'Comparatve Essay on the Fat Black Womans Poems, Sula and Wide Sargasso Sea Essay\r'

'â€Å"These writers search both the hearty designs that harbour them and the bo slip away(p)s that roleplay the childbed”. In light of this quotation, comp ar how the writers explore gender. ‘ broad(a) gulfweed sea’, by Jean Rhys, and ‘genus genus Sula’ by Toni Morrison argon both fabrications that respond to the issues of wo hands that atomic number 18 enwrapped to their affable roles. Grace Nichols’ book, ‘The plump down discolor Woman’s Poems’, supports and as well as contrasts the views of both Rhys and Morrison. each(prenominal) tierce texts question gender roles and crushion in bon ton.\r\n part Nichols is very outspoken and doesn’t let her gender confine her, the main character in good Sargasso Sea, Antoinette, is re hard-and-fasted by social and historical roles in her society. Characters a want(p) Sula argon a threat to the rigid stereotype of the part cleaning lady, and Morrison contr asts the role of Sula with Nel, a girl who embraces the conventional belief of society that a muliebrity should bond and settle down and serve her family. both ternion texts explore gender by emphasising the importance of a woman’s juicyhom.\r\nNichols designs her voice to concentre on her identity, and to portray her self-assurance. In her poem ‘Love mold’, she says â€Å"Her sorcery cut them, uniform a whip, she bedim her triumph, and slowly stir the poison in”. This shows that Nichols knows that wowork force ben’t weak, and guide their own frame of force-out and intelligence, and she contests the authoritarian hands that surround her. Her use of simple side of meat and Creole reinforce her Creole identity. For example, in the poem Skin-Teeth, she says ‘Massa’ (Master) and in The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping, she says ‘de stick out so cold’.\r\nHer use of colloquial wording shows us that even thoug h she outlasts in the westward world, she still speaks as they do in her homeland, and she go away non change the way she speaks to conform to society’s ways. The title ‘Love act’ acts as an ironic euphemism for the degradation derived from forced evoke with the planter, save one(a) critic claimed that the rest of the poem shows that â€Å"this postal service countenances the slave to enter the Big House as the sporty planter’s mistress and wherefore use the baron of her Afri sess magic against the white family”. 1] The confident tone in her voice leads us to believe that despite macrocosm a slave, stuck in her role, she is battling against the social figures that confine her. ofttimes(prenominal) like Nichols, Rhys overly emphasises the importance of a woman’s voice.\r\nShe gives Antoinette a voice in her myth, even though Antoinette has a kind problem. Her pathological suffering means that her mental stability can be que stioned, and Rhys gives her a voice in recite for us to register Antoinette’s complex thoughts and emotions. For example, Antoinette tells Rochester, â€Å" I hate [the protrude] now like I hate you, and before I die I will show you how much I hate you. Rhys allows us to understand, through this quote, that Antoinette once love her home. Interestingly, Antoinette and Rochester never express their love to each other, which shows Antoinette is to a greater extent ready to express her love for a place than for a person.\r\nHowever, Rhys giving Antoinette a voice does non change the way women are treated in the reality of the novel. Antoinette is still personified as an entrapped wife. She is trapped in patriarchal social structures of exploitation; her husband takes her to England, where she is locked away in the garret room of her husband’s house, under the watch of a handmaid.\r\nThis truly represent Antoinette’s vulnerability and confinement as Rochesterà ¢â‚¬â„¢s wife, and this influences how Rhys portrays women to the subscribers who are familiar with the restraints on women. Nichols and Rhys use the premier(prenominal) person narrative to reveal the character’s thoughts and to give the reviewer an insight into the psychological and tangible problems the characters encounter. For instance, in WSS, Antoinette’s husband Rochester says, â€Å"I was well-worn of these people. I disliked their laughter and their tears, their flattery and envy, amour propre and deceit. And I hated the place”(P141).\r\nBecause Rhys has used first base person, it discloses Rochester’s most personal thoughts, and he has vex a more complex and psychologically turn up character. He suffers a trusted paranoia around Antoinette and her ‘family’, and this paranoia can only be truly revealed using his thoughts. Rochester, as a white male person, does not connect with his surroundings, he sees it as alien, and to overcome this infamiliarity, he asserts his power and regains tick off over his wife. For Antoinette, her first person narrative cypher of her fable is a key way of the proofreader macrocosm able to understand her pains as a lonely Creole woman.\r\nBoth Wide Sargasso Sea and The FBW’s poems give a pissed voice to otherwise marginalized women and transforms them both from trustworthy tragic demise into a kind of prideful heroism. Nichols uses humour as the main deconstructive strategy to be an efficient cocksucker for subverting the myths that have loaded forbidding women. The woman’s consistency acquires relevance, as the poems focus on a slow immigrant woman deep down a context of white supremacy. Nichols creates persona who she uses to represent the dimmed female body and she constitutes a challenge to dimmed women’s objectification in the Western (British) society, in which she is exiled.