Oppression Marilyn Frye Summary

Marilyn Frye, in her article Oppression, explores the pervasive presence of oppressive forces and the resultant inequality from which women suffer. She presents qualifiers and subsequent situations that outline her interpretation of the subjugation of women. Frye’s views may be seen as radical due to their extremist nature and unwillingness to conform, but undeniably present valid points and successfully rebels against the social construction she so strongly despises. Frye argues that the root cause of gender inequality derives from what she calls ‘oppressive structures’ and the inability or unwillingness of society to recognize these restrictive forces. Frye’s perspective differs from that of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in many ways but also shows

similarities in general perspective.

In her article, Frye uses a variety of examples and hypothetical situations to describe to the reader how oppression is hard to recognize, difficult to understand, and that the full impact on the oppressed cannot be realized fully by those outside the barriers of oppression. Frye uses the example of the birdcage to comment on the social blinders and what she refers to as microscopic view of “the cage”. The birdcage is built of many wires that all work together to hold the bird in, and one must look at the cage as a whole, not just each individual wire, to understand what constrains the bird. Frye summarizes this by saying, “one can study the elements of an oppressive structure with great care and some good will without seeing the structure as a whole”. In a later analogy she describes a prison, establishing that a person can see the bars from both the inside of the cell and the outside, but the impact of the bars on the imprisoned is far different than the impact of the bars on the free man. These analogies serve to exemplify the oppressive structure surrounding women. Frye argues that to determine if someone

or a group of people are oppressed “one has to look at the context in order to tell if it is an element in an oppressive structure.” In the context of women, she argues, the oppressive structure is often disregarded because women are so well assimilated throughout economic classes and race, and are thusly deemed too sparse to be categorized as a group subject to oppression. Frye and Ritzer both support the claim that to understand the oppression of women fully, one must “evaluate the world from the distinctive vantage points of women” (Ritzer, 193). Frye, though extremist, provides a reasonable and well support thesis that gender inequality, at the root, stems from the inability of others to recognize and understand the constraints, both social and mental, that bind and oppress women.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman makes an interesting argument about the role of women in the household and the silent oppressive forces that bind them to their work. Gilman identifies that most married women are expected to perform the services of a maid, a cook, a seamstress and nurse, without receiving any compensation or real regard for their work. Though feminist, this is not a radical idea, and many would agree and understand the underappreciated role of women in the home. Frye goes much further in her beliefs of feminism to say that women are oppressed in spheres that extend far beyond the home. Frye states that even the simple act of a man opening a door for a woman is an oppressive force and renders “that women are incapable” and thereby lesser than men. Frye and Gilman would agree that women are oppressed by men and their perceptions and expectations of women, but Frye would take it one step further to say that any disparities between men and women in terms of success, happiness, and achievements, could all be blamed on the oppression of women by men.