Our modern world is full of implacable disparities. All living beings are classified into different categories. The animals, for example, will often be categorized into those who can run, feel coming danger and be able to escape it. The biggest diversity ever is probably that of the gender difference and gender stereotypes. No matter how much time passes, there will always exist that inevitable opposition between two sexes. Though stereotypical views of men and women have highly reduced in recent years, many people still believe that some of the gender-role stereotypes retained till the present day.
The two genders in fact are considered to possess distinguishing countervailing characteristics and habits. All men, for instance, are commonly believed to be independent, assaultive, unemotional, active and excessively self-opinionated. They got used to dominating over the women and have always seen as essential breadwinners and protectors of their families. On the other hand, women are supposed to be neat, affectionate, chiefly emotional and religious creatures who are mostly good-natured and easy to communicate with. According to widespread stereotype, female sex as a weaker one has to submit much stronger and influential male sex and be dependent on it.
Quite interesting views concerning the everlasting issue of the men and women difference and stereotypes are presented in the twentieth chapter of the Bennett and Royle’s book An Introduction to Literature Criticism and Theory. Here authors draw reader’s attention to the important theme of sexual diversity that will always provoke a controversy between more feminist, masculinity or sexist representatives in today’s society. We will try to analyze the relevant ideas from this literary work in details and attempt to discuss the question of sexual difference between Bennett and Royle’s work in relation to Ginsberg’s two poems Kaddish and Howl.
Taking into consideration the first definition of sexual difference given by the two authors, the woman of the conventional settings of the society is described as a minor personality subservient to her man. Bennett and Royle also claim that the definition may seem satirical or ironic because it is evidently “really general to have any worthy of printing value” (Bennett & Royle 2009). In order to prove the obvious subordination of women and the dominant control of men, the readers have a chance to observe the relation between a husband and a wife in family surroundings.
Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper is a perfect example of these relationships. The book tries to demonstrate that differences between male and female are primarily based on gender stereotypes. Such stereotypes are greatly influenced by the conceptual contrasting of man versus woman and certainly contain a problem of hierarchy. The text portrays John as an active, practical person, whose actions, qualities and characteristics are persistently emphasized during the whole chapter. The narrator, the woman, on the contrary, produces an impression of very passive and non-practical creature. In fact, there is not any mentioning regarding the woman at all. While readers are following John’s actions step by step, the woman is always staying in the background. Thus, Gilman is representing a hierarchy as an incontrovertible dominance of the man and complete subordination of the woman by virtue of being female.
The Yellow Wallpaper is the skilful and strongly ironic account of how a woman is depressed, imprisoned and finally gone mad especially by her own husband and more generally by the heartlessness of patriarchy. As John is the head and some sort of patriarch of his family, he has the right to reach the decisions and manage the household. This title though, cannot allow him to dispose of his wife as his personal property. If John did not insist in his wife’s confinement in a large old house, she probably would not become the woman behind the disgusting yellow wallpaper or even would not drive crazy. Though one cannot see here any kind of physical violence, psychological pressure concerning the poor narrator is much as harder. The satiric remarks about John’s carefulness and love who does not even permit his wife to stir without special direction, demonstrate the extremely oppressed state of the desperate woman (Bennett & Royle 2009).
On the one hand, The Yellow Wallpaper is surely presented as the story of the harassment and suppression of a middle-class woman in the nineteen century United States. It can be easily grasped as the vigorous feminist urgencies to get free from the unpleasant claustrophobia of patriarchy. On the other hand, one cannot take any notice in the curious supposition about sexual difference based on the theory of essentialism. According to this philosophy, the authors pronounced an opinion that “there cannot even exist such thing as a feminist, a masculinity or a sexist literary work at all and that everything depends on how the reader himself interprets the text” (Bennett & Royle 2009).
Bennett and Royle, however, are sure that the problem of patriarchy does not only deal with the conduct of men but at the same time has also to do with the behaviour of women. Most literary works actually can be used to show the gender difference as well as gender-role stereotypes.
Thomas Wyatt’s sonnet Whoso List to Hunt, for example, represents man as the subject, always energetic and busy with work. The woman to counterbalance it, is considered to be the object that does not even deserves to be represented as a human being but as ‘an hind’, a female deer (Bennett & Royle 2009).
Gilman’s short story and Wyatt’s sonnet are apparently completely dissimilar types of literary works presenting different time periods and discrepant heterogeneous cultures. However, it is possible to draw some analogy between them. In both texts the readers have to make a conscious reflection concerning the question of gender and the power of gender-stereotypes in particular.
Let’s now try to relate the ideas presented in Bennett and Royle’s work to two poems of Allan Ginsberg. Compared to Kaddish, the writer depicts slightly different picture. The whole text is concentrated on the difficult life path of the mentally ill woman and how does she manage to live with this terrible diagnosis. The readers encounter active character that is not biased subordination and are facing all the struggles and challenges together with this hopeless soul.
Though the woman life was mostly about going to mental hospitals, enduring electroshock treatments and a lobotomy, she was not going to give up and took for granted all the ordeals that fell to her lot (Ginsberg 2010). Even in the attacks of recurrent epileptic seizures and paranoia the character did not forget her progressist ideas and continued to be the active member of the Communist Party-USA.
Kaddish presents the life story of Ginsberg's mother, Naomi and her insanity in a form of a long autobiographical poem. Witnessing of his mother’s mental illness greatly affected the author’s childhood as well as further adult life. Later the author decided to dedicate his own elegy for Naomi and wrote a mourning song to honour her memory before God. Ginsberg presents Naomi as the female character that is not dependant on any male sex and is responsible for her own actions.
Speaking about the second poem, Howl, it can be seen as the loud cry for all exploitation and suppression ever existed. The author claimed that “the best minds” of his generation were ruined because of the madness that had been in fact the counterculture (Ginsberg 2001). It was not the choice of everyone but the result of constraint. Ginsberg, however, made an attempt to depict the harassment and affliction of a group of exiles, including himself who were pressing for better reality. These individuals refused to be a part of the mundane aspects of modern society with all its values and morals and were ready to make a change (Ginsberg 2001).
Bennett and Royle’s ideas of feminine oppression and the constant pressure of strong male sex found its reflexion in Ginsberg’s poem. The weak woman from The Yellow Wallpaper could not dare to resist her powerful husband and challenge the society that placed her in an absolute subordination. If one female had not any chances in masculinise world, the group of resolute outcast would at least hope for little luck. In Howl these people were determined to go against the system and struggled for obtaining justice.
So, Bennett & Royle made a good work of focusing on the sexual difference peculiar to society of any time. Some of author’s ideas motivated Ginsberg to write his rather consummate poems and gradually led to the emancipation of the female gender.
Reference List
Bennett, A. & Royle, N, 2009, An Introduction to Literature Criticism and Theory (4th Ed), Pearson Education Limited, pp. 179-187.
Ginsberg, Allen, 2010, Kaddish and Other Poems: 50th Anniversary Edition, City Lights Publishers, pp. 91
Ginsberg, Allen, 2001, Howl and Other Poems, City Lights Publishers, pp. 24
