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Marie Clements’ play The Unnatural and Accidental Woman is based on the serial murder cases of at least ten Indigenous woman in Vancouver’s downtown eastside unofficially known as skid row. All of these women were found dead with high blood-alcohol levels in their systems and were last seen with a local barber named Gilbert Paul Jordan before their deaths (Clements 5). Jordan frequented the downtown eastside bars, while preying mainly on middle-aged Indigenous women and intentionally killed them violently. Which is far from how their deaths were ruled by coroners who conducted the autopsies on these women, concluding their deaths as “unnatural and accidental” (Clements 5). In this paper, I will argue that Clements’ purpose for writing her play …show more content…
is to personify and give honor to the Indigenous women who were murdered by Gilbert Jordan, especially when others did not care enough because they were Indigenous women. She takes the opportunity to include the murdered women in her play as characters to make them visible to her audience and readers and telling their stories because it is important for everyone to be honored and respected after death no matter their ancestry, gender, and social standing in society. Sherene Razack’s essay “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George” is about the murder trial of two white men, Steven Kummerfield and Alex Ternowetsky, who murdered Pamela George, an Indigenous woman who was working as a prostitute at the time of her murder (124).
In her work, Razack argues that the factors of colonialism, gendered racial violence, and spatialized justice contributed to the minimization the personal and legal responsibility of Kummerfield and Ternowetsky for violently ending Pamela George’s death (125). Throughout her essay Razack presents various social dichotomies (man vs woman, white vs Indigenous, and rich vs poor) stacked against Pamela and favored the two accused men who murdered her. Razack’s essay complements Clements’ play in many ways, through detailed technical approach to allow her readers to see the reasons why it is important to know the human qualities of a woman who has been discriminated in life and in death. Razack also helps Clements’ purpose to highlight how society and the legal system collectively minimizes and dismisses the violence done to a woman because of her ancestral lineage, choice of occupation, and her imposed societal position society. With the existence of Razack’s essay, it helps support Clements’ purpose for writing her play in honor of the women murdered by
Jordan. In her play, Clements shares personal information about the women who were murdered by Gilbert Paul Jordan, to identify the women as human beings who had family who loved them. For example, she introduces a character named Valerie, who died on November 19, 1986 (51). Valerie was a mother of two boys named Tommy and Evan, who were part of a scene where they were talking to their mother through a dresser drawer, asking her when she was coming home, she tells them she will soon come back and spend time with them (Clements 49-50). Sherene Razack also provides a similar description of Pamela George, who was murdered by two white men named Steven Kummerfield and Alex Ternowetsky (124). While the two men were on trial for the murder of Pamela George, Pamela’s mother and sister said Pamela was a good mother to her ten year old and five year old, who like doing crafts, and cook anything (140). Both Clements and Razack provide personal information about having children to establish that the women were human beings with family who loved them because it is important to both writers to allow their readers see these women in a way they have not been seen in life and in death. In her play Clement immortalizes the women by writing about the Indigenous women in a way that members of the society who minimize violence against Indigenous women because of their Indigenous decent. For instance, Clements highlights how the local newspaper and coroners focused the levels of alcohol in the women’s systems and dismissed the violence endured by the women before their deaths, therefore minimizing the violence done to women because of who they are in the eyes of a colonial society (8). Razack’s essay supports Clements’ reason for including the newspaper of the coroner reports of the women murdered to show the injustice given to the women by colonial members of society. She does this by writing that she deliberately is writing “against those who would agree that [the] case is about an injustice but would de-race the violence and the law’s response to it, labelling it as a generic patriarchal violence against women, violence that the routinely minimizes” (126). Clements and Razack works both suggest the importance to uncover the deeply embedded subconscious racism that minimizes the severity of violence against women with Indigenous ancestry. Clements and Razack acknowledge these factors and both feel it is important to share a side of these women’s deaths to memorialize them in a way they deserve to be remembered as women who were Indigenous and human. Clements and Razack understand the importance of sharing the women’s sides their stories to honour them. Both Clements and Razack’s works contrast each other when it comes to providing insight to the stories of the murdered women in the way they share the women’s stories. For example, because Clements’ work is artistic, which does not provide, as much detail as Razack’s essay and Razack’s work is technical, which causes it to fall short because she does not share Pamela’s personal history that led her to a place that put her in danger. Another example is the cultural connection to the murdered women, Clements provides this aspect in her play and Razack is missing the cultural connection in her essay. Both Clements and Razack’s works are important because they both provide a feminine voice regarding violence against Indigenous women and the factors that cause the unfair view and treatment of Indigenous women.
