holes back in with a small hand shovel. (Hogan, Mean Spirit 225) Belle did her best to conceal these holes. Moses, her husband, and Floyd, her son in law, helped her. They spent the day ''covering the seeping oil as best as they could'' (Hogan, Mean Spirit 229). Nola's watchers, who were Hill Indians, likewise, ''rush to cover the wound with rock'' (Brice 130). They departed immediately; they ''didn't want to be around the broken earth's black blood and its pain'' ((Hogan, Mean Spirit 229). As formerly illustrated, ecofeminists call for the struggle against the oppression of women, animals and nature; they are against western culture which has oppressed them. According to Lori Gruen, ''[E]cofeminists argue that we must not isolate the subjugation of women at the expense of exploitation of animals. Indeed, the struggle for women's liberation is inextricably linked to the abolition of all oppression'' (82). In fact, Mean Spirit demonstrates the oppression and injustice inflicted upon women and nature. Hogan pinpoints these fundamental …show more content…
ecofeminist issues; she employs literature as a means of liberating both women and nature from the oppressive practices committed against them. Since ecofeminists, as previously illustrated, believe that there is a close connection between women and nature, they affirm that putting an end to the oppression of women will ultimately result in the abolishment of the abuse and exploitation of nature. As regards the oppression of women, Hogan foregrounds the oppression of some female characters such as Nola and Ruth who were abused and maltreated by their white husbands. After discovering oil in the lands of Native Americans, white men began to marry Native American women in order to exploit them and get access to their wealth. Marriage between white men and Native American women became an example of ''vulgar, dangerous transaction'' (Krasteva 56). It ''benefited white men financially'' since Native American women were regarded as ''business investment'' (Hogan, Mean Spirit 34). Hogan quotes a letter sent to an Indian agent in which a white man asked for a Native American woman to marry. He said: If you can place me in correspondence with a good woman and I succeed in marrying her for every thousand Dollars she is worth I will give you Twenty-Five Dollars. If she is worth 25,000 you will get 125 Dollars if I got her. This is a plain business proposition and I trust you will consider it as such. (Hogan, Mean Spirit 34) Hogan narrates, ''[A]nother white man, when asked what he did for a living said, by way of answer that he'd married an Osage woman, and everyone who listened understood what that meant, that he didn't work; he lived off her money'' (Hogan, Mean Spirit 34). As Alex Casteel puts it, the ''main route to the possession of dark wealth is through a dark and wealthy woman'' (65). Hence, Native American women were oppressed, exploited and subjugated by their white husbands. After Grace Blanket's murder as well as the murder of her sister Sara, Nola, Grace Blanket's daughter who is a principal character in Mean Spirit , became the only heir to her mother's great wealth. Being young, Nola had a court-appointed white guardian, Mr. Forrest, who was a dishonest lawyer; subsequently, he exploited Nola. Upon marrying his son, Will, Nola was exploited and oppressed by both Will and his father. Nola accepted Will's proposal to marry her so as to save herself and the Grayclouds, who adopted her after her mother's murder, from the threats they might encounter if she rejected his proposal. She had no choice but to marry Will despite the fact that white men marry ''Indian women to possess their wife's and children's allotments'' (Hogan, Mean Spirit 165). As Alex Casteel points out, Nola ''marries a man without believing that he loves her to ensure her own safety, weeping most nights before the wedding'' (65). Soon, Nola realized that ''these two men [Forest and Will] were lightening-crooked and were probably going to steal her land, but that they wouldn't hurt her until after they'd had a chance to swindle her'' (Hogan, Mean Spirit 133). Forrest exploited Nola by using his authority to invest her money in a company owned by the oil man, Hale. When Will asked Forrest about the money gone from Nola's bank account, he answered him, ''I'm the attorney here. It's up to me to decide about Nola's estate'' (191). On gathering his strength and telling his father that he should ask before using Nola's money, Forrest replied him: ''Why should I ask?'' ''She's my wife.'' ''Yes, Will, she is. She is your paycheck. Now she is the one who pays for your good suits and hats''. (Hogan, Mean Spirit 191) In short, as Alex Casteel, puts it, ''Will has married a paycheck rather than for love'' (65). Like Forrest, Will exploited Nola. One of Will's friends commented on Will's status saying that ''[H]e doesn't need a business. He's got an Indian wife'' (Hogan, Mean Spirit 193). When Nola conceived, she became very upset for her baby since Will was attracted to the life of cities and bars, and started to spend Nola's money foolishly. Nola ''began to think that even their marriage was like glass and that it would take little to fracture it [...]. She began to think that she herself, as an Indian woman, represented something old and gone to him, something from another time'' (Hogan, Mean Spirit 195). Will exploited Nola; he squandered her money, neglected her and knew a white woman from the city. As a consequence, Nola thought that Will would kill her and her unborn baby, and marry the white woman who was ''more like him than Nola was. She was city and blonde and slender. She wasn't awkward with a baby'' (Hogan, Mean Spirit 299). Nola constantly spoke to her unborn baby; She swore that they would leave Will and Watona. As Nola felt the throes of childbirth, Will wanted to call the doctor. However, Nola was sure that they would kill her. It was not just her life, it was ''the new life, also, they would kill. They would say she died of natural causes, she knew it and when felt the baby kick her from inside, she thought she heard it saying, 'help me. Help me' '' (Hogan, Mean Spirit 357). In order to protect herself and her unborn baby, Nola shot Will to death. By so doing, she managed to put an end to his oppression. Like Nola, Ruth Graycloud, was exploited and subjugated by her white husband, John Tate. Ruth was Moses Graycloud's twin sister. Like Nola, Ruth was an Osage woman who became a victim of one of the white men who married Native American women to get access to Osage oil wealth. Despite marrying a Native American woman, Tate had no respect to Native Americans. As Yanka Kroumova Krasteva contends, ''Tate constantly takes pictures of the Indians, as if they were archaeological finds. And this is the way he treats his Indian wife'' (55). Tate was a photographer; he used to appear at all significant events in the Indian territory ''standing behind the three- legged stand that held his camera, his head covered with black cloth, his own good eye seeing everything through glass lenses (Hogan, Mean Spirit 58). He used to photograph Native Americans and send their pictures to magazines. Tate first used Ruth as ''a model then as source of income''. (Hogan, Mean Spirit 179). He humiliated and abused her; he did not love her, disliked to be seen with her. They ''seldom went anywhere together, but when they did, he never walked at her side (Hogan, Mean Spirit 134). At the end of Mean Spirit Tate killed Ruth. As a result, Moses shot him dead. In fact, Hogan highlights the oppression inflicted upon women.
Meanwhile, she pinpoints the previously discussed ecofeminist principle that women's liberation is inseparable from the struggle against the oppression and abuse of nature because there is a close relationship between women and nature. In Mean Spirit, Belle Graycloud is portrayed as very close to nature; at the same time, she withstands the oppression and abuse of nature. She grew corn herself and worked in her cornfield without fatigue. While planting corn, Belle and other old women sang ''a new song made for the new corn, and it was so sweet and fascinating and delicate, it sounded like a river running'' (Hogan, Mean Spirit 261). Belle cared for her chicken and spoke to them ''in the same affectionate tone as she used when speaking to her girls and corn'' (Hogan, Mean Spirit 211). Additionally, she looked after her bees; when she noticed
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down tells the story of a young Hmong girl stricken with epilepsy, her family, her doctors, and how misunderstandings between cultures can lead to tragedy. The title comes from the Hmong term for epilepsy, which translated, is “the spirit catches you and you fall down”. Anne Fadiman alternates between chapters on Hmong history or culture and chapters on the Lees, and specifically Lia. The condensed history of the Hmong portrayed here starts at their beginning, and traces their heritage, their movements, and why they do what they do as they flee from enemies to country to country. This record allows the reader to better understand the Lees and their situation without bogging him down with details that may
chapter 53 of the book, "The Kitchen House" written by Kathleen Grissom, Belle says that the
In a world where the vast majority of cultures are patriarchal, in response to traditional structures, women often find themselves at war in their minds, hearts and in their own actions. 'Yellow woman' and 'The story of an hour' are examples of how women struggle in a male domintaed society. In these two stories, the women fnd themselves wrestling with thoughts and emotions that our society consider unacceptable. The following statements ,ay be asked and considered of these women:
Union between two quarrelsome objects can be the most amazing creation in certain situations, take for instance, water. Originally, water was just hydroxide and hydrogen ions, but together these two molecules formed a crucial source of survival for most walks of life. That is how marriage can feel, it is the start of a union that without this union the world would not be the same. A Hmong mother, Foua took it upon herself to perform a marriage ceremony for the author of “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”, Anne Fadiman. In this miniscule event, two cultures with completely conflicting ideas came together to form a union. In this union, an American was celebrating an event in a Hmong way, truly a collision of two cultures.
Mean Spirit Our story takes place in an oil-rich Native American town, called Watona, on a reservation in Oklahoma. The course of the story extends from 1918 to the mid-twenties. There are a multitude of characters that accompany this story. One of the most important characters is Nola Blanket, a young teenager who is a full-blooded Osage Indian. She is a very delicate girl, but still very strong.
In “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anne Fadiman, the whole story revolves around Lia, the thirteenth child of Lee family. Lee family was a refugee family in USA and Lia was their first child to be born in US. At the time of time of birth, she was declared as a healthy child but at the age of three it was founded that she is suffering from epilepsy. In the words of western or scientific world the term epilepsy mean mental disorder of a person and in Hmong culture, epilepsy is referred to as qaug dab peg (translated in English, "the spirit catches you and you fall down"), in which epileptic attacks are perceived as evidence of the epileptic's ability to enter and journey momentarily into the spirit realm (Wikipedia, 2014)
Tied together with feminism, Gilman’s story takes on the humiliation of social codes by illustrating a woman who is put to bed rest after giving birth and must stay put away per her husband and brother’s requests. Gilman works through the narrator to show how the woman slowly fades from the realistic world and into a new one by way the yellow wallpaper. The room becomes her reality and the world outside her window becomes the fantastical delusion. But as the narrator develops into a creature of the room itself, her physiology transforms according to the environment. Scott quotes Gilman’s essay, “The ‘Nervous Breakdown’ of Women,” on her elaboration of ecologies, “Even if the physico-psychic balance is perfect, there remains another necessity for peace of mind; that is the adjustment between the individual and the environment” (qtd. in Scott 199). While Gilman’s sanity never went as far as the narrator’s, she still bordered the line of physiologically and psychologically leaving one world for
Tradition is defined in the dictionary as the handing down from generation to generation of the same customs and beliefs. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, I believe has two main topics addressed: the traditions of the Hmong people, and the dangers of being unable to communicate. The misunderstanding of these two consequential points, I believe caused the majority of conflict that arose.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is a nonfiction book that brings to light the clash of Hmong culture and Western medicine in Merced, California. Anne Fadiman tells the story of a Hmong immigrant family, the Lees, and the unfortunate condition of epilepsy that their daughter Lia suffers from. Throughout the book the reader sees great conflict inflicted on medical practitioners due to the Lee’s own cultural beliefs and the frustration suffered by the family due to miscommunication. Anne develops the story by giving a detailed background of the Hmong peoples’ lifestyle in their indigenous land of Lao, how it contributes to their beliefs, and their struggle to understand and accept Western practices.
Charlotte Perkin’s Gilman and Simone de Beauvoir is both forward thinking authors who through their writing captured the concept of women being represented within society as a secondary sub species of man. Gilman through her literary work “The Man-Made World: Our Androcentric Culture”, and de Beauvoir in her work “The Second Sex”. Both of these women presented strong arguments that explored the dehumanization of women throughout history, and explored how language and thought processes during their times continued the process of women being viewed as an “other” in reference to men.
The term of “animal” used in Haraway’s Cyborg Theory stands for the mankind: “language, tool use, social behavior, mental events—nothing really convincingly settles the separation of human and animal. And many people no longer feel the need for such a separation” (Haraway 10). However, Gilman takes the oppression of women and applies it to the narrator’s sociological characteristics and setting to highly contrast the depletion of women as human. In short, the narrator becomes an animal; therefore, all ideas of a woman are left behind. The narrator is dehumanized: “according to Darwin, female choice was the norm in all animal species except humans. To these reformers, women’s subordinate status in patriarchal, capitalist societies stood out as “unnatural.” (Hamlin 154) As the men take hold of a woman’s identity, they also take away their humanity in order to dominate them. The beginning signs of this animalistic characterization surface when reading the setting in which the story takes place: “it is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village… for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock” (Gilman 792). Seclusion appears again even through the setting of the story. The narrator is three miles away from society, just as her prescription intended. Walls and gates are Gilman’s way of setting up the suppression that not only
Monique Wittig, a radical feminist, illuminates, “For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation that we call servitude”. The concept of justifying the female inferior image based on biology and the ‘w...
Traditionally, women have been subservient to men; they are still often subjugated, treated as objects, and are valued for their ability to reproduce. Since the beginning of society dating back to the Paleolithic age, in the hunter-gatherer societal system, men generally hunted and provided for the family, while the women gathered fruit and raised children at home. This brand of society has in a way persisted even until today; often women will stay at home and raise children while the man would be the one to “hunt,” or in today’s context, work and provide for the family. This puts the woman in a subordinate position as they are dependent on the man, often leading to women being treated as objects. These stereotypes contribute to the development of Lispector’s works.
As women, those of us who identify as feminists have rebelled against the status quo and redefined what it means to be a strong and powerful woman. But at what cost do these advances come with?... ... middle of paper ... ... Retrieved April 12, 2014, from http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/whatisfem.htm Bidgood, J. 2014, April 8 -.
Today, we live in a world interwoven with women’s oppression, ecological degradation, and the exploitation of workers, race, and class. In the midst of these troubles, a movement known as ecofeminism appears to be gaining recognition. In the following, I hope to illustrate this revitalization movement . I will begin by characterizing a definition of ecofeminism; I will then bring to the forefront the ethical issues that Ecofeminism is involved with, then distinguish primary ideas and criticisms.