn’t seem to phase her anymore. Despite the stigma attached to this particular

Rape is beyond dispute one of the most explicit events that can occur to a person in order to harm them on a physiological, emotional and even physical level. The violation here is subverted into a domination of the “poor rapist”. However the heroine encounters a violation on a physical level, which becomes obvious, when she states:” I was inexperienced at dog-fashion fucking and had probably torn the skin of my cunt a little.” (70) There is physical pain as a result of the violation, but the way the heroine reacts and wipes the pain away by marginalizing (“a little”) the injury makes it less harmful and consuming. At first it seems, that the rape has no quality for her as the source for shame. But on the same page she also describes the way Toni and her interacted right after the rape had taken place: “Tomi glanced at me quizzically once or twice, but I managed to avoid her eyes”. This sentence is easily overlooked because she had taken everything that happened beforehand so lightly, but here there is a moment of judging a moment of trying to avoid shame. He avoids her eyes, because she

The sarcastic tone of the line suggests that women are perceived in a condescending and degrading fashion. Incapable to evaluate their own feelings in reference to rape and that they do not possess the intuitiveness to recognize the magazines offensive manner in portraying such a serious topic. Estelle is offended at the magazines depiction of rape and finds it incomprehensible, "you think it was just invented...I mean what's so new about it" (356) she is further offended at the questionnaire, she is fully aware that rape has been around for sometime. She recognizes, unlike her co-workers, the magazines ploy, at exploiting women's insecurities of self-consciousness, powerlessness, fear and loss of control over their own will and condemns the magazine for minimizing the seriousness of such a sensitive issue.

The archetypal rape victim flaunts her femininity, clad in skimpy clothing whilst walking through darkened parks. The archetypal rape victim is asking for it. At least, that’s the argument used by Teena Maguire’s neighbors to justify her assailants raping her. In Joyce Carol Oates “Rape: A Love Story”, by aligning Teena with the archetypal rape victim, the author employs the switching between second and third point of view, irony, the progressively dismissive diction, as well as the short syntactic structure to emphasize the raw objectiveness of rape in an attempt to delineate the minimizing of rape, and highlight the injustices committed when rapists evade jail time on the basis of technicalities. Written mostly in third person, with the

Rape is a grotesque topic, but in The RoundHouse by Louise Erdrich the subject is a necessity for Joe to comprehend what happened to his mom. Joe is a 13 year old boy that has to grow up faster than he expected. With the attack of his mother and his father's inability to rehabilitate her, Joe steps up and begins to take an active role in trying to find her attacker. Normally a 13 year old would remain oblivious to the turmoil surrounding his family. Joe does not. He takes the attack of his mom personally and becomes more serious. As a reader there are not many scenarios where he is portrayed doing child like things. This is why I believe Erdrich includes the scene with Grandma Thunder. She is the comedic relief and the readers opportunity to

Minority groups have always been marginalized and bellowed by our current justice system in society within these groups are women, this leads to questioning the role of the justice system in perpetuating violence in for example Native American groups. In the U.S. the justice system has failed to protect these women specifically Native American women from sexual violence, and what worsens the case is that more often than not their attackers are let off easy or escape punishment altogether because of federal, state and tribal jurisdictions. In the Round House by Louise Erdrich which is set in 1988 and in The Beginning and End of Rape by Sarah Deer one can see how the U.S. rape laws fail to provide justice to Native Americans who suffer rape and actually contribute to

Rape Is All Prospective In comparing Camille Paglia’ essay Rape: A Bigger Danger than Feminists Know and Susan Jacoby ’s essay Common Decency, it is clear that both of them feel rape has many factors that involve a male and a woman and the lines of sex between them. Is it mixed signals? Is it respect?

In Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, the main character Humbert Humbert writes a memoir of the rape, incest, and murder he becomes involved in. Throughout the novel the chaos is swept under a carpet that consists of manipulative and linguistic trickery. Instantly in the foreword, the author opens up calling the novel Lolita the “Confession of a White Widowed Male” as an attempt to highlight Humbert’s good side, being a husband, rather than explaining why the novel is named after a girl Humbert raped. Humbert addresses Dolores as Lolita and a nymphet, labels assigned to enable control and possession over her. Meticulous word choice allows Humbert to beguile the audience in a similar manner to the way he manipulated Lolita. Humbert becomes manipulative and feeds off of sympathy that strengthens his reason for committing these immoral acts. Lolita, narrated by Humbert, is being contorted to present Humbert as the victim. Humbert plays victim and the audiences’ reactions are predictable to him. Using this to his advantage, on top of his manipulative strategies, allows Humbert control over the emotions evoked while reading the memoir. Without uncovering the manipulative and linguistic puns Humbert provides, the audience will be at risk of forgetting the reason why Humbert is on trial in the first place.

In the book Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf, it is evident that the main character, Clarissa Dalloway, double persona is Septimus Smith. While Clarissa proves to be more rational, Septimus is irrational. Clarissa shows optimism with her life and finding her true identity while Septimus is someone who experiencing insanity and madness. Although she never meets him and their lives are vastly different, the two characters actually mirror each other. Clarissa and Septimus share many characteristics and think in similar manners. Septimus serves as a contrast between the veteran working class and upper class. Throughout the book, Septimus’ thoughts parallel Clarissa’s and can be seen as an echo in some ways. This illustrates how the line between sanity and insanity can become blurred. Both characters have similar experiences, but how they go about interpreting them and finding deeper meaning about it differ because of their different personalities and experiences.