CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM: WOMEN'S WIEV OF THE WORLD

CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM: WOMEN'S WIEV OF THE WORLD

Women said that in the past the world has been explained only by men and they do not consider the difference between men and women. Traditional ideas about women are that they can not share power with men. In societies in which power depend on the ability of physical force, there were reasons for assigning women to different roles. But in the modern society, in which physical strength do not have importance, the biological differences have less importance. As regards the psychology, Freud said that in the women there is the lack of something. Freud is regarded as conservative by contemporary feminists, because the women are passive and only a sexual desire.

YOUTH CULTURE: STREET STYLE IN BRITAIN

The post war period there was a new youth period. The street became a focus of life.

The body symbolism of the Teddy Boys was adapted from an upper-class dress-style, which came to be known as "Edwardian". The Ted's uniform consisted of drape jackets, long pointed shoes with laces, and they wore their hair very short at the back and raised at the front. They had a reputation of violence and they became synonymous with juvenile delinquency and racism - "We are not against the Blacks, let's just say we are not with them".

The Rockers were a similar group: they wore black jackets, battered clothes. They were outsiders, staged drag races down the street and made crude advances to local women. They tended to regard women and coloured immigrants as inferior categories.

The Hippies were the youthful version of the middle-class individualism, simply devoted to the achievement of new levels of consciousness than to material success. They monopolized particular places, pubs and houses. They refused to be subjected to the normal time and threw away their watches. Their dresses were handmade from natural materials. The hippies age was the age of Beatles and Bob Dylan. The texts of these songs was "Love and War". Taking drugs was an aid (aiuto) to consciousness.

The Skinheads had an aggressive behaviour: they wore heavy boots, donkey jackets, tattoos and shaved heads. They welcome conflict and aggression. In the group there were no girls and they think they are a second-rate.

In 1976 it was time for a new "youth revolution": the Punks. Nothing was holy to them and their movement was neither mystical, communistic nor anarchistic. They spat (sputare) on everything, including themselves, their symbols. The hair were yellow, orange or green. Their music differed from mainstream rock and pop. The name of the groups (the Rejects, the Worst, the Unwanted . ) reflected the tendencies of outcast status.

EXISTENTIALISM

Existentialism is a philosophical movement and developed especially the mood of the time, the feeling of uncertainly which followed the atrocities of the Holocaust. It influenced particularly the literature, art and youth culture of the sixties. Its main theses, in contrast with rationalist traditions, are that is no purpose or order in the world; that the universe is hostile; that the truths about the world are revealed most clearly in moments of unfocused psychological anxiety or dread. The recurring themes of existentialism are freedom, decision, responsibility, alienation, guilty and death.

SYLVIA PLATH

Sylvia Plath has become the emblem of feminism and the victim of a male dominated society. She had not a good relationship with her father and was in continuous competition with her husband. Plath's poetry belong to the confessional poetry, because reveals the most subjective feelings, the deepest emotion, as in a confession. Many of them are dramatic monologues voiced by a character that is not necessarily the poet. They are written in free verses and as they were fragments of consciousness. She used metaphors, symbols and flashbacks. She was never satisfied with the result she obtained. In her works she was in contrast: in the letter to the mother she appears enthusiastic and in the poems she is tormented and oppressed. Death is a key word an is the separation and total negation, but also a unique truth and a means of affirming and unifying herself going beyond the limits of life to arrive at a sort of ultimate knowledge. It represented also a sort of challenge that obsessed her. This obsession come probably form the premature death of her father, and after that, her husband abandoned her. She was linked to him by a relationship of love and hate. She did not even consider the possibility of a new life after death. She regarded existentialism as the most honest way to live. Plath's poems are concerned with the search for a personal identity trough awareness of the weight of taboos, of the existence of a gap between individuals. She was interested in the condition of the woman but she did not consider she was a feminist. The tone in her poems is ironic and even sarcastic and the poems had no kind of sentimentality. Some of her poems are a warning against consumerism.

DADDY

The father had neat moustache, Aryan eye, bright blue. He was a man in black with a Meinkampf look. He was a teacher with a brute character. He was a panzer man. He is the typical image of the Nazi.

In the poem the dominant colour is black that suggests oppression, despair, death.

LADY LAZARUS

She tried to kill herself many times but she is still alive (phoenix).She regarded death as a means of rebirth and purification. The woman is the phoenix. The poem is built up on a metaphorical level: the speaker is "the phoenix". The poem must criticise an immoral consumer society, a world where values have been turned upside down and considers dying as a form of entertainment. She has come once again into the world of male savagery.

The speaker describes herself in terms of a concentration camp who has become dehumanised and turned into commodities for practical usage.

The most feature of the woman's determination to revenge herself on those responsible for her torture. God and Lucifer are both addressed as "Herr", in a deliberate attempt to emphasise theit male-ness. God, that represent extreme perfection is identified with extreme evil, because extreme perfection turns out to be a torment for those who are victims. The intensity of revenge is justified by the equality intense abuse of man by man, the anger is directed against the world which stands by and allows this to happen.

Plath handles the theme of religion. She turns one of the most famous episodes of St. John's Gospel, the resurrection of Lazarus, into a grotesque show. Then the victim is turned into a persecutor through the metaphor of the phoenix.

LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER

Trough the relationship between Constance and Mellors, Lawrence celebrates the purify of sexual passion, which becomes a metaphor of freedom. Mellors, like a romantic hero, has chosen to live alone within the nature to escape from the rule of the society. Constance, confused, seeks refused in the wood and in sexual experience. The wood become the symbol of life and natural order as opposed to the emptiness and sterility of Wragby Hall. The style of the novel is characterised by a mixture of realism and symbolism and by a remarkable variety of linguistic registers. For instance, Mellors sometimes uses dialect as a weapon against Constance to stress the social gap between them.

Clifford represents the Victorian's ure of the man that is paralised and a victim of a war. Together with the industrialisation, there is a close relationship that represents emptiness. Constance refused Victorian's reality. Constance is a woman, difference of the others, thanks to her strong education. She can express her point of view.

HOWARDS END

There is the contrast between the lifestyle of the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes, between culture and materialism. The master theme is harmony. The idea of a possible harmony appears in a variety of ways: it is explored trough the private lives of individuals, trough the conflict of classes. The Wilcoxes in business, belong to a world of "telegrams and anger"; they are sharp with the lower orders, deferential towards social formalities. Their household is masculine. The Schlegels's household is female; Margaret and Helen are emancipated, modern, humane, concerned with the arts, responsive to the suffering of those less fortunate. All the characters are, in some sense, in search of a spiritual home. But homes are made only by people capable of love and affection and inspired with a vision of continuity. The novel opens informally, with a casual sentence followed by letters and telegrams which enable Fortser to introduce the main themes of the novel and to filter the first picture he gives of the Wilcoxes through their values. Forster turns away from chronological order, makes use of various points of view, adds the comments of the autobiographical voice, and creates a subtle questioning tone shifting from the comic tone, to the poetic tone.

Helen is considered like a bridge between the two families. At the beginning she loved the family but then understood that they are sharp with the lower orders and, when Paul was frightened, she decided to return home.