Comparing The Women's Room By Zadie Smith And Marilyn French

Men and women have so much different relationships back in middle 20th century. Being affected by those unwritten laws, woman writers put so many things to enlighten what they’ve been through in those times. Zadie Smith and Marilyn French, both being well-known writers, intended to tell so many things about that situation.

In French’s ‘The Women’s Room’, the unhappy relationships between men and women are depicted. There is an inevitable ‘gender dynamics’ term in America and Mira is suffering from that. The novel represents issues like subordination to the patriarchy, identity loss, women trying to create their own identities, being objectified and treated as sexual objects. Objects mean ‘not human’ and the women in the 20th century weren’t

French shows us a different perspective, a perspective from the ladies’ window, and attack the idea of rape. Men are trying to normalize it as it is a natural thing to happen. “Men want women, and they shall claim”. The Women’s Room argues that women are inactive objects for male desire. Moreover, the female characters in the novel are all victims of suicide, natural injustice, rape and divorce due to men. Men were free and they ruled the world. They are always free to do whatever they want to do, go out alone at night, driving their own cars, exposing their body however they want. While they are doing that, they want their women to be in the house all day, doing laundry, cleaning, cooking and such ‘feminine

This actually gives a social boost to the men and they act as they wish to. Val clearly states this situation after her daughter got raped. She says that every man is rapist, they rape women with their eyes, their codes and their laws.

The White Teeth is seeing things in a different perspective. We see Alfred Archibald Jones, a very, very, very boring man as a protagonist. Looking into male and female relationships, we see Archie boring his first wife so much that she goes insane. This is unpleasant because Ophelia can’t kill her boredom on her own, she ‘needs’ Archie. As her man is a failure at life, she can’t do anything but to go mad. When I say ‘first wife’ there must be a second wife. Let’s look into Clara’s side of events.

Clara Bowden Jones is an immigrant from Jamaica. She meets a boy named Ryan Topps, and she keeps telling herself that she’s got to save his soul. Was it real? Was Clara hoping to save Ryan or was she hoping to be saved by Ryan? Answer to that question is given throughout the novel when she hopes that Ryan will be her golden ticket to somewhere else. And when the things between those two don’t work out, Clara looks for something, even more, someone else to save her. After this, she finds herself at the arms of boring 47-year old Archie Jones when she was only nineteen. Archie was old, not an exciting man, so this gives an idea of what a woman might think in a man choice.