Summary Of Margaret Atwood's The Victory Burlesk

In the story, “How I Lost the Junior Miss Pageant” by Cindy Bosley, the narrator tells her story about how she lost the Junior Miss Pageant. She takes us on a journey about how she watched pageants and rated the females as if she was the judge and how she got into the pageant and practiced. She told us about her and her mother’s struggles with money, men and ultimately how she lost the pageant. She went even further after the pageant was over, to tell the reader how disappointed her mother was because she did not win and her mother’s ultimate sorrow, her loneliness. This descriptive narrative allowed me to understand the text's main point: being accepted by others.

Louise Halfe’s “Body Politics” challenges the qualities and behaviour of the idealized feminine woman by contrasting the stereotypical “city woman” with a more masculine “real woman.” The poem’s speaker describes her mother’s opinion of what it means to be a real woman, which is seen through “Mama said.” Throughout the poem, the speaker uses vivid imagery to create a stark contrast between the idealized feminine “city woman” and a “real woman” who does not conform to the feminine gender norm. To begin with, the title of the poem itself can be viewed as an obvious critique of the feminine ideal. By definition a body politic is a group of people “considered as a collective unit” (Merriam-Webster). This is significant because in Butler’s theory, she emphasizes that a person’s gender can vary depending on a given situation, and therefore women cannot be grouped together and defined exclusively by their feminine qualities. Instead, she argues that women should be viewed as individuals capable of possessing both masculine and feminine behaviour. This belief relates directly to the poem’s title, as Halfe is clearly making a statement on the manner in which patriarchal societies expect women to conform to a singular feminine ideal. Moreover, it illustrates how women’s bodies become a political site for the masculinist culture to impose feminine gender on. With consideration to the title’s reference to a homogeneous group of women, it is interesting that stanzas two through four all

First of all, Margaret Atwood is well known for writing fiction with strong female characters that critics categorize her as feminist. Her initial works, ”The Edible Woman”, “Dancing Girls”, “The Robber Bride”, and “The Handmaid’s Tale” are some of examples of her works that are categorize as feminist. Those novels of strong woman describe, “The main characters variously indulge in self-invention, self-mythologising, role-playing, and self-division, while identity is presented as unstable and duplicitous throughout the novels” (McCarthy 3). Atwood has that unique style to describe her characters. She elucidates the woman as their own self to invent their life and their environment through the entire novel. Atwood has a twisted technique for giving her work a jubilant name when the words describe the opposite. One example of that is her short story collection, “Dancing Girls”, Atwood, “bears a surprisingly joyful title for a series of narratives shot through with anxiety and fear, with images of death, deformity, lifelessness and contained rage” (Murray 1). Atwood has an incredible way to write stories where the characters go through gruesome obstacles or experiences that define

The fifty ladies are not just judged on beauty . They are compared on beauty , talent , and intellect . The whole world should see things this way , because it doesn't exclude , judge , or shun people based on beauty . Another part that interest me was how the girl was talking about how most of the girls on the stage would mostly likely become a house mom , and that they will not be able to receive a higher paying degree . I cannot say this about her time period , but I feel that now women and men are equally the same .

Through the setting of the novel, Atwood examines a woman’s role and contribution to society. Throughout history, oppressive regimes

Beginning with Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron-Mills, readers can find within the text a clear oppression of lower class peoples that is also an indirect oppression of women as lower-class individuals. Davis tells this story with a man named Hugh Wolfe as her main

Feminism is a prominent controversy in present times and is relevant through literary works. In the article, “Throwing like a Girl,” James Fallows analyzes that saying exactly for what it means in our society, and more importantly if there’s any truth to the stereotype. In the article, “Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History,” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich shows how feminist historians, by challenging traditional accounts of both men's and women's histories, have prompted more vibrant accounts of the past. While Fallows analyzes the styles of throwing to identify a possible theory of the stereotypical saying, “throwing like a girl,” Ulrich discusses and encourages women to be strong and accomplish their goals, by using her phrase “well behaved women seldom make history.”

