Romantic Love, Gender Imbalance and Feminist Readings in Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea

2022 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-44
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Love ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Feminist Epistemology ◽  
Female Voice ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gender Imbalance ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
Female Author

Even though Iris Murdoch’s novels depict a profoundly patriarchal society, most scholars have generally failed to identify any feminist aspirations in her work. This article aims to reassess her legacy as a writer by analysing from a feminist perspective one of her most acclaimed novels, The Sea, The Sea (1978). The tension between the androcentric approach of a self-deluded male narrator and a female author whose worldview is strongly influenced by her gender results in a feminist critique which is not based on the recovery of a female voice, but on the exploration of patriarchy within the novel and the production of a feminist epistemology derived from a dialogue between Murdoch’s fiction and philosophy.

Agnes Grey

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Brontë ◽  
Sally Shuttleworth
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Anne Bronte ◽  
Agnes Grey

‘How delightful it would be to be a governess!’ When the young Agnes Grey takes up her first post as governess she is full of hope; she believes she only has to remember ‘myself at their age’ to win her pupils’ love and trust. Instead she finds the young children she has to deal with completely unmanageable. They are, as she observes to her mother, ‘unimpressible, incomprehensible creatures’. In writing her first novel, Anne Brontë drew on her own experiences, and one can trace in the work many of the trials of the Victorian governess, often stranded far from home, and treated with little respect by her employers, yet expected to control and educate her young charges. Agnes Grey looks at childhood from nursery to adolescence, and it also charts the frustrations of romantic love, as Agnes starts to nurse warmer feelings towards the local curate, Mr Weston. The novel combines astute dissection of middle-class social behaviour and class attitudes with a wonderful study of Victorian responses to young children which has parallels with debates about education that continue to this day.

scholarly journals Woman’s Suppression in Azab dan Sengsara: A Feminist Perspective

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-51
Author(s):  
Siti Hafsah
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Material Object ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Sociology ◽  
A Company

Azab dan Sengsara is an Indonesian novel written by Merari Siregar (1921), one of the famous roman novelists in Indonesia in Balai Pustaka era. The novel is a material object of the present study. The study aims at revealing oppression, violence, exploitation of woman and all varieties of injustice to woman, revealing social symptoms ideological forms containing in the novel as a manifestation of a company condition in old era. This research uses a qualitative method and approaches of literary feminist and literary sociology as its support. This research succeeds in answering the problems of woman life, as manifestation of real life which reflects kinds of woman’s life in society of Indonesian, for example: marriage, custom, violence, etc. for the hero “Mariamin” (a woman). She is the manifestation of the authority life, besides talking on oppression of woman images of its community lives. The author succeeded offering solutions with various contradictions, conflicts, handling down the novel as manifestation in real life.

scholarly journals Oppression and Female Body: A Feminist Critique of the Novel 'Half the Sky'

2021 ◽  
Vol VI (I) ◽  
pp. 79-85
Author(s):  
Ayesha Khaliq ◽  
Mamona Yasmin Khan ◽  
Rabia Hayat
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
The Body ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Interpretive Paradigm ◽  
A Site ◽  
Body Theory

The female body is more than often used as a site to perpetuate violence and oppress women in patriarchal societies. The current study aims to explore how patriarchal oppression targets the female body and how it enforces women to become subalterns having no voice in the selected fictional work, Half the Sky by Kristoff and WuDunn. For this purpose, Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) and Bryan Turner's The Body theory (1984) are used as theoretical frameworks to explore the selected novel. The research is descriptive qualitative, and placed within the interpretive paradigm. The data for the present study is in the form of textual paragraphs, which is taken from the selected novel and is collected through the purposive sampling technique. The study argues on women's oppression and violence. The findings of the study revealed that the dominancy of male counterpart in every field of life is the basic reason for women oppression which leads to the women being subalterns.

scholarly journals Maïssa Bey : romancière de l’agentivité de femmes Entre réécriture de l’Histoire et invention de soi

Il Tolomeo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lila Lamrous
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The Right

The study of Maïssa Bey’s novel Surtout ne te retourne pas allows to examine how the Francophone novel represents an earthquake as a poetic, metaphorical and political shockwave. The novel is part of a literary tradition but also shows the singularity of the writing and the engagement of the Algerian novelist Maïssa Bey. It allows to examine the feminine agentivity in the context of the disaster camps in Algeria: from the ravaged space/country emerge the voices of women who enter into resistance to improvise, invent their lives and their identities. The earthquake allows them to free themselves, to take a subversive point of view at society and their status as women in an oppressive patriarchal society. The staged female characters arrogate to themselves the right to reread history and take their destiny back.

scholarly journals On the Images and Tragedies of Three Females in The Plain of White Deer

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Jun Wang
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Changes ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
Child Bearing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Status Of Women ◽  
Secret History

The Plain of White Deer, known as a “secret history of China”, unfolds the historical changes of Weihe Plain in more than half of the last century. Based on the fates of different females, the novel tries to disclose the cruel oppression of the feudal clan system on women and the low status of women as a child-bearing tool in the patriarchal society. This paper will analyze the miserable fates of the three main females Tian Xiao’e, Lu Lengshi and Bai Ling in the novel and also the reasons for their tragic fates.

