As a person with understanding of the critical essay “The Married Woman” by Simone de Beauvoir, the author has always brought up to his superiors the viability of strategy formation regarding feminism and at times fail to understand the reasons or logic behind certain strategic implementations imposed on it.
By delving into this project paper, the author intends to have better insights into how feminism as incorporated in the essay “The Married Woman” is thought up, formulated and then imparted down into the readers. The author hopes to have an in-depth understanding as to how the culture of feminism has enabled women to compete effectively and profitably in this era of internationalization where competition is extremely intense.
In order to reinforce the learning objectives, two key focal issues were focussed upon, i.e. innovation and diversity. Innovation was discussed with regard to “The Married Woman” where it was renowned for its developmental capabilities to constantly innovate. Diversity came under strategic thinking and formation as the author considered the diverse culture, political climate, economic surroundings, social environment, technological settings, government policies and legal systems in order to better understand the wisdom behind the essay.
OVERVIEW
Will a married woman’s dreams disappear? In the essay “The Married Women,” Simone De Beauvoir describes the status of housewives: The housework leads to the woman’s dreams not coming true, and to dependency on her family. The married woman spends most of her time preparing food, and cleaning the house. If she receives warm approval from her family, she becomes happy, which shows that her life is only about her family. Even though she works hard, she does not create anything, and does not impact society significantly, as her husband who works outside the home does. Even though a married woman enjoys doing housework for her family, it becomes undesirable and hopeless when the works is repetitive. De Beauvoir over exaggerates the married women’s life as having no hope or desire. However, the author’s strong word choice makes readers disagree with her argument.
ANALYSIS
At the beginning of the essay, de Beauvoir brings up the idea that housework is tiresome by comparing housework to Sisyphus.
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time, she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present. She never senses conquest of a positive Good, but rather indefinite struggle against negative Evil .
Sisyphus is a character in a Greek myth. He was a Greek god who was forced to roll a stone up a steep hill, and each time he reached the top it tumbled back down. Then the whole process starts again, lasting all eternity. Woman’s housework is compared to the torture of Sisyphus because a woman works for her family over and over again. The phrase that says, “torture [and] indefinite struggle against negative, shows how the author describes housework in a pessimistic way. The words torture, struggle, negative, and evil are very powerful. In addition, her repetition words that end with ~ing “eating,” “sleeping,” “cleaning,” “washing,” “ironing,” “sweeping,” “ferreting”, reveal to the reader how dreary the married woman’s job is. As states in the following quotations, the author reveals her disdain for the housework of married women as a “never ending struggle against the evil principles,” and “her war against dust, stains, mud, and dirt”. The author uses extreme words to persuade the reader that chores are repugnant and distasteful.
The married woman repeats the same housework, like washing, cleaning and ironing everyday, and she cannot find hope in any of these works. The author believes that these tasks are some sort of torture, and therefore ineffective for women’s lives. The following quotation reveals the author’s bias:
But woman is not called upon to build a better world: her domain is fixed
and she has only to keep up the never ending struggle against the evil principles that creep into it; in her war against dust, stains, mud and dirt she is fighting sin, wrestling with Satan.
In the beginning of this paragraph, the author shows that the housework is the job that does not move forward to make a better world. Their main work is unchanging and is fixed up for cleaning and cooking. The author’s metaphorical expression of the housework by comparing housework as “never ending struggle against the evil principles” and “wrestling with Satan” gives extreme image how repetitive, harsh and appalling the housework is. In the Christian religion, Satan is the devil, a powerful evil being who is the chief opponent of God. As every Christian has to fight for Satan, the housewife also has to fight for the dust, stains, mud and dirt everyday. The words, “dust, stains, mud and dirt” contain the same meaning but the author repeats these words together to emphasize boredom of the housework. After they fight against Satan, the light shines through the window after the housekeeper cleans them out.
The author mentions that women do not have to take responsibility for developing the world society, and that their lives are only dependent on the family. The following paragraph expresses De Beauvoir’s idea:
The worst of it all is that this labor does not even tend toward the creation of anything durable. Woman is tempted-and the more so the greater pains she takes – to regard her work as an end in itself. She sighs as she contemplates the perfect cake just out of the oven: “it’s a shame to eat it!” It is really too bad to have husband and children tramping with their muddy feet all over her waxed hardwood floors!
The housework does not produce anything worth, does not get paid, and does not challenge woman to show their hidden ability. The author describes the housework with extreme expression that it carries the greater pains. The married woman’s mood is varying under the outcome of the cake. Author chose cake to explain woman’s mood because cake is one of the representative food that gives enjoyment with sweetness and it reminds readers of happiness that is related to the birthday. Making cake also gives a typical housekeeper’s image. The well-made cake gives women a delight of the life. If other members of family make a mess after she cleans the house, she should start over again her repetitive work. In “The Married Woman”, De Beauvoir criticizes woman’s routine and ineffective work by describing it with many tremendous words: “struggle against negative Evil”, “never ending struggle against the evil principles,” and “her war against dust, stains, mud, and dirt”. Even though she mentions the positive side of the housework, she focuses on the negative side of the housework with exaggeration and metaphor. Using metaphors to pertain to the housework with religious-related words make readers oppose to convince de Beauvoir’s deliberation.
CONCLUSION
The results of the analysis carried out on the essay “The Married Woman” by Simone de Beauvoir indicated very significant effects for the establishment of feminism, even amidst the threats of unrest. Therefore, we could conclude that the growth of feminist movement could still be expected to improve faster than average.
The review of a married woman’s capabilities and resources revealed very little inconsistencies regarding her strategies. This is coherent with her traditional inside-out approach. However, the need to reconcile both the inside-out and outside-in approaches becomes imperative now for the married woman mentioned in the essay.
The analysis of the married woman’s environment as well as the capabilities people involved revealed certain gaps, most of which are biased towards the environment. However, these gaps paved the way towards determining a number of recommended options to secure the married woman’s stability.
Also, the married woman has to find a balance between adherence to internal forces within the management and to the changing forces of the environment in order to implement such strategic options.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment