How High School English Ruined Feminism

The Re– “Awakening” of Feminism in College

AP English

High school English was the birth and death of feminist literature for me. In AP Language and Composition, there are required readings that must be implemented into the curriculum. All the novels my teacher chose were from revolutionaries and the best of their kind. When reading about dystopian societies under the guise of utopias, Mrs. McAdams would have the class read George Orwell and Ray Bradbury. Within the theme of the corruption love can have readings included F. Scott Fitzgerald and Emily Bronte. When learning about the origin of morality and who holds true power, we’d read Joseph Conrad and William Golding. So when I hear the term “feminist literature”, I have no expectation except for the very best. Needless to say, I was horribly let down by her choice of literature. We –the open-minded and impressionable students –were exposed to second rate feminist literature, The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

The Awakening

I know this is a strong statement. I’m sure that in the 1800s this was considered to be at the forefront of feminist ideology. However, it is not the 1800s anymore and feminism has evolved and grown. The Awakening is about Edna Pontellier, a repressed housewife telling her story of self-discovery and breaking free of her controlling husbands –and essentially society’s –view of her as no more than an object to own. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not naïve or stubborn enough to say there aren’t the ingredients to make a quality feminist novel in the awakening. However, there are parts of the book that fight against the nature of feminist literature.

[SPOILER ALERT] — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Let’s begin with the very end of the book. We have Edna, now liberated from classic Victorian ideologies and from the patriarchal control of any man, and what is her next move except to spiral into a deep depression. She is a single woman, paying for her own home, and expressing herself in how she sees fit. This strong independent woman is no longer under anyone’s control and her next move is to go into the unforgiving sea and drown herself. If this isn’t enough of an argument let’s put this bluntly: the lack of men led to independence led to sadness which led to suicide.

Also it would be unconscionable not to make the argument that Edna never actually escaped the tight grip of the male control. And even more than that, Edna’s “awakening” was in part directed and facilitated by men. Once Edna leaves her husband’s subjugation and moves to a home of her own she is dominated by her desires for Lebrun and Arobin. Both of these men, led to her sexual awakening. When she escapes the grips of these men, it was only to be grasped by Robert.

College Feminism

It was a choice between GSST020: Women, Feminism, and Society in a Global Perspective or ENT173 Insect Physiology. And as much as I love to delve into the physical sciences, I don’t want a little under half my week to be consumed with images of creepy crawlers. The natural choice was to pick the Gender Studies class. Even more incentive, I have a friend in the class and we can suffer together. Much to my surprise, the class wasn’t a repeat of my high school experience. What most carried with me was the idea that feminism goes beyond just gender.

Intersectional Thought

Like I’ve said, feminism isn’t just about the male-female dynamic. Feminist critical scholarship would be incomplete without taking account of the roles race, gender, class, sexuality, and other aspects of society play into the whole. In GSST020, there was a lot of time taken into emphasizing intersectional thought in a feministic perspective by looking at authors such as Gloria Anzaldua, Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberle Crenshaw, and bell hooks.

Patricia Collins, in her novel Black Feminist Thought, expands on intersectionality by introducing the matrix of domination focusing on the hierarchy of power in society. Feminist Gloria Anzaldua embraced intersectionality in her book, La frontera/Borderlands, and her life within cultural borderlands. A space where her Mexican, American, female, lesbian identity intersects and becomes her intersectional identity. Bell hooks talks about her “borderlands” as being both black and a woman in Ain’t I a Woman. It described how easily she fell through the cracks of gender and race because of being a minority in both. Kimberle Crenshaw argued that not only did intersectionality exist but that there were three types of it including: structural — the experiences of women of color have within political and social systems, political referring to women of color who are caught between conflicting political issues involving race and gender, and representational — where race and gender devalues women of color in popular culture.

Conclusions

College gender studies “awakened” me to the world of modern feminism. It wasn’t as dull and disappointing as reading the Awakening and it taught me more about contemporary feminist theory. So now that it is over, and I am racked with such sadness… maybe I will just go take a walk into the ocean. Or not. I think I will just continue to read and open my mind to more theories. And even figure out a way to spread this knowledge I now have.