Sherene H. Razack’s article The Murder of Pamela George introduces the idea of colonial violence within a spatialized justice system by exploring the trial of a murder of a native woman who worked as a prostitute.
Four black sharecroppers (Roger Malcom, Dorothy Malcom, George Dorsey and Mae Murray Dorsey) are brutally murdered by a group of white people. The murders attracted national attention, but the community was not willing to get involved. The community was not fazed by these brutal murders but, by the fact that this incident got national attention. They were even more astounded that the rest of the nation even cared. In this book Laura Wexler shows just how deep racism goes. After reading the book I discovered that Fire in a Canebrake has three major themes involving racism. The first is that racism obstructs progression. The second is history repeats itself. The last theme is that racism can obscure the truth. This lynching, in particular, marks a turning point in the history of race relations and the governments’ involvement in civil rights. In the end this case still remains unsolved. No concept of the
In her Fire in a Canebrake, Laura Wexler describes an important event in mid-twentieth century American race relations, long ago relegated to the closet of American consciousness. In so doing, Wexler not only skillfully describes the event—the Moore’s Ford lynching of 1946—but incorporates it into our understanding of the present world and past by retaining the complexities of doubt and deception that surrounded the event when it occurred, and which still confound it in historical records. By skillfully navigating these currents of deceit, too, Wexler is not only able to portray them to the reader in full form, but also historicize this muddled record in the context of certain larger historical truths. In this fashion, and by refusing to cede to a desire for closure by drawing easy but inherently flawed conclusions regarding the individuals directly responsible for the 1946 lynching, Wexler demonstrates that she is more interested in a larger historical picture than the single event to which she dedicates her text. And, in so doing, she rebukes the doubts of those who question the importance of “bringing up” the lynching, lending powerful motivation and purpose to her writing that sustains her narrative, and the audience’s attention to it.
There are many ideas, experiences, values and beliefs in the play Blackrock by Nick Enright. The play is based on a true story and is set in late November to early January in an Industrial city and its beachside suburb of Blackrock. It is about a girl called Tracy aged 15 who was raped and murdered at a teenage party and the effects of it on the locals and community. Three main ideas explored in the play that challenged and confirmed my own beliefs include “Disrespect toward women”, “Victim blaming” and “Double standards”.
Women in America have been described as “domestic household slaves” referring to their status in society. Do the documents support this assertion? If so what is the evidence?
Due to the persistence of racism, classism, and transphobia the notion of “good victims” and “bad victims” is unmistakably palpable. Sarah Lamble’s article, “Retelling Racialized Violence” discusses the practices of memorialization and questions the politics of how certain victims are remembered in juxtaposition to other victims of violence. Lamble contends, “identities are thus marked as constituting so-called good and bad victims and these categories fall along particular class, gender, and racial lines”. Meaning, the good victims were individuals who adhered to the categories imposed by society, whereas the bad victims were individuals mandated to the margins of society due to their race, class, sexuality, and gender
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
Glaspell spent more than forty years working as a journalist, fiction writer, playwright and promoter of various artistic. She is a woman who lived in a male dominated society. She is the author of a short story titled A Jury of Her Peers. She was inspired to write this story when she investigated in the homicide of John Hossack, a prosperous county warren who had been killed in his sleep(1).Such experience in Glaspell’s life stimulated inspiration. The fact that she was the first reporter on scene, explains that she must have found everything still in place, that makes an incredible impression. She feels what Margaret (who is Minnie Wright in the story) had gone through, that is, she has sympathy for her. What will she say about Margaret? Will she portray Margaret as the criminal or the woman who’s life has been taken away? In the short story Minnie Wright was the victim. Based on evidence at the crime scene, it is clear that Minnie has killed her husband; however, the women have several reasons for finding her “not guilty” of the murder of John Wright.
