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Thursday, July 10, 2014
Important Books & Authors
Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell
George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant: a Summary and Reflection
George Orwell was “disgusted by the inhumanity of colonial rule that he witnessed while stationed in Burma” (2835 Orwell). Using his writing to confess the inner conflict of an imperial police officer, he wrote an autobiographical essay titled Shooting an Elephant. He notes that the Burmese civilians were not allowed to own guns during his stay – a testament of British control over Burmese resources. Feeling “stuck between his hatred of the empire he served and his rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make his job impossible” he knew that “the sooner he chucked up the job and got out of it the better” (2844 Orwell). Orwell repressed his emotions because acting out as the only white man would have been foolish. If he betrayed his country, he risked treason. If he sided with the Burmese, he would never fit into their culture. Every white man’s life long struggle in the East was to not be laughed at, so the safest choice for a man like George was to live without action. However, when a sexually aggressive elephant gets loose Orwell is called to take action.
Orwell responds to the call, taking his rifle, “an old 44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant” (2845 Orwell) in hopes of frightening it with the noise. This elephant was not wild, but normally tame and broke loose due to sexual desire. This first action is just an exercise of authority in maintaining order; however, in seeing a dead native victim he requests an elephant rifle and five cartridges. This is when the Burmese become quite excited and an “immense crowd of two thousand” (2846 Orwell) follow him. They believe that the imperial police officer is going to shoot the elephant when, in actuality, he just wanted to defend himself from becoming another devilish corpse.
This is where Orwell’s insecurities get the best of him. He is “pushed to and fro by the will of these yellow faces behind” (2846 Orwell). He knows, along with the Burmese, that his duty is to act as a British official in killing the elephant. He develops a strategy: he would “walk within twenty-five yards to test his behavior” (2847 Orwell). If they elephant came at him, he would shoot. If not, he would reveal that the tame elephant no longer posed a threat. Yet, his insecurities with a gun get the best of him and he discards a strategy that would have allowed him to remain neutral.
He shoots the elephant five times with the elephant gun, but it does not die. He calls for a normal rifle to finish the job, but it does not die. He leaves to avoid the dying, gasping elephant and later learns that it took another half hour for it to die. The Burmese get the meat that they wanted and Orwell learns that he is legally right for shooting the elephant. He is thankful for this because he often wondered “whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking like a fool” (2848 Orwell). This is how the colonizer became colonized.
I believe that George Orwell’s essay reflects what many of us go through today: the struggle to do what is morally right when an entire world sways us to conform. Orwell’s dilemma is no different than one that we might face with a job that goes against the very grain of our moral virtue. We face these challenges all of the time:
• A job offer presents to you over someone who is more qualified, experienced and has been working toward that same position for years. Is it right to take it over them?
• A co-worker is disciplined for an honest mistake, we want to stand up for them but fear that rocking the boat could jeopardize our own life-lines. Do we step away from the fire to keep ourselves from being scathed?
• We want to study literature and write, when everyone else advices us to go into education. Do we limit our passions in order to have a career?
• A co-worker is disciplined for an honest mistake, we want to stand up for them but fear that rocking the boat could jeopardize our own life-lines. Do we step away from the fire to keep ourselves from being scathed?
• We want to study literature and write, when everyone else advices us to go into education. Do we limit our passions in order to have a career?
The list goes on. Life gets harder. Some of us are born into situations that are not easy and we’re forced to navigate through the chaos and disorder. In result, we may make bad decisions. In my opinion, the life of an imperial policeman would have been quite difficult. I applaud Orwell for being brave enough to confess his inner dilemmas and questions about the situation he lived out. It reminds us that we all face these conflicts everyday. The great Ralph Waldo Emerson knew this to be true when declaring: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
Works Cited
Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant.” The Longman Anthology: British Literature. Third ed. Vol. 2c. N.p.: Pearson Longman, 2006. 2844-848. Print. The Twentieth Century.
