A Room of One's Own

Well, at least there’s one woman writer who claims there is a medium. Virginia Woolf, another feminist writer, claimed that women can and should be successful, but that they need certain things just as men do. As opposed to sex and skill though, she argues women need a room of their own and money. Her work A Room of One’s Own was written in a time not far from great oppression of women, when women could not own property, or money, or vote. In looking at her work, we are asked to question why there is no female Shakespeare. Perhaps it is because, at this time, there aren't the same educational opportunities and there are different social worlds. Women have been creating but in the home, not in literature, as women weren't even allowed to act or be on stage until the Restoration in 1660. Being a woman writer in that time meant that you wanted to be with men, not that you wanted to write, because that's what men do. Most writings by women were burned typically in the 17th century because it was indecent - a matter of life and death - to put oneself on public display like that.

Woolf also argues that it is important to write objectively if women want to be taken seriously as a writer. She says women must not write like a feminist, but instead write beyond the physical differences. In the 1920s, women weren't allowed to walk on the grass or to be in the library, as Woolf points out in her novel. In manners like this, women are constantly reminded of their physical differences and this prevents them from being intellectual like men can be all the time. She says men shouldn't be writing like men and women shouldn't be writing like women, but should both write as humans, objectively and with purpose. Yet men were afraid of the women's movement, and of a shift in power. Woolf says men are self-conscious but only because they need confidence and get it from putting others down. Men put women down because they are afraid and insecure; and as Woolf argues, being self-conscious about your sex makes you a lousy writer. She claims more than anything that you should write objectively as a person, not as a man or a woman, to make good literature. She blames all of this on anyone who brought attention to sex, and even calls Shakespeare androgynous, so that he is appreciated as a writer not as a man.

Vindication of the Rights of Woman Ch. 2-5

Mary Wollstonecraft


Yet perhaps there is an alternative to this cutting away at ourselves, this quest to always be the perfect Cinderella princess. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, considered by many to be the first feminist writer, gives us a very different look at what it means to be a woman. Wollstonecraft’s father was an alcoholic, and often beat his wife and daughters. Mary took over care of the family at a young age and was very well educate and self-educated. She decided to go to London and be a writer after leaving her family, a controversial role for women especially then. She was very radical, published a response to "Reflections on the Revolution in France," an attack of the French Revolution, published in 1789. She responded a month later called "Vindication of the Rights of Men" anonymously; appear to have been written by a man. In her texts and for her, "manly" is a synonym for virtuous and rational.

Yet in 1792 she published "Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” singular woman as opposed to plural men. Does woman refer to the individual or does woman generalize all women into one big category with no distinction? I think it's the individual. She isolates "woman" as a class of persons who have been treated the same; "men" is perhaps all human beings, or a number of individual classes; man means human because, for her, it means rational and virtuous.

She claims that the educational system trains women to be immoral and irrational, and thus not "manly" or "humanly," and says that sexism is rooted in that issue. By believing in the system, women are jeopardizing their cause. She furthered her argument into the political sphere as well. Wollstonecraft believes in meritocracy above aristocracy. She attacked royalty more or less, for their use of subordination, even though every profession has subordination. Men, she argues, become subordinate even in the most manly profession like the military because following orders is harmful to your morality because you're not thinking on your own.

She also compares women to soldiers in her work, a very controversial analogy even today if you ask me. She claims though, that women and soldiers both acquire manners before morals and blindly follow orders. Ch. 2 she argues that women are degraded because their education for behavior is given to make them sensually alluring. Women are also like soldiers because they are disciplined and educated to please, i.e. if you educate women in the same way that you educate men, they will behave the same way. This means that the difference between men and women is not natural but nurtured. It's a societal inferiority, not factual. Maybe women aggravate the situation; women boast of their weakness to try to get some kind of power over men, legitimate or illegitimate, as is the case with women who sleep their way to the top. The weakness of men is un-chastity, the desire for women to faint and need to be rescued. Wollstonecraft is angry at women for giving men more power over women than they might otherwise have for "using your powers for evil,” something women today are often still accused of. Mary believes in virtue, she believes that if her word doesn't hold the world is corrupt. So is there ever a way for us to win? If we include men in our lives as partners and helpers, we are faux-Cinderella’s and if we cut them out and use them (as they use us at times) we are irrational and immoral. An interesting double standard, or highly conveniently structured double standard in my opinion.

More on The Pretty Woman

Cinderella story is alive and well in society today but it does set up societal pressures for men and women. Women have to be tall, beautiful, thin, in a bad situation, in a situation to be rescued. Men have to be rich, perfect, available, wealthy, and very VERY successful. Without having these things, men can never be the prince. If you're a woman and you don't need to be saved, you'll never be the princess. There needs to be a case where the man and the woman can save each other.

Cinderella and Pop Culture
- "Country Boys and City Girls", Fratellis
- Extreme Home Makeover
- Memoirs of a Geisha
- "Love Story" Taylor Swift
- "Fairytale" Sara Bareilles
- "A Sort of Fairytale" Tori Amos
- They learn to grow their other parts and accept each other for their faults too

Men and women have to cut of bits of their selves to be sexy and desirable. Women have to be stick skinny with large breasts and young, while men can be any age as long as they are rich and powerful, as shown in the couple Hugh Hefner and Holly Madison.

Attack of the Tiara - The Pretty Woman Myth

The Pretty Woman myth is the same as the Cinderella syndrome, more or less, which holds that women get themselves easily and by no fault of their own into terrible situations, which happens to Vivian in "Pretty Woman" when she goes into prostitution feeling as if she has no other options and to Cinderella once her evil-step sisters move in and her father forgets all about her. Then, the women are miraculously rescued by insanely rich, attractive, and amazingly kind-hearted men who want nothing but to whisk us women away on a white steed and ride off into happily ever after. However, this is no reality.

The most interesting commentary I found on this topic was a blog by Rachel Hills called "Do you have Cinderella Syndrome." She talks about the modern Cinderella princess, Paris Hilton, the Duff sisters in "Material Girls" the special one, the envied one, the glamorous one: all desireable traits for any teenage girl. But aren't there dangers to this situation?? This is the part that no one talks about. In "The Pretty Woman Myth" Carolyn Malorey talks about the dangerous implications of public perception of prostitution. But what else? Does Cinderella stay true to her character once she's carried off into the sunset? Does she remember everything that her mother asked of her, or her father's desire for her to be pious and true?? If Cinderella had girlfriends at the local high school, would they keep in touch?? Who knows. Life's not all glam and gold, you know.

Another one of my FAVORITE comments on fairy tale love is a Sara Bareilles Song called "Fairytale." The opening line is "Cinderella's on the bed room floor, she's got a crush on the guy at the liquor store. 'Cause Mr. Charming don't come home any more and she forgets why she came here." Chorus says, "I don't care for your fairytales, you're so worried about the maiden but you know she's only waiting on the next best thing." It's a very empowering song for women and comments on the irrelevance of fairytale love in the real world because it talks about what happens after "happily ever after." So, is the tiara really all that great? Do we all just want to be princesses? I'm pretty sure, secretly yes, but for the record count me out.

Lyrics for "Fairytale" by Sara Bareilles

Cinderella's on her bedroom floor

She's got a

Crush on the guy at the liquor store

Cause Mr. Charming don't come home anymore

And she forgets why she came here

Sleeping Beauty's in a foul mood

For shame she says

None for you dear prince, I'm tired today

I'd rather sleep my whole life away

Than have you keep me from dreaming

[Chorus:]

cause I don't care for your fairy tales

You're so worried about the maiden though you know

She's only waiting on the next best thing

Snow White is doing dishes again cause

What else can you do

With seven itty-bitty men?

Sends them to bed and calls up a friend

Says will you meet me at midnight?

