Womens oppression in womens perspective Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Womens oppression in womens perspective - Essay Example Simon de Beauvoir, Jeanne Hyvrard, Darina Al-Joundi, and Mary Wollstonecraft, even though a dedicated all-time existentialist, claim restrictions to the existentialist principle of self-definition and self-creation, reinforce the total freedom of Sartre. On the contrary, these feminists represents an unclear image of human freedom, where in women endures the evident weaknesses of the female body. In the novels of these feminists, namely, (1) La femme rompue by Hyvrard, (2) Le Jeune Morte En Robe De Dentelle by Al-Joundi, (3) and Le jour ou Nina Simone a cesse de chanter by Simon de Beavouir, they outline a form of existential development of a woman’s existence: a narrative of how an attitude of a woman towards her being, body, and societal roles transforms, and of how society shapes this belief. In their novels, they discuss the core of the central issue of female representation: Are the alleged weaknesses of the female body ‘real’ weaknesses which are present obj ectively in every society, or are they only ‘interpreted’ to be disadvantages by the human society? These feminists resolve this issue by examining empirical evidence of the different levels of female existence. In these pieces of empirical evidence the female body is embodied as both negative and positive, and females as both free and oppressed. The female body is the place of this uncertainty, because she can employ it as a means to here liberty and feel demoralised by it. There is no fundamental reality of the issue: it relies upon the degree to which a woman views herself as a liberated entity rather than society’s object of denigration. Hyvrard (1990) remarked that whatever we see, such as other individuals, is made an ‘object’ of our scrutiny and is stereotyped by us. De Beauvoir adopts this argument and relates it to men’s view of women. The core idea of ‘woman’, as argued by de Beauvoir (1997), is a masculine notion: the f emale is constantly the ‘other’ because the man is the ‘seer’ (Alison 2005, 81): ‘he is subject and she the object—the ‘meaning’ of what it is to be a woman is given by men’ (ibid, p. 81). In the aforementioned novels, which will be the sources of the analysis of feminist themes in French literature, it was argued that it is not the natural position of women as such that comprises a disadvantage: it is how a woman sees this situation which makes it negative or positive. As shown in Al-Joundi’s novel, none of the unique experiences of women, such as the menstruation, pregnancy, have a significance in themselves; however, in an oppressive or antagonistic society they can acquire an essence of being a disadvantage and a weakness, as women decide to accept the stereotypes of a patriarchal society. De Beauvoir (1997) stresses that pre-adolescent girls and boys are actually not especially different: they â€Å"have the sam e interests and the same pleasures† (ibid, p. 295).This essay will review the feminist themes of the French novels mentioned above, with an emphasis on the works of De Beauvoir and Wollstonecraft. The Oppression of the Female Body De Beauvoir (1997) claims that as the development of a female’s body takes place, each new phase is endured and separates her ever more roughly from the opposite sex. As the female body develops, society responds in a more and more aggressive and threatening way. Wollstonecraft (2004) refers to the dynamic of ‘becoming’, which is the mechanism whereby an individual understands oneself as a bodily, and sexual being open to the scrutiny of others. This does not have to be detrimental, but inopportunely, girls are frequently compelled to ‘become’ against their free will (De Beauvoir 1997): The young girl feels that her body is getting away from her... on the street men follow her with their eyes and comment on her anatom y. She would like to be invisible; it frightens her to become flesh and to show flesh (ibid, p. 333).