Author Barbara Welter in her article, The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860 discusses what one may argue is true womanhood and why it is necessary for woman of society. There are multiple ways that one may look at Welter’s text, the first, being within the time frame that it was written, and what it says about society at the time the text was written. The other, is out of context and discussing it as a whole within the feminist movement.

With respect to the degradation of women in The Underdogs, we must profile the two women portrayed in the book. On one hand we have the conservative Camilla, and on the other, we have War Paint. War Paint was the opposite of what society held as the typical woman. War Paint went against the grain, and partook in events which

During the early 1900s till now, women have been discriminated against and have been battling for equal rights in the United States. In 1960s America, the feminist movement was growing rapidly, bringing out influential women and protesters who were starting to get noticed by the majority of the population. One of those influential women, author Adrienne Rich, published an essay that talks about how women are treated differently. In the essay, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as a Re-vision”, Rich argues that a stereotypical and prejudiced male society represses women. She demonstrates these views through the use of literary history, her personal experience towards women’s discrimination, and the potential women have to

The nineteenth century is popularly known for its traditional view of gender roles, especially regarding women. The term “True Woman” refers to what society at that time thought to be the ideal woman, carrying qualities of “modesty, submissiveness, physical weakness, limited education, and complete devotion to husband and home” (White, 2009, p. 1). Women were restrained in terms of sexuality, dress, language, and economic decisions. In Amy Gilman Srebnick’s The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers, Mary rebels against these standards by being a single women that is also sexually active, however, her actions are what seemingly lead to her demise. Similarly, Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall also goes against gender norms. In her case, she earns her own economic independence through her writing and lives a more unconventional life as a mother, but faces repercussions from her family. Through the novels Ruth Hall and The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers, the main female characters revolt against being “True Women” through their daily actions and behaviors, however they’re each punished with consequences for trying to deviate from society’s path.

Presenting literature to the public that is meant to be a commentary on social or political issues, masked under the guise of entertaining and fictional, is a tool implemented by authors and activists for centuries. While not all satire is as overt as Jonathan Swift’s suggestion that we eat the babies, it does not diminish the eyebrow raising suggestions that are conveyed once the meaning has been discovered. In Aphra Behn’s The History of the Nun and Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina, the established expectations of the female role within society are brought into question then directly rejected. These expectations establish that women should be deferential to men, morally unblemished, and virtuous at all times. Men, however, are not held to these expectations in the same way. The masculine roles assumed by Isabella and Fantomina demonstrate a private rebellion against the established patriarchal society as it warns against the under-estimation of women and proves that women exist independently.

There are many companies in the world today that put an idea of this perfect female body into the heads of women. These images lead to a faulty standard men hold of women and their bodies and that women strive to become. Margaret Atwood addresses the issue of the way men view the female body by writing her essay in the viewpoints of a male so the reader can better understand how the expectation men have of the female body is unrealistic. First, she uses an allusive comparison to show the male expectation of the female body and how it is objectified as if it were a doll that comes with accessories. Next, she uses an anecdote with defamiliarization to show how the way the father views a Barbie doll and the way it portrays the female body to young girls is hypocritical. Lastly, Margaret Atwood uses insidious diction to talk about how men not only view the female body as a product but how they also use the female body as a product which can be sold amongst businessmen. In The Female Body, Margaret Atwood uses many rhetorical devices to convey how the female body is viewed through the eyes of men.

The physical body has been seen as many things both positive and negative. It can be thought of as the temple which houses the soul or can be seen as entrapping, like a cage of flesh. More often it seems that the body, especially women’s bodies, are looked at in more complicated ways than the bodies of men. As I grew up, it began to feel more and more like my body, and the bodies of other women, did not actually belong to us like we believed. Through my Women’s Studies class I have gained more knowledge on the body as a political object. In this essay I will examine six different articles with the similar theme of women’s bodies, the expression of those bodies and how by using feminism as a political standpoint they gain power and ownership of their bodies.

Rather than merely reverse the binary of good/bad, Benning subverts it by demonstrating that conventional definitions of womanhood are designed to prevent women from exploring the possibilities of their own identity and self-empowerment. More importantly, the “bad girl” plunders masculine icons of power and rebellion for her own use, thus allowing her to assume a freedom that crosses boundaries of gender and