A_Feminest_Look

The Gender Shift In the essay “The Age of Enlightenment,” April Alliston defines and explains what she believes is the “great gender shift.” According to Alliston and many other literary scholars, as the seventeenth century ended, the eighteenth century ushered in a new view of each gender. The eighteenth century allowed men and women’s understandings of each other as well as their own understandings of self to change drastically. In Volume D of The Longman Anthology World Literature, many short stories represent the view of women and men during the seventeenth as well as the eighteenth century. Because of this changing perception of females, women who once were portrayed as corrupt became heroines, and writings by female authors reached a larger, more appreciative audience. Since the beginning of the seventeenth century, the question of the proper role of women in society arose. Uncertainty surrounding a female’s place became known as the “the woman question” (Alliston). This question examined a woman’s physical, moral, spiritual, and intellectual roles in society. Before the Enlightenment, most men believed that women should remain uneducated and illiterate. However, during the Enlightenment, many women defied the beliefs of men and began to read and write literature of every genre. Along with the belief that women should not have the opportunity of education, males maintained that females were dangerous, sexual individuals who tempted men to sin. Because men were weak in the midst of temptation, they fell to their sexual urges and to the devious nature of women. However, as the eighteenth century arrived, women were viewed as honorable individuals who managed their households or their abbeys with great success (Alliston). Women were no longer viewed as merely evil and sexual creatures; instead they gained a voice in society and became authors and 2 heroines. Through their stories, readers can see the immense impact of the “gender shift” on literature and on society as a whole. Even though women gained more freedom in the eighteenth century, they were held back from all of their writing desires. As women broke free of their negative seventeenth century views and became literate writers, they became tamed and domesticated. At the beginning of their freedom, female authors openly discussed dangerously desirous women in their stories. Female writers soon had to take on more domesticated and sentimental fiction, because of the expected types of literature at that time. Both male and female writers were forced to censor their writing and many authors were exiled due to their risky narratives. Even though men were exiled more, both genders faced barriers on their writing. If female writers refused to compose more domestic stories, then their hope of becoming a novelist would quickly end. The limitations of their writing and their domesticated lifestyle showed the negative side of the “gender shift” (Allison 197). Throughout the many stories in Volume D of The Longman Anthology World Literature, various authors illustrate the “great gender shift” that occurred between the seventeenth and the eighteenth century. Readers easily identify the negative, sexual characteristics attributed to women during the seventeenth century. For example, a woman tempts a man to fall in Aphra Behn’s story “Oroonoko”. In this tale, the beloved and strong protagonist Oroonoko falls passionately in love with Imonida, but his grandfather takes his love away. Oroonoko is driven mad by his inability to be with Imonida and falls victim to her temptations. The warrior is bewitched by Imonida’s sexuality, which lures him to her room, after which she is sent away 3 forever. When Oroonoko and Imonida are reunited, he is not the same strong character illustrated at the beginning of the story; rather, because he has been mesmerized by a woman’s sexuality, he is now pathetic. Because of Oroonoko’s infatuation with Imonida, he loses all of his strong morals. Oroonoko does not trust anyone anymore and he begins to lie to make everything seem better. At the conclusion of the story, Oroonoko takes his own life, because of his obsession and love for Imonida. Oroonoko’s body is cut up to show the consequences for wrong doing and his tragic ending illustrates his life being taken over by sexual desires. As in “Oroonoko,” the portrayal of women as devious is even more prevalent in Ihara Saikaku’s short story “Life of a Sensuous Woman.” At the beginning of the story three men are torn between a life with lust and a life without it. All three men turn to the sensuous woman for her opinion as she reveals immoral details of her lifestyle. Through the many tales of her life, the reader mainly sees the woman protagonist as a sexually driven creature who is merely used by men to satisfy their desires: “‘With this single body of mine I’d slept with more than ten thousand men. It made me feel low and ashamed to go on living so long’” (Saikaku 557). The sensuous woman realizes that she has proven the stereotype of women as seductresses true through her actions. The life that the sensuous woman leads reinforces the opinion of seventeenth century society. However, the woman’s strong desire to be seen as more than an evil creature also emerges in the conclusion of this tale. The sensuous woman knows that she has done wrong in the past, but she also knows that she is a human being who longs to remain pure: “‘I’ve certainly worked in some dirty professions, but is my heart not pure'’” (Saikaku 558). Through Saikaku’s story, the reader sees the world’s negative view of women, but they also recognize the women’s striving to appear as more than just temptation. 