Prue is treated as less than a mistress by Gordon - he lives with
Prue when his wife leaves him, and freely messes around with other females
although he is living with Prue. Despite this terrible treatment, Prue ostensibly
doesn’t get offended by Gordon’s behavior, but shows her friends that “she
doesn’t take herself too seriously” and lives in a likable and light-hearted
manner. This side of Prue reveals a subtle contradiction to another side of her
that resulted in strange behavior at the end of the story, where she is depicted
as completely indifferent to her stealing. “…she doesn’t seem to be under a compulsion.
She just takes something, …(and) forgets about it.” Such lukewarm
representation of Prue’s personality is totally different from that delivered previously
in the story.
Stealing, especially the one taken place without existence of the stolen
thing’s owner, should give a sense of dominance to the stealer over the owner.
In Prue’s case, the absence of Gordon is due to his improper affair that certainly
gives a sense of inferiority to Prue, if not she is his wife. The affair also reflects
social oppression and disregard on women. But paradoxically, Prue is rather implicitly
despising Gordon’s personality and mental maturity by stealing his things when
he is not at home. Thus, Prue’s odd behavior represents a nontrivial rebellion
of a socially oppressed woman to the discriminatory society.
Jeannie experiences a society in which most
members have a similar perspective towards gender. Mrs. Thompson, although she herself
is a woman, has a fixed idea about how women should act and think. She rebukes
Jeannine for her erroneous behavior,
and argues that she must not have gone out with such a showy appearance. What’s worse, Mr. Sherman tells Vern, Jeannie’s
husband, that “…she’d invented the whole story,” Furthermore, people’s
perspective on Vern’s attitude toward his wife is completely different from their
perspective on Jeannie’s attitude. Jeannie is demanded to be obedient and restrained
– there is common acceptance of a notion that Jeannie is raped because of her
lack of self-govern. But when it comes to Vern, his care for Jeannie is considered
as undeserved. To Jeannie, Mrs. Thompson says “… He sure is loyal to you,” a notion that emphasizes
the value of Gordon’s additional –not fundamental- consideration for his wife. The
fact that he gives up two jobs for his wife’s security is highly valued, while
the rape is almost wholly attributed to Jeannie.
Going through the society’s disregard toward women, Jeannie also participates
in having such tendency. At the end of the conversation, Jeannie accepts that
she provided reasons for the rape, and excuses herself by nonsensical words, “If
he’d liked me, I wouldn’t have minded… I wouldn’t have gone wandering up the
road, making all this fuss.” So Jeannie’s self-respect, or her heart, is horribly
broken by discriminative viewpoint of society and her own perspective which
feebly concurred with that of society.
Two protagonists from two different stories form an interesting
contrast. Prue and Jeannie are similar in the point that both of them ultimately
acquiesce in the unreasonable prejudice of the society against women. Mrs.
Thompson’s request that Jeannie not say the criminal’s name is found to be not
for Jeannie’s psychological health or security – the demand implied that who
raped her is not important, since she triggered the rape herself and any men
could have conducted the crime. Instead, Mrs. Thompson worries about the men; “…it
might have been anyone else, because you had them all on the boil. …let’s hope
they can get their minds back on the job.” This extreme discrimination cleverly
criticizes the reality. Jeannie does not disagree with such notion, but feels resentment
for some unknown reason and ends up crying.
Prue’s case is pretty the same; she steals small things for some unknown reason. But interestingly, the
narrator somewhat justifies Prue’s behavior: “Prue doesn’t have to be at the
shop until ten… she’s not responsible for approving the plans.” Such expression
cancels the wrongness of Prue’s odd action – since Gordon misbehaves, Prue doesn’t
have to keep from misbehaving. So this nuance successfully indicates the iniquity
of gender prejudice.
1. the bodies of the book <Prue> and <My Heart is Broken>
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_literary_criticism
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-wave_feminism
4. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/11/
Not bad. Obvious effort, and attention to details in both texts. While I do agree with most of your views concerning Jeannie, I am not sure I can agree with your interpretation of Prue. If it is feminist at all, it is lightly so, and I don't think society is against Prue much at all. 1981, in a large Canadian city, the situation is not really oppressive, and Prue is not entirely unique. She's a divorced woman who has finished raising children, and she lives her life rather freely. She accepts Gordon for who he is, but ----- does she? The odd act at the end sort of indicates that their is more to Prue than meets the eye. She's the product of "modern romance" in a sense, where more and more relationships are outside the norms of happy marriages - with companionship instead of love, or sex instead of love. We feel sorry for Prue, but not in the same way we do for Jeannie, who is simply a sad example of a woman who has no support and no way to realize her own feminine values.
답글삭제Your writing has improved a lot, but still becomes a bit heavy and contorted with one fancy phrase or SAT word too many. Make sure the meaning you want to express comes across more clearly and simply. That said, most of this is pretty solid. Good work.