The Female Eunuch: The Oppression Of Women

We have all heard the saying, “it’s a man’s world”. It appears that our world is governed according to a man’s perspective and thoughts as to how the world should be run, and women gracefully bow down to this perspective and internalize those male supremacist notions of patriarchal dominance. Even with this seemingly innate belief that men have, it is still apparent at times that there is another view that is often glossed over and ignored in the pursuit of extreme power and superiority. In Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones and Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of Butterflies, we are able to dissect society through the eyes of women who have had

“Does Mayella have power or not and why”. The small town of Maycomb Alabama turned upside down when a young lady by the name of Mayella Ewell uses her class, race, and gender to try and gain power and escape her situation. Although she failed to gain power she makes a scene and is noticed in the small town of maycomb when she is her father catches her with tom robinson who says he was trying to help her with chores is accused of raping Mayella Ewell. Mayella Ewell if a white female in the early 1930’s during this time women did not have the rights that they do so today. Her being white and being so poor that even the negros shunned her meant that they though lesser of her than themselves which in a white dominated society in the early 1900s took away any power that her race could have given her .Tom

In a quote by Christine de Pizan, she stated, “Not all men share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated, but it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did.” Christine uses this quote to examine marriage inequality. Women are subjugated in a marriage because of the views and expectations society has pushed upon them. Perkins Gilman wonderfully examines the inequality of marriage in her story The Yellow Wallpaper. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Perkins Gilman reflects upon the inequality of women within the relationship of marriage during the 1800s. This is seen in Gilman’s use of literary devices, characterization, and plot.

In the novel Cutting for Stone, the author, Verghese displays many of the women suffering great loss and agony as a result from promiscuous behavior. Most of the women in the novel are presented as nothing more than an object placed for men’s pleasure. However, when the women initiate this pleasure-seeking behavior and follow through with it, they suffer greatly. The men consistently participate in unwed intercourse, and it is accepted as the way of life. Marion’s thoughts, at sixteen years old, are stated, “Little did I know that our Ethiopian peers both at our school and at the government schools had long ago gone through their sexual initiation with a bar girl or a housemaid” (Verghese, 2009, p.391). Support of this sexist perception of women are given in this discussion from the novel.

Back in the 1800s, what individuals suffered the most? African American individuals weren 't even considered to be humans or "individuals" based on the way how they were treated. African American slaves were transported in boats across the sea, with a limited amount of space and sanitation. At the end, during their ownership of white masters, African Americans lost everything and by everything I mean morals, dignity, and "their bodies". Usually these slaves died or suffered because they were traumatized, other slaves that gained their morals, dignity and bodies survived his stage in humanity and fought for their freedom. The ones that were lucky and were taught by their white masters how to read and write, decided to write about their story and publish it. This didn’t only affect African American males and females but it also affected the morals of white men and women. At the end of the day, race and gender influenced the lives of individuals and how they were treated in society.

With few exceptions, our male dominated society has traditionally feared, repressed, and stymied the growth of women. As exemplified in history, man has always enjoyed a superior position. According to Genesis in the Old Testament, the fact that man was created first has led to the perception that man should rule. However, since woman was created from man’s rib, there is a strong argument that woman was meant to work along side with man as an equal partner. As James Weldon Johnson’s poem, “Behold de Rib,” clearly illustrates, if God had intended for woman to be dominated, then she would have been created from a bone in the foot, but “he

Women have been the most discriminated-against group of people in the entire history of humankind. They have been abused, held back in society, and oftentimes restricted to the home life, leading dull, meaningless lives while men make sure the world goes round. It seems strange that half of the world's population could be held down so long; ever since the dawn of humanity, women have been treated like second-class citizens. Only in the past 100 years or so have women started to win an equal place in society in the Western world. However, the fight for equality has not been a short one. The seeds of the liberation movement were planted hundreds of years ago, by free-thinking

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001)

The suppression of women not only inhibits their freedoms, but relies on keeping the inhibition hidden: “John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad” (Gilman 14). Her condition represents the oppression she, along with most women, faces. Her husband tells her not to think about it because thinking about it will not only force her to acknowledge the problems and unfair treatments she, as a women, faces, but it will make her want to deal with them [think of a