The passage I chose to explicate is from Anzia Yezierska’s, The Lost Beautifulness. The passage is located on pg. 1254 of the Norton Anthology of American Literature 1912-1945. I believe this passage represents the main character’s and author’s view of the Depression-era individual vs. society. It reads as follows:
The play Blackrock, written by Nick Enright that was inspired by the murder of Leigh Leigh, which took place in Stockton in 1989. During this essay the following questions will be analysed, what stereotypes of women are depicted in the text, how do the male characters treat the female characters and how do the male characters talk about the female characters. These questions are all taken from the feminist perspective.
Devising the perfect murder is a craft that has been manipulated and in practice dating back to the time of the biblical reference of Cain and Abel. In the play, “Trifles” exploration is focused on the empathy one has for a murderer who feels they have no alternative from their abuser. As a multifaceted approach, the author Glaspell gives her audience a moral conflict as to whether murder should be condemned based on the circumstances rather than the crime. Presenting Mrs. Wright as the true victim of the crime of domestic abuse rather than a murderer gives Glaspell a stage which shows her audience the power of empathy.
In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles Mr. Wright’s murder is never solved because the two women in the story unite against of the arrogance of men to hide evidence that would prove Mrs. Wright as the murderer. The play Trifles is about the death of farmer Mr. Wright and how the town sheriff and attorney try to find evidence that his wife Mrs. Wright killed him. As the play progresses the men’s wives who had come along were discovering important pieces of evidence that prove the men’s theory but chose to hide from them to illustrate the point that their ideas should have been valued and not something to be trifled. The very irony of the play comes from its title trifles and is defined as something that isn’t very important or has no relevance to the situation that it is presented to. In this play the irony of the title comes from the fact that the men find the women’s opinions on the case trifling even though the women solve the crime which ends up being the downfall of the men as they would have been able to prosecute Mrs. Wright if they had listened which made the women’s opinions not trifling. Glaspell was born in an age where women were still considered the property of men and they had no real value in society in the eyes of men except for procreation and motherhood. This attitude towards women was what inspired Glaspell to write the play Trifles and to illustrate the point that women’s attitudes should be just as valued as men’s and to let women have a sense of fulfillment in life and break the shackles that were holding them only as obedient housewives. Trifles was also inspired by a real murder trial that Glaspell had been covering when she was a reporter in the year 1900. Glaspell is a major symbol of the feminist movement of l...
In chapter five of the book Femininity and Domination by Sandra Bartky, she analyses Michel Foucault’s evaluation of discipline and power relations utilized against the body. Her critiques are addressed through a feminist lens, arguing that the experience of domination over the feminine body is unique from other institutions of control. In this essay, I will analyze the following quote from Bartky’s book; “The absence of formally identifiable disciplinarians and of a public schedule of sanctions serves only to disguise the extent to which the imperative to be ‘feminine’ serves the interest of domination” (Bartky 1990, 75) I shall argue that Bartky’s quote suggests that the loci of feminine domination are unclear as there are no physical structures that regulate discipline and control. I shall also make the claim that the normalization of feminine self-regulatory behavior allows for patriarchal systems to obscure their role in feminine domination by passing of the behavior as natural.
In Tennesse Williams’ The Glass Menagerie and William Mastrosimone’s Extremities, both plays portrayed the women’s struggle to maintain their autonomies. Williams created a character named Amanda, who was abandoned by her husband and brought up two children and struggled with the difficulties of life. The character of Mastrosimone’s Marjorie stood up to the rapist and made him confess his crime, thus protected her autonomy and brought out justice. Both characters were attempting to maintain their independence, but the outcomes were different because of their personalities and their methods of handling the situations.
this play demystifies and criticizes the early modern practice of scapegoating women accused of witchcraft; the play shows how the community of Edmonton, abetted by the English legal system, eliminates a marginal member of the community upon whom the idea of contagion is projected. On the other hand, and simultaneously, the play actively participates in the Jacobean fascination with and sensationalism surrounding witchcraft trials: