peer review work shop

Cecilia Milbrandt

Professor Christopher Venner

Philosophy in Literature

12 April, 2019

People resort to literature to cure their boredom, heartbreak, and desires. We narrate our own lives with our favorite movies, life changing books, and songs that bring back memories. Literature has such a large presence in everyday lives that it has the power to shape who we become. It depicts culture through words in a way that can affect how we live. Gender roles, and the practice of resisting cultural gender norms, is a common point of discussion in today’s society in topics such as equal pay, women in leadership positions in the workplace, and diminishing judgement for not acting the gender one is “supposed to be.” Gender roles have been demonstrated through literature in ways that can subconsciously affect how we view them whether they be portraying strong female characters or male dominating roles. This paper will focus the representation of gender roles in various forms of literature and how it connects to society’s idea of gender. The novel and movie, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, portrays strong mother figures in realistic fiction, the movie and the movie Catwoman demonstrates a strong female lead who is sexualized in a demeaning manner. These are only a few examples of women in literature that add to the overarching idea that culturally representations affect how we view ourselves in society.

Throughout history, society has had an idea on how they portrayed gender and philosophers created theories on how they affected people’s lives. Plato wrote The Ion in 380 BC and in doing so allowed people to reflect on the types of gender roles his society acted upon. In his work, Socrates says to Ion, “Well, Ion, and what are we to say of a man who at a sacrifice or festival, when he is dressed in holiday attire and has golden crowns upon his head, of which nobody has robbed him, appears sweeping or panic-stricken in the presence of more than twenty thousand friendly faces, when there is no one despoiling or wronging him;- is he in his right mind or is he not?” (Plato). In this passage, he only uses the pronoun, “he.” Not only were prophets and poets that they speak of always men, but even the spectators he refers to who would respond to the art are men. Plato believed that art should not change oneself and should not allow them to feel emotions that are not relevant in their life. He thought art feminizes an audience and makes them vulnerable to emotion and men should not show emotion because they are tougher than that.

Not only did early philosophers write only about men, but all the postmodern philosophers were men. With time, more women philosophers were able to get work published, however, the work was not always accepted. “The bulk of the women’s writings either directly addressed such topics as faith and revelation, on the one hand, or woman’s nature and her role in society, on the other. But the late eighteenth century attempted to excise philosophy motivated by religious concerns from philosophy proper. And many German historians, taking Kantianism as the culmination of early modern philosophy and as providing the project for all future philosophical inquiry, viewed treatments of “the woman question” as a precritical issue of purely anthropological interest.So, by the nineteenth century, much of the published material by women once deemed philosophical no longer seemed so” (Eileen O’neil). As the philosophical timeline moves closer to current day, more ideas from female authors are being accepted. Society should no longer accept Plato’s theory that men will be feminized by art. Art and literature should provoke emotions in everybody and should be a field open to everybody.

Although Plato would disagree with the amount of emotion portrayed by both men and women in modern-day literature as well as the idea of women as leads, there are many publications and movies that showcase inspiring women. Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees, focuses on a group of female characters and the idea of an archetypal mother figure. The main character, Lily, is a young girl who lost her mother. It is evident that she searches for a female role model and finds it in four women who become her family and the inspiration provided by the Black Madonna, which are statues or paintings of Virgin Mary with darker skin. “She becomes a symbol, in some theories, of a community of women or like-believers worshipping figures of a dark woman and embracing the concept of finding the godlike within themselves, for they see their inner selves mirrored in a woman's face” (Catherine Emmanuel). The characters use this source of inspiration to find strength within themselves. Sue Monk Kidd not only uses symbolism to demonstrate women’s empowerment through the Black Madonna, but also within the motif of a society of bees in which the hive functions with the leadership of a queen. More than just female empowerment, self-nourishment through inner-confidence is told to Lily, "Our Lady is not some magical being out there somewhere, like a fairy godmother. She's not the statue in the parlor. She's something inside of you" (Sue Monk Kidd, 288).

While Sue Monk Kidd wrote about empowerment through spirituality and self nourishment, Bob Kane, the author of DC Comics, wrote characters such as Catwoman to empower women through strength and courage. In a report published by Women’s Media Center, 90% of girls age 5 to 19 surveyed said that female superheroes and sci-fi characters were role models for them. However, there are still a minority of female superheroes and they are not as popular as male superheroes; less movies are made for them and less merchandise is sold. Female superheroes are also often sexualized to appear more sexy than strong. For example, when Catwoman is being portrayed as a fighter, she is wearing a revealing costume and is told to speak sexier. A stagenote in the Catwoman script is, “With another CLAW she unhesitatingly punches in the number. When she speaks, after a beat, her voice is throaty, sexier -- whenever she's Catwoman, she'll talk this way” (Dan Waters). Women should not have to be portrayed as sexual objects to be seen as strong and successful.

Literature targeted towards adults and teens resembles gender norms through the creation of female characters and actions towards those characters. Children’s literature also demonstrates gender roles in a culture and plants subconscious ideas about their place in society in their heads. “As children's books reflect the gender stereotypes of the culture, it is therefore important to better understand what children are reading and seeing in the illustrations” (Renae Poarch, Elizabeth Monk-Turner). It has been found that men both appear more in children’s literature and were shown in more adventurous and exciting adventures than females. According to a study done by Taylor Berry and Julia Wilkins in which they took a sample of 103 picture books from libraries to examine, 76 of the books had a male main character while only 16 had a female main characters. There were 4.75 times as many male based books as female.

43 of the 76 male books (57%) were inanimate objects typically associated with masculinity such as trucks, trains, and construction equipment with the majority being fast, brave, adventurous, and heroic. 63% of the books with female characters depicted them as being stereotypical by being insecure, showing emotion, and being self sacrificing and were rejected and abandoned more than their male counterparts. For example, The Giving Tree gives all she had to a boy who kept wanting more. Only six books defied gender stereotypes by showing women as leaders with confidence who craved adventure, such as The Little Engine that Could. Of the 103 books, 11 had both male and female characters in which the most obvious difference in the way the characters were portrayed was in appearance. For instance, in Thomas and Friends, Thomas the tank engine is surrounded by other male trains that are red, green, blue, and brown while the one female train is named “Lady,” and is pink and purple.

Movies, books, and other types of literature will continue to have implications on how people live within their own society. By getting children to read stories with both strong male and female characters, they will be brought up in a world that could have more gender equality with girls who strive to have fulfilling and adventurous lives. Adults and teens should be thoughtful about the books and movies they spend their time engaging in and if they see something they do not agree with in respects to gender stereotyping, they should acknowledge it and try to live their lives oppositely. Culture is visualized through literature and has the power to alter our perceptions of life.

Works Cited

Berry, Taylor and Wilkins, Julia. "The Gendered Portrayal of Inanimate Characters in Children's Books." Journal of Children's Literature, vol. 43, no. 2, 2017, pp. 4-15. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1964434636?accountid=14541 .

Emanuel, Catherine B. "The archetypal mother: the Black Madonna in Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees." West Virginia University Philological Papers, vol. 52, 2005, p. 115+. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A149850932/GLS?u=viva_gmu&sid=GLS&xid=30fb9bf6 .

Ferguson, Donna. “Must monsters always be male? Huge gender bias revealed in children’s books.” The Guardian. Jan 20, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/21/childrens-books-sexism-monster-in-your-kids-book-is-male

Monk-Turner, Elizabeth, and Poarch, Renae. “Gender Roles in Children’s Literature: A Review of Non-Award-Winning ‘Easy-to-Read’ Books.” Journal of Research in Childhood Education, Vol 16, no 1, 2001. https://doi.org/10.1080/02568540109594975

Monk Kidd, Sue. The Secret Life of Bees. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2008.

O’neill, Eileen. “Modern Women Philosophers and the History of Philosophy.” Hypatia, vol. 20, no. 3, 2005. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2005.tb00494.x

Plato, “Ion.” Written 380 B.C.E. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/ion.html

Sheffer, Anna. “A new study suggests that female superheroes give girls confidence in their real lives.” October 10, 2018. https://hellogiggles.com/news/female-superheroes-empower-girls-study/

Waters, Dan. “Catwoman.” Second Draft Polish, Feb 11, 2003. https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/catwoman.pdf

Cecilia Milbrandt

Analysis of Rough Draft

4/16/19

I don’t really love my rough draft but I think I got some good ideas down that I can further develop at a later time. I like my individual arguments with the philosophers and then the sources, however, I need to find a way to relate them to each other with more clarity. I could tie in the philosophers’ ideas at the conclusion of me discussing a source to tie them together. I could also compare the sources to each other more. I need to cut out parts from the intro because it is wayyyyyy too long and wordy. I tend to be a wordy writer so I should probably try to cut words out of the whole draft. I need help looking for parts where it feels choppy and if it sounds like the ideas could blend together at all. I feel like each paragraph is very random right now and does not connect to the next. I also want to make the quotes and references blend into the paper more smoothly and with maybe a little more elaboration.

Questions for Reader:

I would like to know when you think my argument emerges in the paper and if you think I fully developed that argument with the material that I have so far?

Do the paragraphs transition into each other? How can I make the paper appear less choppy and keep the argument throughout?

Do the source examples work together or should I focus on one or the other (realistic and historical fiction, superheros, or children’s books and movies)?