Feminist Criticism In The Novel Wild, By Cheryl Strayed

Throughout the novel Wild, Cheryl Strayed has crafted her autobiography to highlight the empowering feminist message of how men and women are equal. Strayed’s crafting ranges from similes to graphic language, to extended metaphors used to describe her feelings in her chapter titles. Strayed’s feminist message, that men and women are equal, is a recurring theme throughout the novel, but her crafting and language features really highlight this in bold.

Strayed’s story starts with the death of her mother and she begins there with her message. Strayed writes “And also I wanted to take pleasure from him, to feel the weight of his body against me, to feel his mouth in my hair and hear him say my name to me over and over, to force him to acknowledge

Strayed writes, “I gazed at my bare and battered feet, with their smattering of remaining toenails. They were ghostly pale to the line a few inches above my ankles, where the wool socks I usually wore ended. My calves above them were muscled and golden and hairy, dusted with dirt and a constellation of bruises and scratches.” In society traditionally women are kept clean, untouched and blemishes are found to be taboo. Strayed’s use of language that is graphic like ‘ghostly pale’ and ‘a constellation of bruises and scratches’ create a vivid image for the reader. Strayed highlights in bold and insights a vivid image of this in her reader’s mind. This is her not caring about meeting those gender stereotypes, that she is her own person and doesn't need other people to justify her look. She is her own person and doesn't need the opinions of other people or need to conform to the traditional gender stereotypes. Strayed’s crafting tells us how women are their own independent people that don’t need to impress other people or conform to their

The first chapter is given the name ‘Ten Thousand Things’ and in that chapter Strayed explains her mother’s death, how she feels her family is broken, how there’s no-one to support her through her struggle and how she feels like her life is falling apart. The title ‘Ten Thousand Things’ is quite fitting for this chapter as it is like things in her life are piling up, and she can’t deal with them like ten thousand things is a very large amount of things, she feels as if she has ten thousand problems. The chapter titles detail how she feels in that chapter and is used in future chapters to convey her feminist message of equality. Chapter seven is called ‘The Only Girl in the Woods’ and in that chapter she talks about all the people she talked with, they were all men. The chapter title is her reflecting how she feels like she is the only girl there, she feels mixed feelings about not belonging. Later in the autobiography, she calls chapter eighteen (the second to last chapter) ‘Queen of the PCT’. The chapter name ‘Queen of the PCT’ was given to her by some people on the trail and the fact that she has named that chapter after it shows how she felt that it suited her quite well and liked that name, she felt like the ‘Queen of the PCT.’ This shows that Strayed had overcome her initial feelings from being around all the men in chapter