Throughout the various books we've read during the term, there are some overarching themes that encompass the plot of every single book. One of the most apparent and prominent ones that I identified were the similarly different ideas the authors had of GENDER AND SEXUALITY within 20th century society.
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
The ONE book that especially drove me nuts with its ridiculous notions of gender -- notably women's -- and sexuality, was Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence. Throughout the book, Lawrence's contempt for women and men's need of them -- particularly their vaginas -- is illustrated throughout the whole book. Regardless of the fact that his conceptions of women and their own sexuality was hilarious, they were also exceptionally ignorant and offensive. When Connie, the main character, was having sex, it seems as though he was utterly unaware that pleasure is mutual and that during intercourse; despite the fact a woman is 'entered' by a man's dick, it doesn't mean she is empty until the man empties himself inside her, nor does it mean that a man loses a part of himself when he does. It illuminates us readers on Lawrence's concept of 'wholeness' for both men and women. Women are 'whole' for they have been with a man and have a piece of one inside of them; whereas for men, it is absolutely the other way around. They are less whole after sex, also giving us an insight into the form of his contempt. Through his words in page 182, "the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humor, creating him a reasonable being, yet forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance," we can see that it is due to the fact that men are vulnerable in front of a woman and with a woman, when they should be 'manly' men, showing no vulnerabilities to the public, least of all to that of a 'lowly' woman. Men's need for woman and their release inside of them makes them less, for having that need for a lower being, as women were perceived -- especially by Lawrence.
And so, it is also relatively easy for us to gain a better understanding of Lawrence's concept of a 'manly' man, through a comparison between Clifford, Connie's impotent and intellectual husband, and Mellors, Connie's strong, stoic, and handy-man-type lover. Clifford is portrayed as a man of letters, who thinks and writes and philosophizes within his own bubble of privilege. Mellors, however, is the groundskeeper, so he walks around in the woods, in his manly flannel shirt with his hunting dog and a rifle strapped to his shoulder, while Clifford is strapped to his wheelchair. Despite the fact that Clifford isn't willingly in a wheelchair, Lawrence frames it as though it is a sort of relief for Clifford to be in one, where he doesn't have to pretend and put on the facade of being a 'real' man. Also helping us understand Lawrence's utter dislike for the industrialization of England, as Clifford becomes a businessman within the mines, while Mellors represents the type of society which Lawrence favors. One where nature is in the spotlight, without the distractions and the noise that industrialized society brings.
In many instances throughout the novel, Connie describes her own surrender to her inherent condition, that of being a woman in the world, mostly during or after interactions with the men in her life, particularly Mellors, the man she's sleeping with. During one of her interactions with him, when she didn't want to have sex, she did so anyways because, "her will had left her. A strange weight was on her limbs. She was giving way. She was giving up" (140). Demonstrating her own sense of loss of her freedom and agency she used to have, to the men in her life. It seems as though that 'blind craving' that Lawrence hates so much, is that 'strange weight' that Connie felt. Mellors' desire and craving was so intense, so overpowering, that a woman can do nothing but submit to the superiority of men over that of a woman. And so, not only is a woman's sexuality a "loss of herself to herself" (142), as women are instruments for pleasure, but it is also a loss of men to women, of a part of themselves, of their 'manly' identity to the act of sexual intercourse, and so inherently to the woman with whom they are performing the act with.
The Effectual Marriage or The Insipid Narrative of GINA AND MIOVANNI by Mina Loyd
As Connie has her own sense of loss of freedom to her "condition of womanhood" (Sultana's Dream, 1), we see the same in Mina Loyd's poem The Effectual Marriage or The Insipid Narrative of GINA AND MIOVANNI. Not only does the title already demonstrate Loyd's own perception of the institution of marriage, but also, as marriage is a symbolic representation of the love or relationship between two people, we see her opinion on the concept of love itself. With the first part of the title, The Effective Marriage, she gives the sense as though it is nothing but a 'love' contract, and with the second part, The Insipid Narrative, she hammers down her point of thinking of marriage as a very unloving, unromantic, and an inherently useless and bland construct of society. Just another way of tying women down and cock-blocking their potential for their independent development.
Throughout the poem, she keeps placing Gina and Miovanni in different parts of the house, such as when she writes, "Miovanni out of his library window // Gina from the kitchen window." Through words like these, she highlights the gender roles that were present and pervasive, while through her tone and the context, she manages to do it in a mocking manner that affirms her position as a relative feminist. With her stanza,
"Gina was a woman
Who wanted everything
Everything to be everyway at once
Diurnally variegate
Miovanni always knew her
She was Gina
Gina who lent monogamy
With her fluctuant aspirations
A changeant consistency
Unexpected intangibilities
Miovanni remained
Monumentally the same
The same Miovanni
If he had become anything else
Gina's world would have been at an end
Gina with no axis to revolve on
Must have dwindled to a full stop,"
Loyd somewhat paints the image of a classic woman, particularly a wife, who wants everything and her everything is her partner. So much so, that Miovanni is Gina's axis, the fundamental reason for her existence, and without him, she stops existing; especially considering that a woman's value was ultimately placed on her husband.
Loyd creates a tension within the poem, of the mundane things that Gina does on a daily basis, and what she would want to be doing but isn't willing to think about in fear of what she would actually be able to do or think about or even think of. She doesn't ever step into Miovanni's study, where he spends most of his time, in fear that she will actually know what he is doing and is utterly disappointed by it. She keeps herself in her own prison of denial, with low ceilings and close walls, so that she doesn't go mad in her own monotonous and tedious lifestyle, where the days melt into nights; and so the sun rises again and she goes back to doing the same circular motions on the kitchen counter with her rag. Cleaning the kitchen among her many pots and pans. For in order for this marriage to succeed and be effective, Miovanni has to remain an obscure character, even being unknown to his wife, Gina, so that she doesn't ever have even the remote possibility that Miovanni is actually a boring dude, destroying the pedestal that she built for in order for her to relatively keep her sanity.
And so,
through these two texts, we see the massive weight society places -- and its constructs, such as marriage and the expectation of it -- on women and their identities. How they have to keep themselves locked in their ignorance and heads to be able to survive the monotony of having to fulfill the roles that it has imposed on them. Connie doesn't do that, and she is miserable in her conscious surrender. Whereas Gina does it beautifully, and loves her husband in his obscurity and succumbs to her role with all the grace of a lady.
Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself by Radcliffe Hall & Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Within these two texts, the discovery and assuming of the main characters' identities, Miss Ogilvy and Orlando, respectively, are both the main conflicts and resolutions.
In Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself, we see how she idolizes men and their bodies, their strength and muscles, and their overall masculinity; kind of how, generally, gay men love female pop stars because it's femininity they can't achieve, and men's masculinity is one that Miss Ogilvy, in her own obviously womanly body, cannot achieve herself. Which is why she is able to fully discover herself, and finds a place where she is as comfortable in her own skin as she can ever be: the war front. Which is why when she has to come back home from the front, all her past resentment towards her own feminine traits comes rushing back with a vengeance.
In Orlando, however, we see a somewhat more of a happy ending in regards to the identity of Orlando herself. Orlando is born a man, and he lived a relative lifetime of being a man in his prime, until he wakes up a woman, after a week of being dead asleep. When she awakens, she comes to terms with her new appearance and identity, she realizes that she both loves and hates her past identity and her present one; women for their limited role and power in society and men for the way they prance about like lords and become fools the second they see a lady. She at least recognizes that she was the same kind of fool when she was a man, and that as a woman she has to be "obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled" (156), which is both frustrating and exhilarating. She misses the simplicity and the entitled-ness that came with having a dick between her legs, but she loves the power that not having one gave her over men.
And so,
through these two texts, we see the struggle that people go through to be able to reach a conclusion about their own identities and to come to terms with it, once they realize it. Miss Ogilvy struggles between both herself, her family, and society's expectations and her own wants and desires about her own self. Orlando, however, is born a man and one day wakes up a woman, so the change is made for her, but the establishment of her own identity within herself is all done by her and for her. She ends up concluding with the fact that "living in two genders is doubly fulfilling" (Chapter 4), giving us a wider sense of the two gender expectations that society had set in that time period, since she had lived as both genders, and highlighting the fact that either though women had the shorter end of the stick, the gender expectations still sucked for men, regardless of the fact that society gave them a leg up at every turn of the road.
Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
In this novel by Jean Rhys, the value of a woman is basically placed wholly on her appearance and the monetary worth of their possessions -- namely, their clothes. Aside from that, the desired 'lady-like' qualities of the period are constantly highlighted through Anna and her own thoughts of what a lady should do, act like, look like. Such as how "a lady always puts on her gloves before going into the street" (34), and how when she does put on the gloves, she begins to sweat and can "feel the perspiration trickling down under her arms," which is a "disgusting and a disgraceful thing to happen to a lady" (42). Anna's thoughts about 'lady-ness' do nothing but exacerbate the "scorn and loathing of the female -- a very common expression in this country [England]" (81) and highlight the fact that the whole concept of 'being a lady' and the pressure it puts on women to actually follow through on that ideal, is inherently dehumanizing, since it takes away the individuality of women by making themselves adjust to the same image of what a woman should look like, and not what they actually look like, rejecting the physical realities of the female population.
Not only that, but when Anna gets herself a taxi one night after leaving Walter's, she experiences what we all know of 'male entitlement.' "When I paid the man he winked at me. I looked over his head and pretended not to notice" (39). This quote exemplifies just about everything that men do that we associate with their entitlement and the well-known 'rape mentality,' such as catcalls when you walk down the street, the winking, such as in this particular instance, and the staring that we endure from men's roving eyes that definitely does not feel comfortable or good at all, but rather objectifying, and that is not a nice feeling to experience. Not only do we see this entitlement to being born with a penis here, but also every single time that Walter or any other of Anna's or any of her friend's men assume, from the very beginning of the night, that they are getting some sexy time. Anna, with her being not a particularly good escort, at least dismisses that assumption by having one of her depressive episodes in the middle of the 'date' or just flipping out on the guy, definitely shattering that expectation of sexy time.
That stereotype of women being ridiculously indecisive -- Hot 'N Cold by Katy Perry -- is something that, despite that fact that it kind of seems like Anna's weird form of some kind of agency over herself, she embodies. Another stereotype would be that all women hate each other, and though that is not particularly shown throughout the book nor within Anna's relationships with other women in her life, Joe feels the need to point out when Laurie's whining about how the woman in the table over looked at her: "Oh, women. How you love each other, don't you?" (119). This quote reminds me of something my dad always says, "You put two women together in a room for an hour and they'll be clawing their eyes out by the time you open the door. But you put two men in a room for an hour and they'll be friends when you open the door." Which, you know, is an infuriating stereotype to even consider, but also relatively true, in general. Society drives women to be in constant competition with each other, even more then, in the 20th century, when women were perpetually trying to be the most attractive in order to get themselves a good husband. Of course, this competition is not only reserved for women, since men also compete amongst each other, but since their search for a wife was never something so acknowledged -- since women were supposed to flock to them, of course, the competition between men is not recognized as the one between women is.
In conclusion,
with the different, yet alike, portrayals of gender and sexuality within all these texts, I was fucking furious. Sure, the gender roles and expectations for men were acknowledged in some of them and even mentioned, despite their being inherently bad or good, they were still framed in a relatively nice light. For women, however, in all of them, we are either sexually-crazed idiots, very effective maids, or pretty, indecisive dolls in the most expensive dress we could afford. Which is all complete and utter bullshit. Fuck this. Sure, different times, different ideas or whatever, but honestly, how can people be such idiots? Whenever a man starts ignoring his dick in whatever decisions he ends up making, we can talk, because in all of these books, most decisions that the men characters ended up making were made through a thought-process that went mainly down there and never really making their way to their brain first (even Clifford, with his impotency, made most of his decisions because of his lack of a working dick).
Comments