The tall blonde lets out a cry of despair says

Would have cut it myself if I knew men could climb hair

I'll have to find another tower somewhere and keep away from the windows

[Chorus]

Once upon a time in a faraway kingdom

Man made up a story said that I should believe him

Go and tell your white knight that he's handsome in hindsight

But I don't want the next best thing

So I sing and hold my head down and I break these walls round me

Can't take no more of your fairytale love

[Chorus]

She's only waiting spent the whole life being graded on the sanctity of

Patience and a dumb appreciation

But the story needs some mending and a better happy ending

Cause I don't want the next best thing

No no I don't want the next best thing

The Snow Child - From The Bloody Chamber

Humanism, as well as defining what it means to be human is further analyzed in Carters story the “Snow Child,” a highly sexualized, adulterous version of “Snow White.” In this story, the count creates a girl out of physical desire, while he is with his wife mind you, as she first appears naked in the snow. The snow child then pricks her finger on a thorn, bleeds, and dies, which symbolically represents, at least for the perverted count, her first menstruation and her coming into womanhood. This gives us a very different look of Carter’s idea of gender roles, yet does so in a manner so exaggerated it is difficult to misread them as literal. It reveals the countess's hateful attitude represents relationships, and sets up a rivalry between women, as she let the girl die and be raped by the count. Furthermore, we are meant to look at what it means to be a woman coming of age, as the snow child never speaks, but only screams once when she dies. Furthermore, the countess is powerless, and her husband ignores all her requests, and takes away her clothes and possessions at will. Perhaps Carter means us to reanalyze what the roles are for men and women and society, and how they could be exaggerated and distorted at some point to a reality in the future.

Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

The Courtship of Mr. Lyons, also known as Beauty and the Beast, brings another twist, as with Cinderella to the classic Disney tale. There are big differences, including the fact that Beauty goes through a bigger transformation in the end than Mr. Lyon. It is a story about what it means to be human, claiming there is something real that corresponds to each of the fairy tale elements of the story. The fairy tale distorts them so that you focus on it, because they can be uncomfortable to think about. The distortion is to encourage us to look at and apply the situation to any young man coming of age and facing manhood in or out of a relationship and what it means to be a woman with relationship to a man. There is also a gender discourse in this text, and an implication of the fear of men by women. For example, Beauty does not want to touch Mr. Lyon, showing a typical reaction to otherness is revulsion. Furthermore, it states that men can grow to tame there aggression, yet girls are tamed in a different way about what is acceptable for interactions with each other, a way that is culturally determined. Carter maybe feels men are afraid of their potential for violence as well, as shown through Mr. Lyons throughout the short story.

However there is more to this text than that. It is an analysis of the need for redemption in order to feel human again, to master the beast within all of us. This occurs in the short story for both Mr. Lyon and Beauty. It asks how we fight our animal instincts to get to more human behavior.

Ashputtle, or the Mother's Ghost

This gives it a more feminist approach. She is still fulfilling the stereotype of caretaker and the typical mother role by self-sacrificing but it's still very empowering for wome

The lesson is trying to get Cinderella to become independence. It' s a story about sacrifice for the sake of pushing someone into independence. You don't really know what happens at the end, if she learned the lesson because she goes into the arms of the Prince. Asks the reader what would you do? Would you stand up and become independent or be taken care of?

"She did alright" is pretty anticlimactic considering the mother gave all her milk, claws and blood to make her happy. Does this counteract ideology? Maybe, depending on which way you see it. Cinderella is still very passive in this story but does she change? Maybe, maybe not.

Weight - The artistic retelling of stories

QUIZ: In the artistic retelling of fairly tales, does art help counteract ideology (being wounded by culturally induced wishes, unconscious assumptions about life expectations)?

Jeanette Winterson says in her introduction to "Weight" the retold story of Atlas and Hercules, that the retelling of stories and myths is important and can counteract ideology. For example, she says that "in the re-telling comes a new emphasis or bias," meaning that doing so can change what the reader sees as important, or the moral of the story. It can change who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, or who is the bad girl. It can change what truths you take from the texts. As Winterson says that by re-telling stories for their own sakes we can find in them "permanent truths about human nature." Whether or not these truths are ideal is up to the reader.

