Representation of Women in Political Fiction - Essay Example

I. Introduction The transformation of society driven by the industrial revolution has traditionally been believed to have brought about a concept ofsociety as divided into private or domestic and public dimensions. While this split was located and established historically, an artefact of the surfacing capitalist bourgeoisie, as articulated by Terry Lovell, it conceals it own roots through a fundamental and universal discourse. However, this discourse is also gender-orientated, as it has been debated; situating women’s status merely in the domestic sphere or in household, at the heart of the family, from which position they gave out a form moral safeguard over public man in his cutthroat domain, liberating him from the polluting effects of the unprincipled marketplace (Fisher & Silber, 2003). Hence, for Ruskin, “the true nature of home is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt and division... so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently minded, unknown, unloved or hostile society of the outer world is allowed either husband or wife to cross the threshold it ceases to be home” (ibid, 54). Basch argues that the moral influence of women in this thought was constructed both quantitatively and qualitatively in straightforward relation to their submissiveness and subordination to masculine influence and authority; and this allusion appears to be established both by the assertion of Ruskin that women must be aware and intelligent not for personal growth but for self-liberation, and Coventry Patmore’s angel, whose strength of character is firmly weak because of mere passiveness to his authority (Michie, 1992). Man’s domain is action whereas emotion for the woman, therefore, as the prologue of the poem proclaims, “inspiration hers: In his heart, his thoughts were rife/ How for her sake to earn a name” (ibid, 102). Basically, the masculine public domain of action was also the special sphere of politics, which thus were expressed as an entirely male concern: “man’s duty, as a member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in the defence of the state. The woman’s duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of the state” (Fisher & Silber, 2003, 56). Not astonishingly, perhaps, provided with the traditional domain of divided dimensions ideology, particularly in the aspect of political fictions, nineteenth century feminist movement began in the 1970s and at the advent of the 1980s to dispute against its deceptiveness, generally on two significant justifications. Primarily, this ideology pursued to normalize women’s economic dependence and confinement to the domestic sphere. Second, yet no less significant, this ideology was issued to critique because of establishing an inaccurate distinction between employment and family; it misrepresented people’s understanding of women’s employment and of their position in both the larger society and politics (Michie, 1992). II. Sex, Marriage and the Role of Women in Political Fictions There were several reasons explaining political fictions’ marketing triumph in the sixties and the seventies, and one primary feature of this fame was the inclusion of sexual content into political fiction. Sex is fascinating to multitudes of readers, and sexual content adds to the popular attractiveness of Drury fiction. When marriage and roles in sexual life are precisely and vibrantly illustrated in political fiction, they boost animation and realism to the texture of the milieu. Such is the circumstance in the political series of Drury where marriage, sex and the position of women are integrated into political designs and merged the emphasis upon the practice of political authority contained within the body politic (Kemme, 1987). Even though Drury is a political traditionalist, his demonstration of sex in his political fiction proposes a somewhat progressive or open-minded outlook toward sex. Drury illustrates an expansive array of sexual doings, and no sexual activity is downright rebuffed as being immoral or socially deviant. When Advise and Content was released in 1959, the issue of homosexuality was seldom an experience situated at the core of a popular, best-selling novel (ibid). In Advise Drury stylishly narrated the sex activities of Senator Anderson and sensitively discusses Anderson’s homosexual experience to a changing self-awareness of one’s identity (Kemme, 1987). Even though Brig Anderson’s most unforgettable sexual experience is homosexual in nature, he is a bisexual who takes sexual pleasure with lots of women in college and a lot more when he was dispatched as a pilot in the South Pacific at the time of the Second World War. Being a college student, the storyteller relates that he had girls “often enough and enjoyed them sufficiently enough so that he was pretty sure he didn’t want what his homosexual fraternity brother wanted (ibid, 205). Moreover, according to the description of the narrator, women in the army are easy to get. In A Promise of Joy, when America’s position is threatened by the military power of Russia and China, Lafe motivates the spirit of tremendously frustrated President Knox when he tells him that Mabel has agreed to be his better half and that Jimmy Frye, Mabel who recently lost her husband, and her daughter Pidge, have sprinkled him trust in the miracles and power of love, a faith which inspires President Knox to recognize the disposition of the changed Washington Romeo (Kemme, 1987). In Come Nineveh, Come Tyre, on the other hand, Lafe’s open-handedness and love are not acclaimed. Mabel Anderson returns to the character of a feeble, subservient, submissive woman; and in spite of Lafe’s endeavours to have her rejuvenate her confidence in politics, America, and the opportunity, she sentimentally proclaims her decision to pull out from Washington and the body politic. For Mabel Anderson, politics is wicked. On the contrary, in spite of a cruel battering and miscarriage, Crystal Knox declines to allow her husband to pull out from politics. Crystal perceives that politics is, or may be, a dignified line of work and that politicians are competent to be honoured and of creating or changing the world for the better (ibid). Even though Senator Smith’s life stylishly throws in sexual substance into Advise and Content and A Shade of Difference, the most realistic sexual content is created by the love relationship and marriage of Cullee Hamilton and Sue-Dan Proctor. At the moment the two met at Howard University, Cullee felt a frantic sexual need and immediately fell in love with Sue-Dan’s smart little face. Several weeks after their meeting, they became lovers. After four months, they married (Hallisy, 1987). In the marriage of Hamilton, sex turns out to be a power game, which Cullee experience prior to his meeting with Sue-Dan. Because of the sensible, big-hearted guidance of his mother, in spite of being taken advantage of a white female, Cullee does not develop antagonism against the white (ibid). Such is not the condition with Sue-Dan who is extremely more annoyed about the prejudice that African-Americans endure in America; and her aggressive, provocative attitude oftentimes conflicts with her husband’s temperate inclinations. Due to Sue-Dan’s insistence that Cullee should become more antagonistic in advancing equal privileges and opportunities for blacks, the marriage of Hamilton weakens. Due to Cullee’s reluctance to rebelliously advance the rights of African Americans, Sue-Dan assails his identity and nature as a black and as a man. However, Cullee remains essentially infatuated with his wife, even when she starts to disapprove of him for not having a political ambition (Hallisy, 1987). For Cullee, his marital predicament is more crucial than political ambition and even politics. Undoubtedly, Sue-Dan takes advantage of sex as a political weapon or as a way to acquire political power and influence; on the contrary, Sue-Dan is also taken advantage as a sex object by her husband. For instance, on one incident when Sue-Dan tells her husband that she is very much stressed and weakened for sex, Cullee insists and resorts to sexual harassment (Kemme, 1987). Unsurprisingly, the marriage of Hamilton did not last long. After Sue-Dan obtains an employment in New York and Cullee understands that his wife has declined him, he comes across a sexual partner in a bar. His escape from melancholy is only for a short-time. For bliss, Cullee has to be in a more evocative and passionate romantic relationship (ibid). Even though Drury creates a genuinely self-determining and self-sufficient female character in Sue-Dan Hamilton, majority of the important female characters in the political fictions of Drury reflect the traditional female image of the housewife-mother, a stereotype which positions woman in a subservient, inferior and dependent status to the male. In The Feminine Mystique (1963) Betty Friedan rebuffed such a limited description of “The Happy Housewife Heroine” (Kemme, 1987, 212) in mainstream writing since it took in that woman’s character could not be genuinely complete except if she became a well-adapted wife and mother. Although Betty Knox, Dolly Munson and Ceil Jason have the possibility to evolve individualities apart from their husband’s identities, in majority of Drury’s fiction their outlooks indicate the satisfied housewife image that Friedan eliminates as being the solitary framework likely for the ultimate achievement of a woman’s character. Undeniably, the great majority of Americans, both sexes, were personally aware with this description of the position of women at the early sixties, before the renewal and re-surfacing of the Feminist Movement in America, a free-thinking movement which does not merely advocated the principles and perception of men and women, but one which as well as affected legislation and court resolutions that importantly expanded woman’s privileges in the sector of compensation, employment privileges and promotion, and abortion (ibid). Even though there