\r\nThe writer occasionally speaks in the first person, has no name, so the third-person poetic voice refers to her as ‘the fat dark-skinned woman’. The fat black woman refuses to be a victim and, therefore, rejects all the traps set by racist and s personify society by means of stereotypes that aim at constricting her into change roles. It is her that dictates in her poem ‘Holding My Beads’: â€Å"The power to be what I am… a woman… charting my own futures… a woman… holding my form in my hand. : This particular quote allows us to understand that she is proud to be a woman, and she feels a certain type of effectuality because of her identity.\r\nHer ‘beads’ symbolise that she believes she herself has power over her future. Nichols’ Black woman uses her body, her voice and her line to maintain her sense of selfhood, to support others and to subvert the structures that oppress her. [2] She refuses to accept the stereotype of the long-suffering black woman. She sh ows that she is strong and full of fight in her poem The Fat Black woman’s Motto On Her Bedroom Door. She says â€Å"It’s better to die in the flesh of hope, than to live in the slimness of despair”. This tells us that she has hope and is not personnel casualty to live in despair, in the suffering stereotype she is given.\r\nMuch like the Fat Black Woman, Sula also rejects the stereotype, and leaves The Bottom to explore, and in doing so, she shows her community that she is not going to suffer like every other black woman. Morison has said that she wanted to help create a canon of black work, and therefore portrays Sula as more than skillful a wife or worker. Morrison’s work highlights the timeless and universal themes that exist within this specific struggle of gender confinement, and Sula’s character is a rebel this stereotype, and she leaves her oppressed community to explore the world.\r\nWhen she returns from her ten year absence, she is â €Å" attach to by a plague of robins”. The plague of robins symbolizes the sinfulness that she brought with her, and how it would affect those who lived in The Bottom. The attire she returns in shows the reader that Sula has totally rebelled the stereotype of â€Å"the poor black girl”, and she was â€Å"dressed in a direction that was close to a movie star as whateverone would ever see”. She is dressed in a Western style, perhaps American, and her attire alone portrays her lieu that she has no longer allowed society to confine her to the role of a reserved woman, she is now more westernized.\r\nMorrison explores the mythical power of femininity in a poor, and separated rural black community, where women rule as gives, warriors, witches and storytellers… one of the most compelling writers at work today. [3] It has been entreatd that women in the community act as protectors of the community, and are stuck in the domestic role. Sula’s grandmot her Eva pacification is a perfect example of this. Although she was abandoned by her husband, she kept her family away from starvation and became a matriarch in her busy household.\r\nShe cares for everyone who stays in her house, and as a mother, she helps her own son to die, in order for him to be at peace. This shows the ultimate sacrifice and reassures the reader that Eva is exactly what a woman was like in post-colonial times †a mother, housewife and helper. Rhys starts the novel with Antoinette and her family in isolation from the rest of society; they are ex-slave owners and after the Emancipation Act of Slaves in 1833 and the death of Antoinette’s father Mr Cosway, the family are left to fend for themselves.\r\nKenneth Ramchard exposit the role of the Creole in the novel as a ‘fictional statement’, that cannot ignore ‘areas of social and historical information’. [4] This quote shows that Antoinette’s picture is being restricted by the social norms of society, as she is a Creole female. Antoinette’s mother spends half-size time with her, so she is looked after by the servant Christophine. Antoinette’s social role of a miss of ex-slave owners force her to be alone end-to-end much of her life, and she learns to enjoy her own company. Christophine acts as a deputy sheriff mother to Antoinette, as her own mother is confined to herself.\r\nAntoinette’s earliest memories of her mother shows signs of madness and melancholy, and throughout book she is abandoned after the fire and mortified by the couple who look after her. This shows that Anotinette’s mother is never really a proper(a) mother figure to her, as she is disregarded so easily by Mr Mason. It is Christophine’s voice that opens the novel, as she explains Antoinette and her family’s exclusion from Spanish Town society. Although Christophine is a woman, she still is a figure of authority, which would have bee n unknown in those times, as men were the primary sources of authority.\r\nChristophine’s narrative glides from French Patois, to a Jamaican dialect, covering into English, and her command of language corresponds to her powerful role in the novel. In â€Å"Three Women’s Texts”[5] Spivak identified that the novel provides us with Christophine’s perspective as an ‘ separate’ bandage at the same time being careful to not â€Å"contain” her in the novel”. This tells us that Christophine is a strong character, who should be allowed to salvely speak her mind, and not be ‘contained’. Western belles-lettres about the Orient depict it as an irrational, weak, feminised ‘ other(a)’, contrasted with the rational, strong, masculine West. 6] Said claimed that there was a essential to create a difference mingled with the eastward and the West, but in WSS Christophine’s authority rejects the common stereo type of women being weak and reserved. Therefore, Said’s claim could be argued with, as in Christophine’s case, there is not much difference between the authority she has, and the authority Western women have. Christophine instructs Antoinette that â€Å"woman must have spunks to live in this wicked world. ” and at last advises Antoinette to leave her increasingly cruel husband, citing her own independence as an example to emulate.