>Barbara Benesch
>BJBenesch@aol.com wrote:
>My point is this: We're falling for one of the most classic (and
>unfortunately effective!) tools of patriarchy to keep women from actually
>gaining ground. In our society, a woman is "wrong" no matter what she does.
> A mother who works and sends her children to day care "doesn't care enough"
>about her children, while a mother who stays home to raise and nurture her
>children herself "doesn't have a life of her own." Who exactly are WE to say
>who is right? We all live very different lives and a choice that is right
>for me may not be right for any other woman on this list or anywhere, in
>fact. The problem is that society has us so hard on the defensive that if
>someone says something that *might* be construed as criticism, we feel we
>must leap to our own defense for fear of being informed that there is
>something wrong with the choices we have made and the ways we have each
>chosen to live our lives.
http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~lhsjamse/home.htm
>
Barbara: thank you for some good comments regarding the recent debate. I
belive you have pointed accurately to what is happening. I know for some
years I have been following the media presentation/construction of "working"
women vs. "housewives" (as if all women don't work) which seemed to
constantly foreground the enmity between these women. As a woman who has
chosen not to be married or have children, I don't have much personal stake
here except to note that all this focus still seems to be based on the
assumption that women SHOULD have children, no matter what. Of course I'm
living in a rural part of Texas where the dominant assumption is women ought
to be married with kids right out of high school, and there I do believe
that the young women are NOT given the chance to make a choice. I have a
lot of students who are 24, back in school, divorced (IF they're lucky; the
level of reported spousal abuse is horrifying), and trying to raise two or
three children on their own.
Robin
**********************************************
Yvonne wrote:
>You're probably right again. Sam is certainly a very conmpetant,
>self-sufficient hobbit. I don't like the way Merry & Pippin talk to him
>though. Of course, I've never had a servant so perhaps that's what grates.
The model for Sam's relationship to Mr. Bilbo, Mr. Frodo, etc is the English
class system that Tolkien knew only from the top down. Sam is an admirable
character in many ways (remember he takes over for Frodo when he belives
Frodo is dead and thus becomes a Ringbearer in his own right and is honored
as such by the Elves and others). But he is also a firm believer in the
class system, knowing his own place in it and keeping others firmly in
theirs. I didn't understand this on an emotional level until I studied at
Oxford for a summer abroad program and met some of the scouts who work in
the colleges, cleaning, etc. Some of the women (*who were my mother's age*)
told me how much they liked the American students who picked up after
themselves (made their beds, hung up their own clothes, etc.) and were
generally nicer than the British students. Pip, one of the men, once firmly
instructed a group of radical American students about how awful it was that
a few working class students come to Oxford on scholarship are, and how they
shouldn't be allowed, etc. (We also heard a lot of comments about how
emotional Americans are, and how much they hug, oh horrors, in public, and
so on, showing the perceptions of major cultural differences between the two
national cultures.)
This may not connect directly to feminism/SF except that the myth that
America has no class has often affected feminist philosophy, theory, and
practice--trying to work out the intersections of race, class, and gender
can be difficult. SF novels, even explicitly feminist ones, often focus
more on gender issues, but the 'invisible' aspect of the gender is that it's
often anglo-european/middle class women who are presenting their critique of
gender roles in their cultures/communities.
A further comment on the fantasy/medieval thread: my housemate who is a
medieval historian cannot stand to read 99.999999999 of the published
fantasy and especially Ellis Peter's Cadfael mysteries because she says they
have got it all wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. She does like Eco's novel,
but that's about it.
Robin
****************************************************
Edward James wrote:
>Thank you for your long interesting letter about Tolkien etc. I thought
>people might be interested in an extract which the best known current
>children's fantasy writer in Britain, Diana Wynne Jones, has just
>published in my journal FOUNDATION
Thank you for running this--it's wonderful! I'll have to subscribe asap so
I can receive that issue.
Robin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:53 PDT