The Dead, James Joyce.
Feminist Criticism, pg. 175-208
The argument on page 182 caught my attention as soon as I got to it and it's a question i'd like to extend to you all, "Does feminism weaken or fortify itself by emphasizing its separateness?"
You could compare it to the Plessy v. Ferguson court case, seperate but equal, right?
We all know that seperate wasn't exactly equal at the time and it doesn't seem to be for feminism either. A good point for this arguement would be the amount of success from novels written openly by women and the amount of success from novels the public did not know were written by women. I think just as in the case mentioned above, separateness is strengthening feminism in the long run.
I have actually thought about this in a modern day context. For instance, I often see women talking about how princesses and makeup and high heels are terrible and how they much prefer "boyish" things, and like for their daughters to prefer boyish things. I don't know if this kind of thinking is good or bad for feminism. On the one hand, it is great that women feel free enough to say that they like things that are not conventionally "girly", but on the other hand I feel like it sends a negative message to young girls that if they want to be taken seriously they shouldn't like girly things. To me, this is a sort of backhanded way of saying men are better than women, because
ReplyDelete"manly" things are considered better than "girly" things. I don't know if making seperate categories for what a "woman" is or should be is helpful to feminism.