Women in literature have been portrayed in a multitude of ways throughout time. From goddesses to witches, and even prostitutes, women have not been limited in their representations. One challenge, in particular, is repression of their sexuality. In novels by Kate Chopin, George Orwell, and Kazuo Ishiguro, female characters live in societies that seek to regulate their sexuality. Published in 1899, The Awakening by Chopin focuses on Edna Pontellier, a woman who seeks to create a life outside her marriage by pursuing relationships with various lovers. George Orwell’s 1984, which was published in 1949, features Julia, a woman who rebels against her society by having sex for pleasure and not for reproduction. In addition, like Chopin and Orwell,

The plague of male dominancy and female oppression has spread throughout time and cultures like a pandemic infection, targeting women. Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Janice Mirikitani’s “Suicide Note,” show the struggle and pain that oppressive forces perpetrated on women. Although, both speakers are oppressed the way they end the oppression and the cause of it are very different. Patriarchy has always existed, and it affects women all over the world. For example, banned bride abductions in Central Asia have continued to occur, and the women who resist abduction, risk death, or becoming ostracized from their country (Werner 2).

The Traffic in Women: The “Political economy” of sex by Gayle Rubin is an exploration of the origin of women’s oppression. Rubin’s main objective is to arrive at a more fully developed definition of the sex/gender system, otherwise referred to as “mode of reproduction” and/or “patriarchy”. She further develops her definition through the analysis of the work of Levi-Strauss and Freud from a marxist perspective. Rubin provides the following preliminary definition of the sex/gender system “A set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied.” (159) She attempts to add to her definition of the sex/gender system through the analysis of the overlapping work of Claude Levi- Strauss and Sigmund Freud. Despite implications with their work, Rubin believes that both Levi-Strauss and Freud provide conceptual tools in describing the sex/gender system. Rubin looks at a Marxist analysis of sex oppression, as well as, Engels theory of society which integrates both sex and sexuality. Furthermore she incorporates aspects of each theory addressed into her own working definition of the sex/gender system. By shifting between Marxist, structuralist and psychoanalyst explanations of sex oppression, Rubin is able to construct a multi-dimensional definition of the sex/gender system that is not only inclusive but also provides a basis of which to build from.

Through years of history women have been subjugated. They are seen as vehicles for reproduction and sexual objects. Yet this is a mentality that is directly related with moral theory. Since this is for the most part a male dominated society, women's views are often seen

Simone de Beauvoir, in her 1949 text The Second Sex, examines the problems faced by women in Western society. She argues that women are subjugated, oppressed, and made to be inferior to males – simply by virtue of the fact that they are women. She notes that men define their own world, and women are merely meant to live in it. She sees women as unable to change the world like men can, unable to live their lives freely as men can, and, tragically, mostly unaware of their own oppression. In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir describes the subjugation of woman, defines a method for her liberation, and recommends strategies for this liberation that still have not been implemented today.

“A great achievement of women’s movements worldwide has been their success in ‘breaking the silence’ about male violence against women in intimate relationships” (Vickers, 2002). Having broken the silence of violence it has also broken the silence of oppression. The ongoing battle(s) of women’s rights suggests that the silence of oppression is of the past and the future holds equality for all alike. “…power is the capacity to terrorize, to use self and strength to inculcate fear, fear in a whole class of persons” (Dworkin, 1981). Male dominance exhibits and practices fear toward those of different classes, its use is to gain power to which control is given. “In the male system, sex is the penis, the penis is sexual power, its use in fucking is manhood” (Dworkin, 1981). The male mind indicates that without a penis an authority of power is dismissed and overlooked. Unfortunate for society today male hierarchy continues to be the dominant practice and the penis is a visual and vital form of power. “Male sexual power is the substance of culture” (Dworkin, 1981). Although women have come a long way their oppression and limited amount of power in society has yet to be broken and adjusted because of this visual of the male penis extracting power in society.