*Blogger’s note: This was a brief reflection that I wrote and edited during college. It is by no means a 100% exact interpretation of Orwell or any of his writing. I am not an Orwell scholar nor do I claim to be. If anyone is looking to build off of this post, then please cite this blog in your paper and write away. Please feel free to share what you write with me and what you discover about Orwell.
Monday, July 07, 2014
Meatless Men in Meatless Days
Jane Porter
Through various portrayals of women in her life, Sara Suleri, in Meatless Days, paints a complex image of the female in Pakistani society. Her interactions, although their resolutions are often unclear to the reader, tend to suggest a demeaning attitude towards men, further emphasizing the richness of the females she introduces. From scalding her brother's genitals and boldly refusing a marriage offer to Dr. Sadik's son to her straightforward and rash judgments of many of the men in her life, Suleri often marginalizes male roles, a tactic that further enriches her depiction of women. Suleri scatters descriptions of ephemeral relationships with various men throughout her text, a technique similar to Bruce Chatwin's collection of brief interactions with countless individuals in In Patagonia. Her unhesitant voicing of opinion when talking to Tom, a male acquaintance briefly discussed in the text, serves as an example of Suleri's attitude towards men:
"You do not have the backbone of a shrimp," I mourned, gazing up at the spread-sheet of that man mountain. "You have a head the size of a bowl of porridge and a brain the size of a pea." This was in a restaurant. I was surprised beyond measure when that big head bent back and wept, a quick summer shower of tears. By the time he left, all surfaces were absolutely dry. [p.38]Why does Suleri interject such details about brief relationships with men throughout her text? How does this technique impact her overall voice?
Does Suleri's inclusion of such statements loaded with resentment place a distance between herself and the reader? Why might such a distance be significant to our overall conception of this text?
In her section on Mustakori, Suleri introduces Dale, stating in parentheses, "Dale: if you will stay now, within the privacy of parentheses, then I'll not again disturb the ways you are invisible between us" (p.46). Why does Suleri explicitly choose to address Dale and furthermore, why does she make reference to her stylistic use of parentheses in this passage? Is this a technique emulated throughout the text?
MEATLESS DAYS BY SARA SULERI
Meatless Days is a book that encompasses person memoir, the history of the development of Pakistan, and fermale position within Pakistani culture. Suleri jumps from the present to the past, from the United States to Pakistan, and from the privileged world of Yale in New Haven to the traditional realm of cultural traditions. Both the clash of modern and traditional cultures as well as the exile versus the homeland is addressed in her beautiful prose.The female Pakistani author, Sara Suleri addresses the ontological landscape of her narrative as the role of both a Pakistani female and an exile. Through Pakistani’s role as the "alien double" in relation to the West, Suleri sees herself as the American Pakistani also as the alien double of her own culture. Through her misunderstanding of some of her own cultural traditions, she sees herself as existing in between two cultures and two ideologies, neither one nor the other. Sara, through her stories of her father’s work for Pakistan and his political machinations, Suleri presents history within a human frame. She also illustrates her own imagining of what Pakistan is an means to the exile. Her "country" becomes a homeland that encompasses both the remote and archaic world of traditions with the contemporary, modern society of both the East and the West. Through religion and the cultural development of the Twentieth Century, Pakistan is presented as both jarring and formless within Suleri’s prose. The book is an intriguing look at life in Pakistan and in the American-Pakistani community that Suleri has known. A fascinating and haunting book.