4 As the seventeenth century gave way to the eighteenth century, many women assumed major roles in literature and evolved beyond the deviant creature so often depicted in earlier works. In this new century, many women pursued the opportunity for an education and many became heroines as characters and as authors. Mary Wollstonecraft exemplifies one female who took on a new and important role in literature and in society. In her essay “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” Wollstonecraft identifies a women’s lack of education prior to the eighteenth century as the main source of misery. Wollstonecraft urges women to prove that they are more than just their beauty and that they have minds superior to men’s. By using their knowledge instead of their image and their sexuality, women could encourage men to see them as actual human beings. Along with Wollstonecraft’s revolutionary view of women’s roles, in her poem “The Rights of Woman,” Anna Letitia Barbauld illustrates the message that women need to listen to their own rules. Even though Barbauld maintains that women should not be educated, she still feels that women need to throw all male rules and listen to themselves: “Yes, injured Woman! Rise, assert thy right!” (Barbauld 1). In the poem, the speaker urges women to break free from their previous stereotype to become free individuals who dictate their own behavior. Even though Barbauld’s ideas are strong and show the desire for women to break free from their previous deviant roles, her views are somewhat more conservative that Wollstonecraft’s. Wollstonecraft believes that women need to strive for every yearning that they have including an education. Barbauld agrees with Wollstondecraft on the fact that women need to become more than beauty and prove themselves, but she feels like they should do it uneducated. Barbauld feels that women should strictly be educated as “rational beings” and she thinks it fruitless to 5 “provoke a war with the other sex” (Alliston 598). Through such eighteenth century works, people witnessed the gender shift that occurred during the Enlightenment. Women shed their sexual and evil stereotypes and considered the advantage of education and of freedom from men. Even though Eliza Haywood still depicts Fantomina as sensuous, in her short story “Fantomina: or, Love in a Maze,” the female protagonist shows her sense of independence. Throughout the tale, Fantomina continually tempts and tricks Beauplaisir by her appearance alterations. Even though Beauplaisir does not recognize Fantomina, he still is tempted by every one of her characters. Because of Fantomina’s pursuit of Beauplaisir, she is viewed as a sexual creature. However, when Beauplaisir asks Fantomina to marry him, her mother shows her independence by rejecting him and sending her daughter away: “‘..I must confess it was with design to oblige you to repair the supposed injury you had done this unfortunate girl, by marrying her, but now I know not what to say: - The blame is wholly hers, and I have nothing to request further of you, than that you will not divulge the distracted folly she has been guilty of’” (Haywood 586). Fantomina’s mother knows that nothing was her daughter’s fault and she takes a stand against Beauplaisir. Through her devotion to her daughter and her expression of her feelings to Beauplaisir, Fantomina’s mother shows that women are able to make up their own minds and they are not deviant creatures. During the seventeenth century, what was known as proper sexual expression took a drastic change in the eighteenth century. As the authors clearly show in their short stories from the seventeenth century, sexual expression was viewed as immoral and taboo. Even though sexuality was frowned upon, men used women for their sexual desires and women were 6 stereotyped as mere deviant individuals. Women were treated as less than men and were denied the chance of an education, because of the seventeenth century’s view on sexual expression and their negative view of women. However as the seventeenth century gave way to the eighteenth century, sexual expression became more acceptable in society. Women and men were able to share their sexual desires without society punishing them for their behaviors. Because sexuality became more acceptable, women were viewed as actual human beings in society and they were granted the opportunity of education. Women broke free from their deviant stereotype of the seventeenth century and they became important members of society and were able to express their feelings freely in the eighteenth century. The “great gender shift” is described in “The Age of the Enlightenment,” written by April Alliston, as well as the many works of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century. As the seventeenth century ended and the eighteenth century began women and men’s views and opinions of each other changed immensely. Women were no longer deemed solely sexual creatures; instead, some became serious writers and productive members of society as a whole. Women could now be educated, which allowed them to prove their intellect as well as their integrity to men and to themselves. Men of the eighteenth century did not as easily use women to satisfy their desires because they witnessed women’s early push for equality during this time period. The contrast in characterization as well as in theme expressed in the literary works from different centuries clearly depicts the “gender shift” considered by April Alliston.