Both O’Connor and Eve Ensler provide stories about people’s body and way of life. O’Connor focuses on a time period where the ideas of acceptance are shunned by the church in The Complete Stories. The congregation of the church also reject such ideas in the name of Christ. On the other hand, Eve Ensler brings out encouraging information for females to love their bodies and their vaginas in The Vagina Monologues. Thus, it’s easy to say that a priest from A Temple of the Holy Ghost during that time would be the most outspoken critic against The Vagina Monologues. Eve Ensler represents an abundance of love and positivity towards a vagina. The idea of accepting a part of the body that has been ignored for years is her primary goal. She explains, “There’s so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them - like the Bermuda Triangle” (4). While vaginas have always been a part of the female body since the start of the human creation there seems to have been a disconnect with identifying that part of the body as real. Eve Ensler describes the emotions of a fellow female, “I did not, for example, see it as a …show more content…
part of my body, something between my legs, attached to me” (45). The journey of love and acceptance was difficult for many women however Eve Ensler was able to depict their moments beautifully. Eve Ensler began by describing how women originally felt about their vaginas but then slowly began to show how the hate that encompassed many women about their vaginas crumbled.
She describes a female finally connecting with her vagina, “My vagina is a shell, a tulip, and a destiny. I am arriving as I am beginning to leave. My vagina, my vagina, me” (50). Eve Ensler continues to describe another woman that started to embrace herself after years of hatred, “I began to swell, began to feel proud. Began to love my vagina” (57). While women despised themselves in the beginning due to the way society had shaped the idea of a vagina Eve Ensler destroys the hate that encompassed such ideas and sprouted new loving thoughts about vaginas to thousands of women. She was able to provide a platform with her play which helped thousands of women overcome the rejecting of their
bodies. Although today many people have praised Eve Ensler for what she has accomplished with The Vagina Monologues there are still critics who disapprove of her ideas. Flannery O’Connor describes the relationship the church has with the idea of acceptance in A Temple of the Holy Ghost. O’Connor describes how the Catholic church expected women to act in a situation involving a man, “…if he should ‘behave in an ungentlemanly manner with them’…they were to say, ‘Stop sir! I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost!’” (238). This idea that women are a representation of God enforces the idea of darkness and secrecy surrounding vaginas as explained by Eve Ensler. The church sets out strict rules and the congregation is meant to follow them. Thus, when a fair comes to town showcasing a hermaphrodite there is controversy among the church. The hermaphrodite was telling the group of people, “God made me thisaway and if you laugh He may strike you the same. This is the way He wanted me to be and I ain’t disputing His way” (245). Even when he was spreading a positive message like Eve Ensler was accomplishing in The Vagina Monologues the church was against those ideas. O’Connor describes the actions of group of priests, “‘They shut it on down… some of the preachers from town gone out and inspected it and got the police to shut it on down” (248). The preachers shutting down the establishment depicts the refusal to accept natural parts of the human body. Thus, it’s no surprise why a preacher from O’Connor would be an outspoken critic to The Vagina Monologues. Flannery O’Connor and Eve Ensler both depict different opinions on acceptance. Eve Ensler enjoys bringing acknowledgement to a vital part of a woman’s body. Flannery O’Connor describes the blatant need to keep secrecy about the human body. The dangers associated with having a hermaphrodite boast that God made him that way are huge in O’Connor’s point of view. These two conflicting opinions are able to describe how society feels in terms of embracing yourself.
In What ways is Sexuality portrayed as central to the conflicts of the individual-v-society in Ken Kesey's One flew over the cuckoo's nest and Tennessee Williams A street car named desire? In What ways is Sexuality portrayed as central to the conflicts of the individual-v-society in Ken Kesey's 'One flew over the cuckoo's nest' and Tennessee Williams 'A street car named desire'?
In the featured article, “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,” the author, Judith Butler, writes about her views on what it means to be considered human in society. Butler describes to us the importance of connecting with others helps us obtain the faculties to feel, and become intimate through our will to become vulnerable. Butler contends that with the power of vulnerability, the rolls pertaining to humanity, grief, and violence, are what allows us to be acknowledged as worthy.
Bartholomae, D., & Petrosky, A. (2011). Ways of reading: an anthology for writers (9th ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. “Judith Butler; Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy.”
When Obie award-winning author and playwright, Eve Ensler, began collecting testimonials from women across the country regarding their experiences with sexuality, she had no idea what would eventually occur as a result of her innovative ideas. Ensler gathered 200 monologues from women, and wove them into a play that represents the strength and vitality of female sexuality. The Vagina Monologues were first performed in the basement of New York City’s Cornelia Street Café in 1996. Since that time, the play has become a symbol of awareness and advocacy about violence against women, and has been translated into 24 different languages, making it an international success (2005, randomhouse.com).
Women left feeling empowered and understood, while male audience members left wanting to do something to help women facing such struggles with infertility. One of the most profound reviews of Your Mother’s Vagina on the Hollywood Fringe website states, “For audience members who have been through the ringer of egg harvesting, miscarriages, unwanted pregnancies strained relations with mates or the unquenchable desire to become pregnant, Your Mother’s Vagina offers deep recognition, levity and a reminder that you’re not alone” (Hollywood Fringe). In order for women to feel more empowered to speak up about their personal struggles with infertility, more awareness needs to be brought to the subject. The performing arts serve as a prime example of a safe and more “digestible” medium through which these discussions can be had, giving a voice to subject matter that often gets shoved under the rug. The “unspoken plague of our generation” needs to be spoken of more frequently, and Chaffee’s play pushes us in the right direction (Chaffee
In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women, Esther and Del try to take control of their sexuality and their sexual lives. These two female protagonists attempt to gain sexual confidence by quietly rejecting the societal images of women. They are able to seduce men and pilot their own sexual lives. These women are also able to ignore the popular beliefs about marriage and motherhood, thus freeing them from the traditional, restrictive female sexual roles. By rejecting the popular notions of womanhood, sexuality, and marriage, Esther and Del become the mistresses of their sexuality and sexual lives.
Published in 1696, the authorship of An Essay in Defence of the Female sex has been a subject of debate for a long time. Initially the work had been attributed to the contemporary author of Judith Drake, Mary Astell. However this controversy has been cleared with Judith Drake as the decided author of this work. The controversy perhaps emanated from the fact that no author had been indicated on the letter. It was only stated, ‘Written by a lady’. This has been interpreted by some literary analysts as a having been done deliberately by the author to emphasize her message of feminism, the key theme in the work. (Hannah, 2006).
The Hollywood movie Pretty Woman (1990) is about a prostitute in Hollywood, marrying an extremely rich businessman, in spite of her mutual distrust and prejudice. The movie contains the basic narrative of the Cinderella tale: through the love and help of a man of a higher social position, a girl of a lower social status moves up to join the man at his level.
Meese, Elizabeth. "When Virginia Looked at Vita, What Did She See; or, Lesbian: Feminist: Woman- What’s the Differ(e/a)nce?" Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1997.
George Santayana once said, “[t]hose who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” (1). Had Helene Cixous’s arguments in “The Laugh of the Medusa” been regarded as an axiomatic approach to feminist theory, history would be forced to repeat itself. Though Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own was published in 1928, it still contains ideas that are more relevant to the modern world than those of Helene Cixous in “The Laugh of the Medusa,” which was published in 1975. Several of Cixous’s suppositions ignore literary examples that were prevalent during the time in which she was writing, but these ideas in the literature that she disregards have reemerged today in modern formats. If Woolf’s piece had been disregarded, modern society would have to rediscover her ideas that are so relevant.
Gay reminds us that, “womanhood feels more strange and terrible now because progress has not served women as well as it has served men” (Gay 2011, 132). In other words, women have been portrayed as degrading and inferior to men due to the inevitable consequence of patriarchal western societies, in which women have traditionally been correlated with a less status than men. Women’s Realities, Women’s Choices demonstrates this theory as a conventional view of sex and gender by emphasizing that “women have been associated with the body and nature and men with ‘self, ’soul,’ and culture, profoundly affecting how women have been valued, treated, and constrained in their opportunities and choices” (Hunter College Women 's Studies Collective 2014, 152). In addition, an origin myth for Christians is that Eve was made as a companion to Adam, and by defying God, eating the fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge and convincing Adam to do the same, she brought evil into the world. This suggests that “it is men, not women, who engage in productive labor and that women deserve the pain of childbirth” (Hunter College Women 's Studies Collective 2014, 28).This myth originated from Christianity is generally held to be acceptable at the expense of individuality and has had influence on society, which has lead the authors to question views of sex and gender. Therefore, in the film Coffy, men played a role of dominance in demanding women to satisfy their sexual
“One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.” Arguably Simone de Beauvoir’s most famous quote, it raises questions about womanhood and identity that we struggle to grasp and accept even in todays society. To Beauvoir, this statement in her writing questioned the very entity of what it meant to be a woman, highlighting the idea that societies expectations and norms imposed the idea of womanhood on a young women. This issue of becoming is even further discussed by authors like Judith Butler, who applies this idea to her own lesbian identity, and how it defines her relationship to society.
Furthermore, gaining a broader and deeper understanding through personal narrative allows for the improvement of feminist issues. Feminist literature, such as Margaret Atwood’s story, “Rape Fantasies,” explorers the manner in which woman have a different way of experiencing the world than men do. This first-person creative piece illustrates the emotion and experiences of Estelle, a woman who is scared that she might get raped by the man who she is talking to. Towards the end of the story, Estelle begins rushing her words and rambling, a clear indication of her unease with the situation. She repeatedly states that she doesn’t understand “how they could go ahead with it…I know it happens but I just don’t understand it, that’s the part I really don’t understand” (Atwood 170). There is also recognition that individuals that have not experienced sexual vulnerability may not understand the situation, as Atwood states “but maybe it’s different for a guy” (Atwood 169). Traditional analyses of these situations would not be able to encompass the emotional and psychological elements of Estelle’s
I recently attended the Vagina Monologues, also known as the Blank Monologues at the University of Washington. Various self-identified women spoke about different experiences that invoked various reactions of feelings, thoughts, and actions, however, unapologetic for all of these instances that were the results of bigotry, addiction, depression, or violence. One women spoke about her mother who was her first heartbreak and her morning process from no longer having her in her life, while another woman spoke about her father who would sexually molest her sister growing up, and the love and hatred she still felt for him despite his violent, drunken, and perverted actions. Another transwoman discussed the hate
Elaine Showalter is a feminist writer who analyzes the oppression of women in psychiatry. Her contributions to British and American literature have brought new insights to feminism and have helped to influence other female authors to do the same. In writing “Toward a feminist poetics”, Showalter does not show women as being multiple women, but as a single “woman”. It is implied that she does not believe that there can be many different types of women, and that there can only be one. Showalter writes in this article about how women cannot become doctors or lawyers and cannot aspire to be anything other than a writer. Showalter argues that