In Meatless Days, post-colonialism is used, like the English language itself, self-consciously. Post-colonialism and English have become not just historical links to the canon, but tools used by the authors to communicate their unique, non-Western visions of life. Discussion of post-colonialism in these novels illustrates the confrontations of two worlds, Western and colonized, but this is conflict is not bemoaned or decried. In fact, post-colonial rhetoric, metaphors, and imagery have been appropriated in both, as has the very use of English. Meatless Days delivers a forceful image of a unique culture that has collided with Western tradition in no uncertain way. Works such as these can illustrate the effect the fermenting residue of colonial power will ultimately have on nations confronting the dual identities of indigenous and imposed culture. An apt analogy lies in the derivative of cricket played by the native populations of some Indonesian islands. Discouraged by British missionaries and early colonial outposts from pursuing their traditional form of mostly theatrical warfare and their pagan rituals, they coopted cricket, which the colonials were eager to disseminate. Transforming it, they play it as a multi-day ceremonial celebration in full traditional garb and with much of the showy feints and retreats characteristic of their original inter-tribal conflicts.Although Meatless Days is non-hronological, a significant amount of the text address the partition of the Indian subcontinent and the resulting confusion: "When in 1947 Mountbatten's scissors clipped at the map of India and handed over what Jinnah fastidiously called a moth-eaten Pakistan...those very people must have worked with speedy fidelity all through the crazy winter of 1946, realigning their spatial perspective with something of the maniacal neatness of a Mughal miniaturist" . The religious/ethnic conflict on the subcontinent has become a prototype irredentist dispute of the kind now manifesting itself in many ex-colonies: Ireland, the Middle East, India and Pakistan, etc. Neither of these novels is about post-colonialism. Theses authors do not stake claim to canonization by appealing to current historical and political sensibilities, but by presenting a unique synthesis of their literary predecessors and native cultures.
Meatless Days, colored by the effects of colonialism, provides a unique vision that is not explicitly post-colonial in nature. Meatless Days treats multiple themes (gender and sibling relations, political strife, religion, expatriatism, etc.), but above all it is a personal novel, a celebration and remembrance of her English mother. In communicating her personal vision, Suleri necessarily writes about colonialism, for she is a Pakistani. However, as a celebration of her mother, post-colonialism is conceptualized as a communicating tool and metaphor. She asks, "How can I bring them together in a room, that most reticent woman and that most demanding man?... Papa's powerful discourse would surround her night and day".
Meatless Days succeed as vessels for communicating a unique vision. It is evident that Suleri has become adept at utilizing her cultures' encounters with the West to their own ends. This cooptation of things Western, including English itself, provides an ironically effective method of forcing Westerners to reevaluate their beliefs in regard to the canon among other things. These are precisely the contemporary writers who can force open the canon. In an era where post-colonialism, the third world, and ethnicity are central concerns, the sensibilities that shape the canon may be ready to acceptMeatless Days. Certainly her vision, quality, resourcefulness, and groundbreaking topicality recommend them.
Boys Will Be Boys: A daughter’s elegy
by Anjum Niaz
It’s an elegy, this time for
her beloved Pip, “patriotic and preposterous” – the father Sara Suleri never
let the reader of Meatless Days forget: his pedestrian English accent; his
irascibility with his brood of six (“You tended to chide us before we were
children”). The English professor at Yale gripped us with the cold-blooded
murder of the fairest of all Ifat, her sister, (“she dies inside me daily”) and
the hit and run death of her Welsh mother: Surraya Mair Suleri, daughter of
John Amos Jones, by a rickshaw at Punjab University where she, like her
daughter, taught English and was adored by her students.(“I think each of us died
in some way the day they buried Mamma”).
Privy
to the most intimate memories of the Suleri household embedded in the golden
era of Lahore, “Oh, City of Lights, the grave-homes of our mother, sister and
now our father”, Sara, robustly engaged us in the intrepid social fabric of the
fabulous 60’s and 70’s woven around the changing seasons and her father’s blind
devotion to ‘General Zulu’ Haq: “You were quite chummy with that maniacal
general”.
A
decade and two years later, there she is, in the dim-lit corridor of Yale,
waddling along in her black patent flats burdened by the endlessly flowing
kurta – a rich silk Wedgwood blue stripes – worn with a loosely fitted
chooridar and a scarf carefully clutching her shoulders but girlishly pushed
away. Her characteristic bob, parted in the middle, still drapes the sad, sad
face.
Sara
starts to read and opens the first chapter of her new book, Boys will be
Boys: A daughter’s elegy,
hot from the University of Chicago Press. It’s a title jokingly chosen by Z.A.
Suleri (Z.A.S.) for his unwritten autobiography. The prominent political
journalist turned editor died in 1999. He was 86.
Her
voice cracks as she recites Ghalib, Iqbal and many more during the next one
hour, narrating nuggets from randomly picked pages packed in a graveyard of
memories. The 13 chapters, prefixed always by an Urdu couplet: “Pip who loved
Ghalib with a passion typical to his nature” are enticingly crafted around her
family with ZAS as the chief protagonist.
Deathlike
silence prevails in the small room where Sara Suleri Goodyear, 50, celebrates
the life and times of her father. “When Pip died, I moaned. I thought some
remnant in me had been discarded.” As if to make amends for the fun she poked
at him, cruelly taking the wind out of his pompous sails in Meatless Days, the
daughter now wants to make her peace. “On Judgment Day, I will say to God, ‘Be
merciful, for I have already been judged by my child,” ZAS would chide her.
But
her rendition is inaudible, poorly constructed. She appears in pain, her face
distorted, lips puckered, head bent, shoulders sagging, Sara halts often as she
turns the pages and stumbles over sentences once too often. Her vocal chords
suffer, whispering hoarsely while attempting to mouth words. A glass of water
is pushed sympathetically towards her to salve her tortured delivery.
“Whatever
continents may intrude to interrupt our narrative, the circle of life only
seems to grow tighter and tighter,” she continues.
Is
her inside weeping? her heart tearing? her soul grieving? None dare fidget. The
crowd is mostly Indian.
On
Indo-Pa war and liberation of Bangladesh in, Sara says philosophically: “ I
watched you, Pip, during the bitter war of 1971. It take me much time to
mention that war because of its colossal failures, its unutterable consumption
of lives. I am not sorry Bangladesh is in place – it was a stupid idea, anyway
, to have an east wing and a west wing of Pakistan, separated by a thousand-odd
miles of enemy territory, like a bird without a body.
Sara well remembers how they had to be
collecting funds for the cyclone victims to the erstwhile East Pakistan. Nuzzi,
her sister, had a cook from Bengal who “told me that the last time he returned
to Bangladesh there was another enormous upheavel in the Ganges. Uprooting
villages, wreaking havoc where havoc should not have been wreaked. He said he
and his family spent days clinging to some trees…I felt ashamed.”
Referring
to some photographs of her father from his early days as editor for Dawn which someone had sent to her she says, “When I
looked at the photographs of that young man – with a face disturbingly like my
own – I knew that if I did not love him already, I would until God’s heavenly
Muslim universe had descended and taken him from me for good.”
But
she quickly sets the record straight: “A saddening thought. But you were, Pip,
always exuberant about your editorials and your articles, even when you did
them everyday.”
When
all’s over, I walk away, self-contained, a trifle triumphant over the
Yale-wallahs: I consider Sara’s discourse my intellectual property right solely
as a Pakistani first and a Lahori second. I saw it happen. “She looks so dukhi
(sad)” says the young Nandini as we walk out together. Her male companion,
another Indian student, has specially come to hear Sara, but leaves
disappointed. “Maybe she’s not well…it seems that she didn’t really want to be
here.”
Read
the book! That’s what I did and could not lay it down. “A Proust in Pakistan,
to wander among her own several lives” now gives us a rare peep into the secret
life of Pip - a man with human frailties, never mind his self-righteousness.
The
aging and ailing Lion as Sara calls her father “adopts” Shahida in the hoary
twilight of his life. The woman – crude to the core and scheming to the hilt
according to Sara’s accounts, works in the advertising section of The Pakistan
Times where ZAS is the big boss , she comes howling with a complaint of sexual
harassment. Not only is the alleged abuser (innocent of the crime) summarily
kicked out, but “Pip came home with his blushing daughter”, giving Sara and her
siblings a “stepsister”!
Sara
tantalizes the reader with the ambivalent relationship between the young woman
and her father. We’re told how Shahida takes over the life and home of Pip, who
badly needed a “companion” and allows this peroxide blonde with a generous
bosom to ransack their home – throw “Mamma’s china” out, put up shining cheap
curtains, get rid of the gold nib Parker and Mont Blanc that “Papa” loved to
write with. She even accompanies him to New York during a UN session and stays
grandly at the UN Plaza!
“After
you had left, Pip, stepsister Shahida began pestering each of us for
‘por-torni’”, until they finally figured out what the Punjabi wench wanted was
a power of attorney to keep ZAS’s Lahore house where she’s set up a Z.A Suleri
Trust Foundation and ambitiously appointed herself the President!
Sara
regales us with her tale of “Scorch & Soda” (Scotch) that ZAS enjoyed
furtively and loved eating “meat sausages” – who cares if they had a bit of
pork! “Get rid of the sausages !Hide the sausages!” bellowed ‘Pip’ to his kids
when some “religious-looking visitors turned up” at the hospital in London
where ZAS was admitted.
As
for politics: there was “Bobby Shafto (Nawaz Sharif) fat and fair with his
Model Town estates and innumerable mills of corruption”; while Benazir Bhutto
“promsied some hope until she married her scoundrel.”
Sara
abbreviates “Paki” for Pakistan and “Mozzies” for Muslims throughout the book.
They make for an easy read, why quibble?
“Ifat
wore rings, just as I do”. Sara can say that again: I have a hard time counting
the number of glittering baubles covering all her 8 fingers as she tentatively
turns the pages while reading from them.
“Yes
Pip, he (Austin) is still my husband…you see me married, domesticated,” Sara
addresses her father and recounts her marriage to a widower; a millionaire, a
Goodyear (the tyre man); double in age with a daughter “older than I am…I
leapfrogged to become a step- great grandmother”. Austin Goodyear owns a yacht
called “Mermaid” and a farmhouse in Maine. “Sara make him a Muslim”, urges ZAS
from afar.
Who
won’t remember Abdul Ali Khan - “a feudal gentleman if ever there was one” as
the Principal of Aitchison College. Well the tyrant expelled Shahid (Sara’s
brother) for writing “libelious and obscene lyrics about his various teachers.
Pip called him over the phone a bull and a pig” when he refused to take Shahid
back.
And
Zeno – Dawn’s most respected columnist: “would send poisoned darts at Pip and
Pip would send them back at Zeno”.
“What
was it about Pip’s relationship to friends?” asks the daughter who cannot
“recall a single of his friendships that was not somehow trammeled by history.”
Of his cousins “Uncle” Shamim and his younger brother Nasim the journalist who
later became the UN Ambassador at New York, ‘Pip’ never saw eye to eye.
“Pip
your handwriting still can wrench me as your Quran (that ZAS gave when Sara
left for the US in 1976) has traveled with me – and will forever – from home to
home.”
“Ifat-Tillat-Nuzhat-Sara”,
ZAS would yell and each of his daughters would come running: “If possible we
would still be running to his side today.”
Except
Ifat and Nuzhat are dead and so is ‘Pip’.
“Good
night, sweet Pip, flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! You will be back
more times than you know. I was always obstinate,” thus ends a daughter's
elegy, Boys
will be Boys.
NOTE: This article was first published in Dawn,
23 Nov 2003. We have published it here on Jazbah.org with permission from the
author.
© Jazbah.org 2008. (source:http://kazbar.org/)
What is the “male gaze”?
Before talking about the male gaze, it is first important to introduce its parent concept: the gaze. According to Wikipedia the gaze is a concept used for “analysing visual culture… that deals with how an audience views the people presented.” The types of gaze are primarily categorized by who is doing the looking.
While the ideas behind the concept were present in earlier uses of the gaze, the introduction of the term “the male gaze” can be traced back to Laura Mulvey and her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” which was published in 1975. In it, Mulvey states that in film women are typically the objects, rather than the possessors, of gaze because the control of the camera (and thus the gaze) comes from factors such as the as the assumption of heterosexual men as the default target audience for most film genres. While this was more true in the time it was written, when Hollywood protagonists were overwhelmingly male, the base concept of men as watchers and women as watched still applies today, despite the growing number of movies targeted toward women and that feature female protagonists.
Though it was introduced as part of film theory, the term can and is often applied to other kinds of media. It is often used in critiques of advertisements, television, and the fine arts. For instance, John Berger (1972) studied the European nude (both past and present) and found that the female model is often put on display directly to the spectator/painter or indirectly through a mirror, thus viewing herself as the painter views her.
For Berger these images record the inequality of gender relations and a sexualization of the female image that remains culturally central today. They reassure men of their sexual power and at the same moment deny any sexuality of women other than the male construction. They are evidence of gendered difference… because any effort to replace the woman in these images with a man violates ‘the assumptions of the likely viewer’ (Berger, 1972: 64). That is, it does not fit with expectations but transgresses them and so seems wrong.[Wykes and Barrie Gunter (pp. 38-39)]
The male gaze in advertising is actually a fairly well-studied topic, and it — rather than film — is often what comes to mind when the term is invoked. This is because, more than just being an object of a gaze, the woman in the advertisement becomes what’s being bought and sold: “The message though was always the same: buy the product, get the girl; or buy the product to get to be like the girl so you can get your man” in other words, “‘Buy’ the image, ‘get’ the woman” (Wykes, p. 41). In this way, the male gaze enables women to be a commodity that helps the products to get sold (the “sex sells” adage that comes up whenever we talk about modern marketing). Even advertising aimed at women is not exempt: it engages in the mirror effect described above, wherein women are encouraged to view themselves as the photographer views the model, therefore buying the product in order to become more like the model advertising it.
If you look at the image at the top right of this post, you can see that the image being sold to men is that of an attractive woman (they are encouraged to look at her in the same way the men on the curb are) while the image being sold to women is that if they buy the product that they, too, can be the recipients of male attention. Thus the image being sold, for both men and women, quite literally becomes that of the male gaze.
As feminist popular culture critics emerge, so does the use of the term in regard to areas such as comic books and video games. Indeed, it is from one of those areas that we can find a clear example of the male gaze in action:
The above image, which is a panel taken from the comic All Star Batman And Robin, the Boy Wonder juxtaposed with the script written by author Frank Miller (released in the director’s edition of the comic), illustrates the way that the male gaze works in a concrete way. When Miller says, “We can’t take our eyes off her” he is speaking directly of his presumably male audience, and the follow up (“Especially since she’s got one fine ass.”) says loud and clear that her sexualized portrayal is for the pleasure of the envisioned heterosexual male viewer. In essence, Viki Vale’s character is there to reassure the readership of their hetero-masculinity while simultaneously denying Vicki any agency of her own outside of that framework. She is the quintessential watched by male watchers: the writer/director (Frank), his artist, and the presumed male audience that buys the book.
As illustrated in the above examples, the term has applications outside of the framework that Mulvey initially imagined. Although it is most easily illustrated in places where creator intent is clear (or, in Frank Miller’s case, blatantly stated), creator intent is not actually a prerequisite for a creation to fall under the male gaze. Nor does the creator and/or the audience have to be male, nor does the subject of the gaze have to be unhappy with the result. In the end, the simplest way to describe the male gaze is to return it to its roots of the female model/actress/character being looked at by the the male looker.
And, well, if you’re still confused you can go read this Dinosaur Comic about it. It gives an overview of the subject in 6 panels, placing it in the humorous context of talking dinosaurs! And everyone knows things always make better sense when they’re put into context by talking dinosaurs.
