[schema type=”event” evtype=”EducationEvent” url=”http://eliterarysociety.com/” name=”Patriarchy & Discourse” description=”Mills Discourse, Colonial Discourses, Sara Mills, Male Dominance, Suffrage Movement, Feminist Writers, Spivak, Structuralist, Escapism, Patriarchy” city=”London” country=”UK” ]
Patriarchy and its Discourse
Early feminists of Victorian age revolted against patriarchal language but post structuralist feminists did not just focused upon suffrage movement but the developed the issue and rebel against the male dominance. Iragery (1998) views that patriarchal discourses are based upon power and political determinism. The same politics and power developing discursive femininities through language is differently cited and viewed by Julia Kristina, (Strangers to ourselves, 1989), Gayatri Spivak (On other worlds, 1995), Catharine Clemet’s (Opera,1998 undoing of women).
SUBJECTIVITY AND BEASLEY’S VIEW
Beasely also views that women are considered as pet creature to men. They have to work the household and to develop the children instead of the professionals like doctor and architecture. The fiction must play role to construct subjectivity about women. The term subject and subjectivity refers that meaning in text are never fixed. It is the reader that construct it .the research aims to investigate the patriarchal effects created in the text developed by Ibsen in “A Doll’s House”.
MILLS DISCOURSE
Sara Mills views that the women. about its importance feminism over the writings of founded through travel writings that was not earlier developed femininities within society. Female writers of Victorian age and post modern age have visible subject matter differences in literary works (Morris, 1979: 23). She analyses the women travel writers theme of discourses. Though all their works are Hetrogenitic and complex phenomenon. Constraints in writings have been used by female writers (Hulme 1986, O Porter 1982).
Victorian age is considered that few feminist writers emerged at the surface due to the patriarchal oppression. Colonial discourses and Victorian literature finds less similarities due to cross cultural impact and text (Worley, 1986: 40). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Hulman and Mary Louise used objectivity, escapism and especially individuality is key subject that is contradictory to literature of female writers of 19th century. Imperialism represented the real picture of the British women.
Foucault’s work on power and language ‘he believes that power is economy (Focault, 1992a: 109). He further says that speech acts of text and discourses represent reality by organizing them and finding the fluidity and unspoken elements of discourses. He concludes the ambiguity in women writings using the language as authority and power.
The surface and deeper level analysis predicts the facts as “Hermeneutic” analysis says that there is no text, the thing is interpretation.
“Power is convinced as sort of grand,absolute subject… who attributes what is forbidden on the side on which power is suffered. There is an equal tendency to ‘subjective’ it, by determining the point at which the acceptance of the indirect occurs, the point at which one says ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to power” (Foucault in Morris and Patton, 1979: 54).
Mills finds out the failure of critics in finding out the Gender identity and lack of perceptions. She concentrate on short texts and represent the discourse analysis of feminist perspective. She argues that women writers should frame different types of discourses. The key types are Confessional discourse and Feminine discourse. Confess is there to adhere the reality and admit the daily facts that are not confessed by writers. The second one she stats that represents the femininity and heterosexuality. She pictures the representation in famous book “Feminist Stylistics”1995. She clearly concludes that writing style of women is different than male writer. She believes that foregrounding in texts makes it different. In representation of text gender is necessary element .the speech acts; language of discourse is actually reflection of the writer’s gender identity.
CLASSICAL VS MODERN PATRIARCHY
It is an agreed fact by research and scholars that women is always taken as the subordinate and inhabitant creature. Women has been represented by weak and negative characters since the origin of the English literature.
“BEOWOLF” and other ancient vernaculars shows the dominance and authoritative value of male being the patriarchal society. On the other hand the famous writers like Shakespeare represents female in comedies and tragedies “King Lear, Twelfth Night” in same boat, G.B Shaw in Major Barbra and ‘The Arms and the Men’, Ibsen in ‘A Doll’s House while in poetry John Donne in “A Faerie Queen” and Chaucer’s character “A Wife of Bath” represented the women in their patriarchal ideological sense. As far the modern dramatists concern we see after the third wave of feminism women is quite different in gender role. O Neil’s drama “Juno & Paycock” is one of the senile representation of women as domesticated animal in male dominated society.
The stereotypical role of men and women is beautifully depicted by Virginia Woolf in (Women and fiction, 1998). She argues that our fathers are distinctive that made law but what about our mothers that just a tradition.
“One was beautiful, one was red haired, one was kissed by a queen, we know nothing of them except their names and dates of their marriages and number of children they bore” (Woolf in Women and Fiction, 1998).
It is described by different feminists that sex is biological category while gender is social construct (Weedon 1987 & Millet 1997). Modern male writers presents the role of the female in society in real sense as Henrik Ibsen points out the gender role of ‘NORA’ in ‘A Doll’s House’. The terms got popular in 1960 by Lakoff’s article “Language and Women place”, he argues that both sex are different in talk and all is result of male supremacy. Judith believes that modern feminists committed a mistake by talking female common in character and objectives (Gender Trouble 1990).