My perspective, like Winterson, is that yes, it does. However, maybe it’s more reinterpreting or having an additional tool than counteracting a previously written story. The retelling of a story means that we look at it through a different lens. By retelling a story we add more relevance to it, as is the case with Cinderella. Cinderella is about more than just being good and being rewarded, but is about self-transformation and self-assertion.

Colleen Dowling "The Cinderella Complex"

Throughout her text, Dowling had some very interesting quotes and opinions about "The Cinderella Complex." For example, she says that women suffering from this complex believe, "Only hang on long enough, the childhood story goes, and someday someone will come along to rescue you from the anxiety of authentic living." She says another symptom is believing your life would be better at times if you weren't in charge of it. For example, Cinderella's claim, "I'd do virtually anything to manipulate someone else into taking over when things got rough." More distressing even than this though, is that these women are unable to be truly independent without a man. For example, Dowling states, "What I hadn't anticipated - what I'd had no way of foreseeing - was the startling collapse of ambition that would occur as soon as I begun sharking my home with a man again... There was nothing compelling me to rise."

I think this is definitely true to life for women today. I've always been told by my parents that we should be independent and have the college experience because you have your whole life to be married. But that's just it isn't it? You have the whole rest of your life to be married; it's supposed to be the ultimate happy ending, the goal, the thing everyone does because it makes you happiest. Also, being single now, I've noticed that almost everything in the media points you toward relationships. Rarely do you see a strong single woman not looking for love, except maybe the women in "Sex and the City." Once you find it, there are certain roles, the care-taker and the money-maker. I don't think they're inevitable, but it can slip that way pretty easily. I think that there needs to be mutual taking care on both sides, of each other and of yourself. Not that I have to be taken care of, but I definitely wouldn't mind.

This article points out that there can be masculine and feminine gender roles that we are almost completely unaware of. According to Dowling, there are rules as well as unconscious assumptions about them to which we are bound but over which we have no control. This puts pressure on both men and women in society that is actually unrealistic and unattainable. It puts pressure on women to be just like Cinderella, skinny, kind, sad and lonely, and puts pressure on men to be just like Prince Charming, rich, handsome, and willing to risk his life for a woman he met yesterday. It all seems a little too fairy tale for me.

Ashputtle & Cinderella

"Ashputtle" Grimm Brothers, and "Cinderella" Anne Sexton

The words that most caught my attention in "Ashputtle" were the symbols used by the Grimm brothers throughout this short story. These included things such as the white dove and the hazel bush, which are used to suggest the reincarnation or guidance from her dead mother and represent purity and wisdom. It is the hazel tree that grows on her mother's grave and the dove that brings her opportunity and also truth to both her and to the prince. Other symbols include those the prince encounters with Cinderella, like the pigeon coop, the pear tree and the golden shoe. These show development from a poor social class to a rich one, or from ordinary to extraordinary. For Cinderella, ending in the golden shoe means ending with high social status. Finally, the blindness of the step sisters at the end parallels their blindness of and toward Cinderella's heart and abilities throughout the beginning of the story.

Sexton's version, however is much more contemporary and, while she uses the same symbols, she includes several references I was not familiar with, including a "charwoman," Bonwit Teller, Al Jolson, and Regular Bobbsey Twins. A charwoman, I found, is just a British word meaning a woman who cleans another person's house. Bonwit Teller - "from mops to Bonwit Teller" - was an expensive department store of the early 20th century, that later developed into stores such as Saks, and B. Altman. Al Jolson - "she slept on the sooty hearth each night/ and walked around looking like Al Jolson" - was a famous American singer, comedian, and actor of the early 1900s who typically wore blackface makeup. The Regular Bobbsey Twins - used to describe the step sisters at the end - is a metaphor for living happily ever after, and is based on another fairytale. Sexton takes a very sarcastic approach, and pokes fun at the "happily ever after" part of fairy tales, showing they are unrealistic because of the extravagant examples used throughout her text, which are not relatable to the "typical" person.