are self-sufficient, successful career women fashioned in Drury fiction, it is devoid of Feminists. Nevertheless, two women who are passive, conventional wives in the prologue of Drury fiction and who encouragingly take in that role, namely Beth Knox and Ceil Jason, do developed into self-governing, triumphant characters in the male conquered political dimension of the The Promise of Joy and Come Nineveh, Come Tyre, hence showing shifting outlooks toward the potential of women at the time of the sixties and seventies (Kemme, 1987). Strangely, it is Ceil Jason, the woman in Capable of Honor who provides the most definite, female articulation of the approval of “The Happy Heroine” (ibid, 213) stereotype. Ceil looks at herself as a wife of a politician who is an indispensable accessory of politics. When her political suggestion is requested, Ceil politically counsels her husband; though, she is submissive in this counsellor role. No matter what Ted decides to do, she will just go with the flow. At this instance in Drury fiction, Ceil is completely devoted to her husband and his political profession devoid of reluctance (Kemme, 1987). To be a good wife of a politician is a complicated and uninspiring mission; the marriages of Sue Hamilton, Kaye Frye and Mabel Anderson testify to this depressing reality. III. Virtuous Rebel or Aggressive Madwoman: Sophocles’ Antigone Antigone’s insubordination to her uncle Kreon’s directives gives one of the original stories of deep-seated opposition to state power in Western literature. Such straightforward challenge of a royal order might bring about disasters in any regime, yet since Antigone is a woman, and her deeds and actions too much public and vocal, the disobedience becomes exceptionally scandalous. The play was rather relevant in its time; a quite few generations earlier, Solon the statesman had drafted laws that were commonly considered as antecedents to democracy in Athens but which openly restrained women’s rights through prohibiting them to express grief in public funerals or abandon their homes without escorts, for fear that they lose their dignity (Gibbons, 2003). Why does Antigone departed with the stereotypes for her gender so rebelliously? Is it to pay respect to kinship ties, which the Greeks perceived as vital to the polis? Antigone in fact buries Polyneices twice; after the guards cleaned the ritual filth, she bravely repeats her work. She carried out these sacraments for her parents, too. She prefers commitment to the dead over her approaching marital bond with Haimon, and likens her tomb to her marriage bed. She by no means express her sentiment for Haimon openly, but laments that she will for no reason bear offspring, as the meaning of her name foretells (ibid). Antigone asserts another justification for her rebellious act, too; loyalty to a higher law of the gods “which are not for now or for yesterday, they are alive forever” (Fisher & Silber, 2003, 19). She claims that such laws assume superiority over Kreon’s man-made and imperfect legal decree. Readers frequently argue whether this illustrates moral action, above the pressing issues of political expediency and possible opposition, conflict of a predominantly female type. Whether Antigone is a zealous political rebel inspired by profound spiritual faith or whether she is in the depths of despair and infatuated by death or perhaps both can produce a lively debate. In-depth gender analysis of other important characters is valuable. Ismene plays as a frustration to Antigone; her submission to dominant gender stereotypes implies how rebellious her sister is. Ismene cries, “we are women, born unfit to battle men” (Fisher & Silber, 2003, 20) and suggests a conciliation, she will join the protest if Antigone will carry out her rebellious acts secretly. Yet Antigone remains firm, “No shout it, proclaim it. I’ll hate you the more for keeping silence” (ibid, 20). The confrontational act of burial is inadequate for Antigone. She yearns for public argument with Kreon. Antigone was awarded the festival prize the moment it was presented. During the time of Sophocles, women were not allowed to be present at theatre festival, whilst attendance was a must for male citizens. The character of Antigone and the other female characters would have been portrayed by men in mask; that men argued subjects of gender and power among themselves indicates the extent of essentiality of such concerns then. Several modern interpretations of Antigone’s narrative exist, proof that interest in concerns regarding gender, political resistance, and family devotion remain well-built today (Gibbons, 2003). IV. “A” as Hester’s Liberation in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most celebrated novel, The Scarlet Letter, offers the contemporary reader with Hester Prynne, a Puritan woman residing in the closing chapters of the seventeenth century, fashioned from the point of view of nineteenth-century New England novelist. Even though apparently about the Puritan lifestyle, the narrative provides even further enlightenment on shifting gender roles in the nineteenth century. Women were customarily believed to take care of domestic affairs and children and not endeavour into men’s domain of business or political activity. At a fleeting look, Hester Prynne is definitely not the kind of woman who would have been endorsed as an icon of genuine womanhood. Married to someone, she has an out-of-wedlock child, and then puts up a home of her own with no husband to help her, as a single mother (Johnston, 1995). Hawthorne has the common sense not to eliminate his adulteress, a first in the literature of Anglo-American. Neither does he establish Hester as some fragile female who desperately needs a husband or father to support her; somewhat, she is self-sufficient, resourceful and zealous (ibid). Young readers, specifically, might be perplexed about Hester’s reserve of power. The message of the novel may be quite alarming, as a complete departure from the standard could lead to political banishment and isolation. It is more essential to probe into one’s own identity and being to discover one’s concealed willpower and intelligence, an intuitive breathing space within, as Hester does, than to generate a new Eden, founded on time-honoured traditions, as the disapproving Puritans do. Hester does not submit to patriarchal authority figures to satisfy a judgmental or superficial crowd. Readers who are good in compliance might respond with admiration to Hester’s boldness and independence. Others may be fascinated in weighing up their own acts of aggressiveness and daringness against their loved ones, mentors, and their society’s expectations to Hester’s (Fisher & Silber, 2003). V. The Motherly Influence in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an informative narrative of epic significance that entwines the stories of while and African American families, illustrates Stowe’s conviction that slavery should be abolished. This exceptionally celebrated novel informs the reader of the political issue of slavery within the private or domestic domain of the home, a strategy Stowe made use of to highlight the significant role of women in American private, ethical and political life. While majority of novels depict heroines as youthful, single women within a marriage scheme, Stowe’s narrative emphasizes the importance of women as mothers. The first mother portrayed is Eliza, an attractive slave, introduced as “The Mother” (Stowe, 1897, 13) to contradict the period’s chauvinistic idea that slaves were incompetent in taking care and loving their children in the similar manner as whites. When Eliza finds out that her possessor, Mr. Shelby, plans to deprive her of her son through selling him to the South, she devised their escape. Emily Shelby disputes in vain with her husband that it is against the law of God to sell their son and to take away mothers from their children. Incapable to prevent the sale, Mrs. Shelby wisely takes advantage of her control over meal times to oppose her husband and the law, hence allowing Eliza and Harry to flee. In one of the narrative’s most prominent scenes, Eliza showed courage when she barely escapes her captors through jumping from one block of ice to another to traverse the great river of Ohio into the liberated society of Ohio (ibid). The concluding half of the novel portrays that slavery in the Deep South humiliates mothers, and therefore the domestic sphere and society. Marie St. Clare, an upper-class mother living in New Orleans gives up all her responsibilities and consumes her time inactive upon a sofa, abandoning her home in complete mess. Stowe cautiously describes Cassy to demonstrate the sexual abuse of female slaves in the Deep South and the misery of slave mothers to safeguard their children. Cassy, a tough, compassionate character, is motivated to violence in reaction to brutal losses compelled upon her; she once killed an owner with a knife who sold their children and afterwards poisoned an infant she had by another owner to put away the child from the dreadful realities of slavery (Fisher & Silber, 2003). References Anouilh, J. (1951). Antigone. London: Methuen & Co Ltd. Aguiar, S. A. (2001). The Bitch is Back: Wicked Women in Literature. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Fisher, J. & Silber, E. (2003). Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Gibbons, R. (2003). Antigone. New York: Oxford University Press. Hallisy, M. (1987). Venomous Woman: Fear of the Female in Literature. New York: Greenwood Press. Hawthorne, N. (1906). The Scarlet Letter. London: J.M. Dent & Sons. Johnston, C. D. (1995). Understanding the Scarlet Letter. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Kemme, T. (1987). Political Fiction, the Spirit of the Age and Allen Drury. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Michie, H. (1992). Sororophobia: Differences among Women in Literature and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Stowe, H. B. (1897). Uncle Toms Cabin. London: George Routledge. Read More