Hello faithful readers,
Well this is for sure my second to last blog of this class
and what better way to bring to an end to these series of blogs but nothing
other than a very heated topic. That topic readers is Gender Criticism. What is
Gender criticism exactly? One may ponder about. From the notes I read in class Gender
Criticism is basically criticizing gender as we commonly perceive it. From the lecture
notes of my class I discovered that gender and sex are two completely different
things. The true meaning of sex is your natural born bodily appendages a person
acquires in the womb. These appendages
deem a person male or female biologically. While gender is the way we perceive are
self. This perception is commonly
masculine or feminine and just recently the new coined style of gender
metrosexual which is a “balance” of both genders. Now, back to gender
criticism, what makes gender criticism so intriguing to me; it is the fact that
the way the work is criticized or conceived is completely varied by the sex criticizing
the text. These views are broken down into essentialism or constructionism. The
previously stated concepts are to lengthy to explain in one blog so feel free
to look them up. Gender criticism may at
times focus on gender reading. A great example gender reading is when a female reader
criticizes that men writers immaculate women in there text, in a sense creating
inferiority of women when it comes to men.
Although, gender criticism does play a pivotal role in peeking into how
a males view the world and vise versa if it were a women written text.
In class we read the text “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti.
I found the text incredibly easy to apply what I learned about gender criticism
to analyze the text. First things first I will give a little short background information
on the text “Goblin Market”. “Goblin
Market” is about two sisters who hear the commotion of the goblin market that’s
right next to their house. The Goblin market is completely male population and
the males being considered goblins hence the name goblin market. The sisters
try their hearts out to ignore the luring noise of the goblin market but unfortunately
one sister gives into her inhibitions and goes off to the goblin market. Once
there the sister trades her golden hair for a “tasty “goblin fruit which she
consumes and in consequence goes home and begins to wither away. The other
unharmed sister worries about her sister’s condition and runs off to the goblin
market to find a way to save her sister which she does, but I won’t spoil the
rest for you. Rossetti portrays men in a very maniacal way, calling the men
Goblins which applies a negative connotation to men. Rossetti also portrays men (goblins) as corrupters of innocent
women and to an even greater extent the unity between females represented in the
story as sisterly love. Rossetti in her text also establishes men as deceivers,
tricking one the girls with tasty fruit to steal her life force and her precious
commodity which is her hair. All these portrayal of men in this story shows a
very negative extreme and radical feminist approach to men.
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