Werewolf Wollstonecraft

2020 ◽  
pp. 253-274
Author(s):  
Chris Washington
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Gender Identities ◽  
Dynamic Power ◽  
Karen Barad

The judicial bestiary at the heart of eighteenth-century politics has long been evident in Enlightenment social contract debates, as Michel Foucault’s and Giorgio Agamben’s theories of biopolitics show. In this essay, I argue that Wollstonecraft is nonetheless the first thinker of ‘true’ werewolf out-lawry in her final novel, Maria, Or the Wrongs of Woman and in her letters to Godwin. In the novel, Wollstonecraft leverages what we now call new materialism as a feminist critique of heteropatriarchal society. Wollstonecraft’s new materialist thinking also scrambles gender across even human and nonhuman distinctions. To counter microcosmic familial and macrocosmic state heteropatriarchy, Wollstonecraft theorizes what I am calling, following the example of wolves and werewolves, not a family but a ‘pack’. The pack manifests as new spacetimes through what Karen Barad terms “quantum entanglements” that produce love between subjects and subjects but that never strives to reproduce binaristic pairings that reproduce the sovereign family. A pack, as Wollstonecraft’s texts demonstrate, emerges from processes of co-creation that iterate new subjects and objects without dynamic power structures structured around stable gender identities or human and nonhuman power relations.

The Journey through Feminism: Theory, Research, and Dilemmas from the Field

2001 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-444
Author(s):  
Tamar Z. Semerjian ◽  
Jennifer J. Waldron
Keyword(s):  
Life Span ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Older Women ◽  
Sport Psychology ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Feminist Epistemology ◽  
Psychology Research ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Feminism Theory ◽  
Theory Research

This paper explores how feminism can be used in sport psychology research and the particular dilemmas that can present themselves when a feminist perspective is used within the framework of sport psychology. Both authors describe their personal entrées into various schools of feminism, the ways they incorporate feminist theory into their work, and the struggles they have encountered in using feminist approaches in a field that is not always open to feminist epistemology. This paper includes a description of several types of feminist thought. Both authors use feminist theory in research that concerns women at either end of the life span, specifically girls and older women, and the ways that members of these groups think about and relate to their bodies. While feminism has been an important, useful, and enlightening perspective and tool for both authors, it has also proven problematic within the context of sport psychology research. The dilemmas encountered are described as epistemological and methodological and discussed in the context of personal experiences from both authors.

scholarly journals Elegant Economy in Elizabeth Gaskells Cranford: A Socialist Feminist Study

2021 ◽  
pp. 55-61
Author(s):  
Megha Ramteke
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Class System ◽  
Feminist Study ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The Social

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was a Victorian writer who had to undergo various kinds of condescension for her writings. After bearing the stigma of being conformist, conventional, and meek as ascribed to her by the contemporary feminist critics, Gaskell’s writings are being revisited with a new feminist perspective in recent years. The present paper is also a humble attempt to rediscover the feminist dimension of her writings by exploring one of her novels, Cranford (1853), through a socialist feminist lens. Cranford presents such a social structure that is devoid of a Class system and constructed by women in a matrilineal society as against the capitalist patriarchal society of Drumble. This Matriarchal socialist social structure is based on the values of cooperation, humanity, and motherly care characteristic to the differently developed gendered subjectivity of women. The social change through the agency of woman foreshadows Gaskell’s far-sighted feminist views of the 1970s.

scholarly journals Power Analysis in The Handmaid’s Tale

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 248
Author(s):  
Meijiao Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Power Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Power Theory ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Relationship

<em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> is one of Margaret Atwood’s most popular novels. As a dystopian novel, it describes an absurd society in the future and explores themes of subjugated women in a patriarchal society and the various means by which these women resist and attempt to gain independence. By applying Michael Foucault’s power theory, this paper analyzes the power situations in Gilead, revealing the relationship between power and body, also aims to analyze the relation between female characters’ status and power in the novel to reveal the cruelty of the totalitarian government and patriarchal society.

scholarly journals PERSPEKTIF FEMINIS AFRIKA DALAM NOVEL RIWAN OU LE CHEMIN DU SABLE KARYA KEN BUGUL (THE AFRICAN FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE IN THE NOVEL RIWAN CHEMIN OU LE DU SABLE BY KEN BUGUL)

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Mega Subekti ◽  
Aquarini Priyatna ◽  
Yati Aksa
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ken Bugul ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Feminist Perspectives ◽  
Autobiographical Work

Penelitian ini ditujukan untuk mendeskripsikan bagaimana perspektif feminis Afrika ditampilkan dalam karya autobiografis Ken Bugul yang berjudul Riwan ou Le Chemin du Sable (1999). Dalam karya itu, perspektif feminis  ditampilkan melalui kacamata narator sebagai perempuan Senegal ketika dihadapkan pada persoalan poligami. Analisis menggunakan teori feminisme yang kontekstual dengan isu yang dihadapi perempuan di Senegal, terutama yang dipaparkan oleh Hashim dan D’Almeida serta pendekatan naratologi autobiografis. Saya berargumentasi bahwa perspektif feminisme dalam karya Bugul itu adalah konsep famillisme yang merujuk pada penyuaraan rasa solidaritas antarperempuan Senegal dan keterlibatan aktif laki-laki demi terciptanya keberlangsungan dan kesejahteraan sebuah keluarga.Abstract:The present research aims at  describing  how African feminist perspectives features  in Ken Bugul’s  autobiographical work entitling  Riwan ou Le Chemin du Sable (1999). In the paper, the feminist perspective is shown through the eyes of the narrator as Senegalese women when faced with the question of polygamy. The analysis uses the theory of feminism that contextual issues faced by women in Senegal, mainly presented by Hashim and D’Almeida and by applying the approach of autobiographical approach narrathology.  I argue that the feminism perspective in the Bugul’s works  is a familliasm concept that refers to the voicing solidarity among Senegal’s women  and the active involvement of men in order to create sustainability and a well-being  family.

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