Related Reading:
Introductory:
- Laura Mulvey (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Screen 16 (3): 6-18.
- Nancy M. Brannon (Feminist Theory, Spring 99): The Patriarchal Gaze
- (TV Tropes Wiki): Male Gaze
- Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics): October 06 2006
- Maggie Wykes and Barrie Gunter (The Media and Body Image, 2005): “Ways of seeing women”, pp. 38-47.
- Daniel Chandler (Notes on ‘The Gaze’): Laura Mulvey on film spectatorship
- Examples of the male gaze: Scott A. Lukas (The Gender ADs Project): The Male Gaze
Clarifying Concepts:
- Gender differences in seeing women:Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.[Berger, John. (1972): Ways of Seeing, p. 42]
- Layers of the male gaze:This article effectively, although unintentionally, reveals the layers and layers of perception that surround us. Bailey Rae sees objectification in images where women are blatently sexualised and speaks out against it. However she is apparently not aware that she can still be objectified and sexualised despite keeping her midriff covered. I think a certain blindness to aspects of the patriarchy can affect us all, purely because we are all products of it in one way or another.[la somnambule (la somnambule): Where does the male gaze end?]
- How the male gaze interacts with sexual objectification:
(source: http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/)In Miller’s hands, photographer Vicki Vale becomes a gossip columnist “gadfly” who struts around her apartment in lacy lingerie and fluffy heels, sipping a martini, and dictating to herself while Gotham City gleams in the huge, uncurtained, picture windows behind her.
[...]
Frank wants you to drool over Vicki Vale. She’s hot! She knows what she’s got! She’s strutting around her own apartment – technically alone – but you, dear reader, you are allowed in to watch. She’s stripped down for *you*.[Karen Healey (Girls read comics): I HAVE A DATE WITH BRUCE WAYNE.]
Saturday, July 05, 2014
Friday, July 04, 2014
M.A ENGLISH FREE IN FAISALABAD
All interested students(Male and Female) should send their assent through email I.D mazinawaz@gmail.com or by sms on 03457812656.As classes would start soon , so please send your registration data soon so that a Venue could be decided.
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
"Hamlet": Feminist Approach and Gender Study
The title of the essay ‘Frailty, thy name is Hamlet: Hamlet and Women’ that applies theory of feminism in “A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature” by Wilfred L. Guerin et al demands detail discussion. The authors metamorphoses one of the famous dialogues by Hamlet which originally reads,
“Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—
Let me not think on't—Frailty, thy name is woman!”
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—
Let me not think on't—Frailty, thy name is woman!”
It is spoken in anger to Gertrude due to her hasty marriage.
By replacing women with Hamlet, it seems to me, the authors consider Hamlet’s inability to act as a feminine trait. Are the exponents of feminism themselves being anti feminist? For me, simply ‘Hamlet and Women’ title would be enough. It proves that to bring out someone’s fault, one has to relate him with feminine quality.
He is crushes under the burden of moral dilemma. Not only by means of title, Hamlet is psychologically castrated by his oedipal attitude and his act of letting loose his anger upon two father images, one is good and strong and another is bad and strong. Hamlet unnecessarily attacks on woman around him because he can’t act on his powerful uncle cum father Claudius. Another reason for the same hideous act can be due to her mother’s overhasty marriage and Ophelia’s support to his scheming father, unknowingly.
It is very strange that her mother can’t get married in two three months of her husband's death. After all, who is he to decide whom and when she should remarry? He is adult but still behaves like a kid. He still wants to have a control over his mother’s decision. Or his oedipal instinct forces him to behave like this? A kid can’t stand at the thought of his mother’s divided attention between father and himself.
