Jose Saramago Blindness Essay

Women are strong. Women adapt. Women will do anything to survive. These three statements are proven in Jose Saramago’s novel, Blindness. He creates beautifully dynamic female characters that often outweigh the importance of the other male leads. These assertions give Blindness a feminist touch.
Saramago’s story follows the epidemic of blindness from the beginning. This allows him to show all the different emotions of each character; documenting how those emotions develop. The first female, the wife of the first blind man, reacts how any person would realistically react: she cries. The doctor’s wife reacts in a more pragmatic way. After she releases the thin shred of hope that there is no epidemic of blindness she moves on, simply taking her

husband by the arm and saying “Come along, love”. The girl with dark glasses is over taken by fear, screaming out for help. These first jerk reactions from the female protagonists provide a great starting point to later contrast. As the book goes on, Saramago’s shows us that the women adapt to their new situations. The doctor’s wife especially recognized that she needs to adapt to stay alive, and she does. She gives up the basics are that she can fit in with the rest of the blind people in the asylum. She changes even the simplest actions so that she can act as the other act, camouflaging her sight, so she can continue to live, by changing her actions.
The women also sacrifice many things to survive, many things that the men would likely not submit.

The doctor’s wife gives up her freedom to be with her husband, knowing that whatever place they end up will not be pleasant. The other women, in addition to giving up their sight, a sacrifice they did not chose, also gave up their bodies. When the hoodlums demand sex for food, all the women in the ward, after a short time, decide that being raped is a price they will have to pay to survive, and ensure the survival of their ward mates. The men are far more hesitant and protective in this case: “The first blind man had begun by declaring that his wife would not be subjected to the shame of giving her body to strangers for whatever, she had no desired and he would not permit it” (169). But the first blind man is quickly shut up by his wife. She shames his manly assertion in a way that, perhaps if seeing, she would not have. These acts of sacrifice were not cowardly acts. In fact they took an amount of courage that is almost unimaginable. The women show that they had such a strong will to live they were willing to do anything. This willingness did not fade. They were resilient and never gave up or got overly frustrated. The same cannot be said for all the men. The doctor breaks down at the state of the facilities, and though the doctor’s wife is disgusted, she deals with it. She finds the emotion and physical strength to withstand the stench and state of

affairs.
The three women really begin to assert themselves and take over the situation while in the mental asylum. The doctor’s wife does not just aid her husband, but begins to lead him and the others. Her leadership is even more prevalent once the blindness victims are released from the hospital into the real world, where the doctor’s wife gains more responsibility than she has ever had before, and without her positive response to the pressure that the epidemic has put her, she would never have achieved so highly. The wife of the first blind man also asserts herself more, she no longer allows her husband to decide what is right and what it wrong, and she makes her own decisions and practically forces him to abide by her new rules.
The women push themselves further mentally and physically than the men. Without their sacrifices they would not have survived. Though the horror of blindness caused them much pain, the epidemic must have showed them that their metaphorical ledge extended farther then they believed.