Phil 221 Prof. Brixel Essay 1 In this essay, I will argue that while not necessarily offensive or harmful, the door-holding ritual’s role within the broader context of a patriarchal society serves as one of many vessels by which women are silenced, and their needs deemed irrelevant. I will demonstrate that despite the prevalent objection that Marilyn Frye’s door-holding analysis is not valid due to the helpful and universal nature of the act, it is still a manifestation of gender oppression in daily life. Then I will show that door-holding, in its dismissive nature, reinforces the existing cultural and social subjugation of women. While seemingly innocuous, the ritual of door-holding symbolically reinforces gender norms, perpetuating broader …show more content…
The fact that door-opening is a performance regardless of “convenience or grace” speaks to the dismissive nature of its employment in daily life. It is performed automatically and passively, which Frye cites as evidence of the ritual’s “detachment from the concrete realities” of daily life, specifically, women’s actual needs. Frye’s analysis here supports the claim that door-opening as a gendered ritual instills in participants a disregard for genuinely addressing the needs of women, which in turn reinforces the notion that women’s needs are irrelevant. Frye connects this detachment of women’s needs to broader patterns of silencing women and reinforcing subservient roles, drawing parallels to other forms of female gender socialization. In its dissemination as a rule and its dismissive nature, the practice reinforces a broader system of silencing women and their needs. Frye argues: “There is nothing but advice that women should stay indoors after dark, be chaperoned by a man, or when it comes down to it, ‘lie back and enjoy it’” (Frye 7). By making a connection between the subservient nature of the performance door-holding and the other roles that girls are taught to play from childhood, Frye conjures a powerful image of the demeaning narratives encompassed
In this paper, I will argue how Marilyn Frye’s Door Opening Ritual is significantly incomplete. Instead of assuming all women are faced with the same challenges, Frye should have noted each woman will have her own experience based off of her background. Thus being a factor in what “doors” will be opened for her.
The narrator’s room is furnished with “symbols of restraint” such as, the bed nailed down to the floor, a gate blocking the stairs, and rings in the walls. According to Jeremy MacFarlane’s journal “Enough to make a body riot”: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Chester Himes, and the Process of Socio-spatial Negotiation, all the things in the room normalize the “repression and self-denial” practice for women. And, of course, the yellow wallpaper reinforces a state of “grotesque, idiotic cheerfulness,” which is the key to a woman’s assent in the status quo (MacFarlane, 8-9).
Unknown. 2012. The Bloody Chamber: AS & A2 Critical Debates: Feminism. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.yorknotes.com/alevel/the-bloody-chamber/study/contexts-critical-debates/04020300_critical-debates. [Accessed 03 January 14].
In Charlotte Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator describes several attitudes in which men thought about women and the overall oppression of women in the early 20th century. The perception of men and women encouraged society to place limitations on women and allow men to dominate. Women were seen as caretakers, homebodies and fragile, unable to care for one’s self. This is symbolic to the “Cult of Domesticity”, a term identifying a nineteenth-century ideology that women's nature suited them especially for tasks associated with the home. It identified four characteristics that were supposedly central to women's identity: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness.” One the other hand, men would rule society through their work, politics, and government. They were able to live free and enjoy the public sphere where men enjoyed the competition created in the marketplace through which they gained their identity. In the public sphere, they made decisions that enhanced their own positions in society, while exploiting women’s biological makeup and employing blackmail to render women immobile.
Prior to the twentieth century, men assigned and defined women’s roles. Although all women were effected by men determining women’s behavior, largely middle class women suffered. Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women. This ideology, called the Cult of True Womanhood, legitimized the victimization of women. The Cult of Domesticity and the Cult of Purity were the central tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood. Laboring under the seeming benevolence of the Cult of Domesticity, women were imprisoned in the home or private sphere, a servant tending to the needs of the family. Furthermore, the Cult of Purity obliged women to remain virtuous and pure even in marriage, with their comportment continuing to be one of modesty. Religious piety and submission were beliefs that were more peripheral components of the ideology, yet both were borne of and a part of the ideology of True Womanhood. These were the means that men used to insure the passivity and docility of women. Religion would pacify any desires that could cause a deviation from these set standards, while submission implied a vulnerability and dependence on the patriarchal head (Welter 373-377).
Women and men are not equal. Never have been, and it is hard to believe that they ever will be. Sexism permeates the lives of women from the day they are born. Women are either trying to fit into the “Act Like a Lady” box, they are actively resisting the same box, or sometimes both. The experience of fitting in the box and resisting the box can be observed in two plays: Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” and Henrick Ibsen’s “A Doll House”. In Hansberry’s play, initially, Beneatha seems uncontrolled and independent, but by the end she is controlled and dependent; whereas, in Ibsen’s play Nora seems controlled and dependent at the beginning of the play, but by the end she is independent and free.
However, the focus of the reinforcement of conventional gender roles is young women; this is an attempt to resist women’s fight for equality and opportunities to leave domesticity during the second wave of feminism in the sixties. In the legend the babysitter is a young woman whose task is to take care of children, the whole scenario is set to be a type of role play with the babysitter as the mother (Snopes, “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs”). Support for this perspective of traditional gender role reinforcement are the expectations held about babysitters as care givers for the period of time in which children’s’ parents are not present. In support of the reinforcement of women staying in the private sphere to take care of children and do more homely and conventional tasks – namely not working in the public space alongside men – is in the way the legend acts as a cautionary tale. While the babysitter is expected to do tasks expected of women such as caring for children the fact that the babysitter is working and outside of the home is a reference to feminists’ resistance to traditional femininity. The conflict in the role of the babysitter, coupled with her failure to protect herself and the children in her charge, becomes a statement about how women should not move away from their roles in the home for they are vulnerable without men to protect them. Therefore, the telling of this legend accomplishes the task of reinforcing traditional gender
Up until recently, the definition of what a man or a woman should be has been defined, with boundaries, by society; males should be strong, dominant figures and in the workplace providing for their families while females should be weak and submissive, dealing with cleaning, cooking and children. Any veering away from these definitions would have disrupted the balance of culture completely. A man playing housewife is absurd, and a woman being the sole provider for the family is bizarre. In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls” and Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh”, conflict arises when expectations based on gender are not fulfilled by the characters. According to “Boys and Girls”, there are certain things women should not be doing as defined by their gender.
explores not only the way in which patriarchal society, through its concepts of gender , its objectification of women in gender roles, and its institutionalization of marriage, constrains and oppresses women, but also the way in which it, ultimately, erases women and feminine desires. Because women are only secondary and other, they become the invisible counterparts to their husbands, with no desires, no voice, no identity. (Wohlpart 3).
What is within the boundaries of the feminine is always considered to have less status and power and is always subordinate and marginal—women always remain ‘other’. I perceive feminism as a part of the process of challenging the boundaries of the socially constructed role for women in our society—a process which through struggle will create for women a different notion of the normal and natural and a different tradition of being female. (Goodman, Harrop 4)
This emphasises women's precarious position in a patriarchal society by showing how their limited public presence made them vulnerable to male
Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” shows in society how a woman should be placed and what it means to be a woman. A women doesn’t question her partner, instead she is subservient to him. A woman’s duties include staying at home taking care of the children and cooking; while the man works and brings home the money. A feministic approach to Kincaid’s “Girl” points to the idea of the stereotypes that women can only be what they do in the home, they should only be pure and virtuous, and their main focus should be satisfying their husband.
Women are looked at as less than males, and males are to be far superior because society thought male to be the better gender. “A Doll's House,” by Henrik Isben describes the sacrificial role of nineteenth century women , men in society and in the household.
At the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries, a series of events occurred that would be known as the feminist movement. During this time, many women were starting to change the way they thought of themselves and wanted to change their social roles. In his views on feminist analysis Donald Hall says, “Feminist methodologies focus on gender.and explore the complex ways in which women have been denied social power and the right to various forms of self-expression. In this context the many perspectives that fall under the heading ‘feminism’ vary wildly”(Hall 199). Since women were denied social power and self-expression, they went against what society saw as acceptable, a patriarchal world.
Women have always been essential to society. Fifty to seventy years ago, a woman was no more than a house wife, caregiver, and at their husbands beck and call. Women had no personal opinion, no voice, and no freedom. They were suppressed by the sociable beliefs of man. A woman’s respectable place was always behind the masculine frame of a man. In the past a woman’s inferiority was not voluntary but instilled by elder women, and/or force. Many, would like to know why? Why was a woman such a threat to a man? Was it just about man’s ability to control, and overpower a woman, or was there a serious threat? Well, everyone has there own opinion about the cause of the past oppression of woman, it is currently still a popular argument today.