We see the character of Gertrude through the eyes of Hamlet. But critic Carolyn Heilbrun sees her in wider perspective. She doesn’t find any fault in her as claimed by Hamlet. She shows motherly care in bad chamber scene and tries to console Hamlet. She is not of hypocrite lady of Elizabethan age. She knows she is lusty as inferred from her dialogues. In her speech during burial of Ophelia, she displays her maturity, intelligence, and control over emotions. She makes feel Hamlet comfortable in new court held by newly appointed king Claudius. I don’t have any information about how long a widow should remain unmarried to save herself from the social criticism, two months, or twelve? Again, how can it be termed as unfaithful, when husband is already dead? Had she been married later, would Hamlet be happy? Her love for Hamlet reaches at the summit when she in exaltation over her son’s bout winning performances in the duel. She drinks the poisonous glass of wine. We can’t comment on or prove her role in murdering King Hamlet, but it is evident that she adores her son. Comments Carolyn Heilbrun,
“If she is lustful, she is also intelligent, penetrating and gifted.”
Another reason for her hasty marriage can be political condition of Elizabethan time when widow queen has to either live at the risk of her life or marry new king. Of course, any sane human chooses life over so-called faithfulness. Mourning behind partner and remain unmarried to death sound silly to me.
It is very surprising that the ghost of King Hamlet too is unhappy with his wife’s marriage. He orders to take revenge on his uncle, but advises prince Hamlet to spare her as if she has committed a serious crime and he is showing forgiveness. He says,
“O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there…leave her to Heaven.”
In compare to Hamlet, he though seems soft on his wife. That is very rare case in the play, which is infested by anti feminist words such as whore, whoring, whoredome, harlot, cuckold, strumpet etc. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern compare earth and later fortune with whore, because they are ever changing. The sign of disrespect is seen again, when Laertes cautions Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet and in reply to this Ophelia refers to his escapades with women. That’s the reason why Polonius pays Reynaldo for spying over Hamlet to know whether he is whoring. Ophelia is far better than both his scheming father and his hypocrite brother.
In play within play, the characters compare the fortune with the strumpet. The actors’ feeling of pain is dramatised and fake, but Hamlet’s suffering is genuine. However it is like “whore” who unpacks emotion not action.
Hamlet loves Ophelia but again suppressed hatred and anger towards his uncle is projected on Ophelia. First, he requests her to pray for her well-being but later he starts abusing her, saying her to leave for nunnery, an Elizabethan slang for brothel house. Ophelia completely fails to understand the reason behind such offensive behaviour and prays,
“Heavenly powers, restore him!...O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown.”
She doesn’t know that she is used by her father to know whether the cause of his insanity is lovesickness. This sort of use of female characters is against the feminist point of view. Hamlet not only hates his mother but whole world, in general all female species as if they all have committed such a ‘crime’ done by her mother. Therefore, his anger on Ophelia can be out of his misogynist attitude. The real love surfaces when Hamlet sees her dead body in the grave and confesses how much he has loved her. It is too late and the damage has already been done. The war is waging between brother Laertes and lover Hamlet. If Laertes fails to avenge the death of his father by prince Hamlet, he considers it’s like having been born of whore. He speaks,
“That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow
Of my true mother.”
Thus, Shakespeare’s use of offensive feminine words mouthed from his male characters show the playwright’s dirty mental makeup or the Elizabethan society’s that may have been using these words to show their anger and hatred to immorality. He could have used other neutral expletives to express the same emotion. Famous for his skilful usage of language, it wouldn’t have been difficult for him.
In the last duel scene, the swords are phallic symbols. The entire idea of duel is the product of Claudius who wants remove his one of the sons, (remember he refers Laertes as his own son in a scene) to have a complete command over kingdom as well as Gertrude. Hamlet kills Claudius only when he comes to know that he is poisoned. It’s too late to act. No one remains except Horatio to tell the ‘frail tale’ of Hamlet who himself thinks of his friend as ‘a bravely fought hero.’ And that is not the case. Later one more offence is committed by Shakespeare. He gives masculine end. Notice that the order in Denmark is restored by the male Fortinbras, the prince of Norway!
Reference
Guerin , Wilfred L, et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 5th ed. Delhi: Oxford UP, 2006. 242-249. Print.
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