Monday, December 12, 2011

Paper #2


“Anatomy Defines More than a Few of the Gaping Holes in our Social Fabric”
            In the plays The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins-Gillman and Hills like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway, women are forced to conform to society’s gender roles.  This is a recurring theme shared with the song, “Turn Soonest to the Sea” by the band, “Protest the Hero”.  However, Hills like White Elephants hints at this theme while The Yellow Wallpaper and “Turn Soonest to the Sea” expose it directly.
            In The Yellow Wallpaper and Hills like White Elephants, the speaker and Jig (respectively) are troubled by the gender roles that they are expected to conform to.  The speaker of The Yellow Wallpaper refuses to take on the roles of a typical mother figure at that time:  cooking, cleaning, taking care of the baby, and staying home all day.  She says this in paragraphs 48 through 50:  “Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, —to dress and entertain, and order things.  It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby.  …I cannot be with him, it makes me nervous” (Perkins-Gillman 48-50).  In this quote, the speaker is saying she cannot conform to the female gender role, which would require her to dress the baby, entertain guests, order from catalogs, and take care of the baby.  She also says earlier that “congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (Perkins-Gillman 14).  The fact that the speaker wants to get out of the house and work instead of being forced to cook and clean proves that she is unhappy being forced to conform to the gender roles of the time period she lives in.  However, she is forced to endure the rest cure in order to treat her serious case of “hysteria”.
In Hills like White Elephants, Jig is expected to give into the American’s demands by having the operation.  He doesn’t force her to do it or threaten her, but he tries to manipulate her by constantly repeating phrases like “if you want to, you don’t have to.  I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to.  But I know it’s perfectly simple” (Hemingway 55).  He knows she will get annoyed by his repetition and hopes that this will cause her to just impulsively agree with him to get him to stop talking.  The American believes that Jig is just his sex puppet and that if he can convince her to have the abortion, he can continue to take her around the world, staying in hotels along the way.  Jig’s fear of causing a disagreement with the American becomes apparent through her actions and words.  She merely hints at her pregnancy by saying about the hills, “They look like white elephants” instead of just bringing it up directly (Hemingway 9).  Also, in order to get the American to stop talking, she asks, “Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?” (Hemingway 98).  This does not show that Jig should fear being abused by the American, but in the time of the story, it was unheard of for a woman to be living on her own, especially if she was pregnant.
Protest the Hero’s main lyricist, Arif Mirabdolbaghi was once known for his creative lyrics and very touching album called “Kezia”, which discusses the wrongful prosecution of a young woman with the same name as the album.  The song, “Turn Soonest to the Sea” exposes a lot of the problems with the society during its fictional setting using irony.  The speaker uses phrases like, “put some plastic in your tits; you’d look better as a blonde” to represent the way a lot of men feel about women’s looks (Mirabdolbaghi 13).  This shows that women are viewed as sex objects that are exhibited mainly for the entertainment of men.  Later on, the speaker also says the following, which show that women were supposed to act a certain way, but were expected to be nothing but “whores”.
“So when you bled on the bed as you fed those expectations as a whore, not a human, you embraced with hesitation the very parameters of all you can be:
not a mother, not an aunt, not a sister that's not subdued
because dignity is not physical and your flesh means more than you.”
(Mirabdolbaghi 20-24).
These lines are very cruel intentionally to represent how unforgiving society can be.  Earlier, the speaker talks about how the society is extremely patriarchal:  “We've made you all the peasants and we've made ourselves the kings” (Mirabdolbaghi 10).  The speaker expresses his hopefulness for a better society in the future later on with the following quote:  “Maybe someday when, when this bloody skull has dried … a plaque will read, ‘No woman is a whore.’” (Mirabdolbaghi 31-35).
            In the plays, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins-Gillman and Hills like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway, there is a recurring theme of gender roles being assigned to women.  Both of these stories share this theme with the song, “Turn Soonest to the Sea” by a band called “Protest the Hero”.  As you have seen, Perkins-Gillman expressed her frustration through the thoughts/writings of the speaker.  She refused to conform to the gender roles of her society and was punished by a treatment that was disguised as a cure.  Hemingway hints at the idea of gender roles in society through the actions and careful choice of words by Jig.  Although she does not seem to know how to communicate effectively, she decides instead to hint at things instead of speaking directly.  Protest the Hero used irony to show the similarities between the fictional setting of “Kezia” and life as it is now.

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