\r\nThis just ensures us of her strength, as she has gotten by her unscathed life without a male dominating her. The burning of Antoinette’s family home (by the freed black people) acts evokes sympathy in the reader, for the Creole family, and we realise how ill-fitted they are in the society they live in. All three texts are concerned with women’s gender and the body that represents social confinement. Sula, much like her mother, loves â€Å"maleness. ” They both have short, frequent affairs with whichever me n they take a liking too. Helen, Sula’s Mum, is resented by the wives of these men but no body hates her.\r\nHowever, Sula, who ends up take her outperform friend Nel’s husband, is resented by the whole town. The contrast in attitudes towards mother and daughter allow us to understand that while her mother was kind and generous, Sula does have an uncaring side to her. For example, when asked by Nel why she chose to sleep with Nel’s husband, Sula merely replies with â€Å"there was this space in front of me, fag me, in my head… and Jude leaseed it up… that’s all’. Sula does not feel any remorse in breaking up her best friend’s marriage, and even at her old, feeble age she does not ask for forgiveness.\r\nThis shows that Sula just used sex as a stopcock to occupy her loneliness, and probably did not respect herself a great deal. Nel, however, is more respectful of her body. Her grandmother was strict and religious and this h ad a positive effect on Nel’s values. Sula grew up around numerous, fantastical men and this probably made her view her doings as normal, just like she witnessed as a child. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette also connect her happiness to sex. She submits to her husband sexually and begins to hunger for sex as much as he. Afterward, Antoinette seems more lost, holler when Rochester whispers, â€Å"You are safe.\r\nHe feels no real esteem for her, and this shows that once again, the woman is left suffering and stuck in a situation that she is unable to break free of. Also, Rochester has sex with Amelie (a servant who accompanies Antoinette and her husband), while Antoinette is next door. He does this to exert his power over Antoinette and to belittle her. Amelie, like Antoinette is lonely, and this sexual act with Rochester is the only way she feels wanted. Although she knows Rochester does not love her or even have feelings for her, she is electrical capacity with the fa ct that she is wanted for single moment.\r\nShe uses sex to fill the void of loneliness, much like Antoinette does. Unlike Rhys and Morrison, Nichols demonstrates her sexuality and effrontery in her body. In her poem Invitation, she says â€Å" interject up and see me sometime.. ” and she repeats this four times throughout the poem. Her use of repetition puts emphasis on her confidence and we realise that she is flirtatious, and uses her sexuality as a tool of power. There are also graphic and funny descriptions of her breasts, thighs, front and bum, such as â€Å"My breast are huge exciting amnions of watermelon, your hands can’t cup…my thighs are twin seals, fat polish pups”.\r\nThis shows us that she is happy and proud of her body, although some whitethorn not agree. In the poem Small Questions direct by the Fat Black Woman, she refers to Eve committing a Sin in the Garden of Eden, and says â€Å"Will like Eve… be tempted one again’. S he is line drawing herself as a sin, and a temptation to resist, which symbolises her confidence in her self, she knows men are lustful towards her. While Nichols focuses solely on portraying the character of a black woman, Sula also explores the male characters in the texts, and how social roles confine them.\r\nThe typical male is regarded as the provider for the family, but Morrison takes this typical male figure, and demonstrates how they are dependant on woman and incapable of height a family, and they have an insatiable hunger do them to commit adultery. In all of the men that Sula, her mother and Eva sleep with, they are willing to cheat on their wives to fulfill their needs. There is usually a penalization for adultery, but the women use their own personal strength and respect for each other, and they let the men condense away with adultery.\r\nWhile many will argue that forgiving their husbands is a sign of weakness, really it is the men that are weak for giving in to t emptations. young-bearing(prenominal) domination is also present with Sula and Jude (Nel’s husband), as he sleeps with her despite the fact that â€Å"she stirred up a mind maybe, but not his body”. Contrary to the typical male provider role, men are incapable of raising a family in Sula. Eva was left alone to fend for her children, and Sula’s father died when she was a child, and Sula also failed to feel a suitable male to start a family with.\r\nMen were unfaithful to their wives and they even left their family, in the case of Nel and her husband. Nel’s father, although married happily to his wife, was incessantly working away at sea, leaving Helene to raise her daughter alone. Though they are physically strong, men need women in order to be effective, and they a great deal fail to be a father figure. To conclude, all three texts explore gender, through the social roles that confine them and the bodies that represent the confinement. It can be argu ed that Nichols and Morrison offer a more confident, free portrayal of women, compared to Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.\r\nThe use of first person emphasises the turmoil go about by the characters in Wide Sargasso Sea and also The Fat Black Woman. Unlike Nichols, Morison and Rhys use narrative techniques to show how women are both emotionally and psychologically confines in the post-colonial world. Nichols offers the fat black woman freedom and happiness, while Rhys ends Antoinette’s story with her in captivity, foreshadowing Antoinette’s next actions. All three writers effectively present their characters battling the confinement that being a woman brings; Sula and Nichols remain rebels while Antoinette fails to break free of her confinement.\r\n'