Analysis Of Lethal's Embrace, The Mother And Love, Forever

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A NEW WOMAN Feminists as Lucy Irigaray, Judith Butler and Helene Cixous have explained in their essays how men are historically empowered by their own speeches that explain men are the only subject, the main model to equal. The aim of this essay will be to provide an analysis of Lethal, Embrace, The Mother and Love, Forever by Carol Oates and explain how society affects characters’ behaviors in these stories considering feminist ideas. Lethal shows a man’s action caused by patriarchy, created by society. It is a short story with a male narrator. There is a man that feels superior to a woman, so he rapes her, even though she does not want to. This story can be related to Irigaray’s ideas that man is a ‘singular’ subject capable of governing all. Irigaray criticizes Freud; she believes he only sees sexuality, ‘’All her efforts are directed toward the conquest of the male sexual organ’’ (Irigaray, p. 9). Society, absorbing all these ideas from recognized people that men are above women, justifies men’s actions. That is what usually happens in society when women are raped: people tend to comment ‘she must have done something to attract him,’ instead of trying to change a patriarchy that is constructed since childhood as Judith Butler affirms ‘’gender is constructed by society’’ (Butler, p. 35) and Irigaray explains ‘‘the mother speaks …show more content…

She is apparently quiet after her boyfriend has told her he do not want children. She is actually shattered and she murders her children. It seems a little exaggerated, but it is a consequence of all the situations she has repressed during her life. As Cixous explains ‘’every woman has known the torment of getting up to speak: a double distress.’’(Cixous, p. 351) It is necessary that women must speak up their minds, the female’s character in Love, forever is a victim of a patriarchal society that defines women’s expected

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