The "I" and Janet from The Female Man seems to look down on Jeannine and Joanna's worlds. Their worlds often have characteristics of dystopias.
My question would be how do Jeannine and Joanna's worlds appear as dystopias to outsiders such as Janet and the "I" of the novel? I want to specifically focus on how does the over-obsessiveness and covetousness (overly or wrongly desirous attitude) appear as dystopian to outsiders such as Janet and the "I" of The Female Man?
Some examples I have so far are on p. 83 in the first paragraph where the "I" is stuck with Jeannine and speaking of the ruffles on shirts, hanging earrings, etc and is annoyed. It continues on the next page with another obsession....The Home. Also, page 86 when Jeannine buys the fishnets she won't ever wear then feels guilty about it, but just "had to have them". Also, p. 92 Jeannine suggests an attack technique of Whileaway and Janet responds that they don't worry about that stuff because the way to protect the Whileaway-ans would make life way too over obsessive.
I could also point out how Janet's world is very efficient and there's no nonsense add-ons because of obsession or covetousness. Or about Jeannine's obsessiveness to finding a man.
Should I just focus on Jeannine's world and outsiders since all of my examples so far have that? Or should I try and include Janet? Does my question make sense? Do you think it would make an interesting paper?
Thank you!!
Hi Aimee. I'm having trouble following the direction you're trying to take thi, but if I understand it correctly, I think that focusing on one character would be best. Perhaps by picking one you can focus particularly on the dystopia or alternate reality that this character poses and how they do or do not relate with the "real world" gender rules.
ReplyDeleteI think that if most of your examples pertain to Jeannine's world, you should just focus on her. But if you are comparing her dystopian world to the utopian world of Janet, you definitely need to include Janet. I don't think the paper would be strong enough without the comparison. Since Janet has such a hard time relating to Jeannine and Joanna's worlds, it might be good to also look at the scripts/myths surrounding those worlds and how Janet reacts and relates to them.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the fact that I think most of the examples do g back two Jeannine's world. You have many examples that could support a question about Jeannie's world. If you found some more examples that could support Janet then you could have a strong paper comparing the two. I do not know if this helps at all.
ReplyDeleteHi Aimee,
ReplyDeleteYou've located an interesting aspect of The Female Man. Along the lines of others in your group, I'm thinking you can focus on Janet's responses to Jeannine. In other words, how does Janet's character highlight and critique the social practices/value systems of Jeannine's world (and therefore, perhaps, the reader's)? My question is about what exactly those social practices or value systems are: what do covetousness and over-obsession have to do with each other? Is there an umbrella term that might encompass them both? In other words, what's really being criticized here? Possession? Control? Excess?
I agree with everyone about when saying that you need to narrow down your focus a bit. There is a lot going on in your original question which makes it a bit confusing and I think that this would help. I do think that it is interesting to think about how everyting his viewed differently when looking from others points of view.
ReplyDelete