Silent Subversion in a Woman on a Roof free essay sample

This paper centers on the unnamed woman sunbathing on the roof of her own, using her indifference and silence as rebellion toward the three mens provocation working on another roof, trying to explore womens subversion toward the gender bias and their self-consciousness raising in the society. Key words: silence;indifference;rebellion;subversion 1. Introduction Doris Lessing, the recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature, is described by the award committee as that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny. Her novel A Woman on A Roof depicts the life and culture of modern European life and is regarded as one of the twentieth centurys pivotal works of fiction speaking for women. A Woman on A Roof is a short story set in the early 1960’s in London. While repairing a roof during a scorching heat wave, three workmen spot an attractive woman sunbathing on a neighboring roof: Tom is 17 years old, shy, and impressionable; Stanley has recently married and is both shocked and attracted by the womans nakedness; Harry, who is married and has a son about Toms age, is 45 years old, tolerant and practical-minded. They take advantage of her privacy and start to blow wolf whistles to her though she appears indifferent to their harassment. The harassment goes on for the next seven days and during this time we see the men’s hatred for her increase due to her indifferent yet they are still excited at seeing her naked body day in day out. In the novel, the unnamed woman represents the new modern liberating women having fortune, leisure and taste to enjoy themselves at any time anywhere, which is quite against the traditional opinion many men always think of. Meanwhile, the three men working hard under the same sunshine belong to the low class. By comparing with their different living status, Doris Lessing presents us a very vivid picture between men and women, high class and low class, which delivers her intention that women are not expelled to enjoy the high quality life as men usually do and new women have the courage to defy the creed vocally or silently. 2 Traditional Female Image and Gender Bias When talking about the female images, there is a variety of overt and subtle ways in it. They may be posited as ideal, whose angel wings scarcely touch the earth. Wealth may allow them enjoy poetic leisure, youth and extra grace if necessary; They may be posited as the material, whose whole-life mission is how to survive herself and her family in the earthly world. In A Women on A Roof, the traditional female images are just like the material: stay at home, obedient toward their husbands and keep the family hard. However, the unnamed women representing the new image of woman between the ideal and material and truly be herself all the time. She lying prone, brought her two hands up behind her shoulders with the end if a scarf in them, tied it behind her back, then sat smoking, and did not look up when Stanley let out a wolf whistle. When she is bothered, she blinked and stared, then dropped her head again with this gestures of indifference to ignore turbulence. How does the image come? Mostly by men! And it is because of the long-time existed gender bias. Women are generally and routinely casted to be inferior and their main responsibility is o nly to breed next generation. Women are not allowed to work outside and those encouraged working women still rarely receive equal pay respects and supports they deserved. Maybe there are some exceptions; the general situation is more or less the same. Julia Swindells has commented:It seems to me that the construction of gender difference and hierarchy is created at work as well as at homeand that the effect on women(less physical and technical capacity, lack of confidence, low pay) may well cast a shadow on the sex-relation of domestic life. [Victorian Writing,1985:2]. And Charles Darwin in his works of The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex(1871)says:Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman and has a more inventive genius. , which delivers his latent gender bias toward women. In U. S, it is not a long history that women are allowed to be enrolled into college educated as the same as men always were treated. Even those girls were allowed to enter colleges, the guiding principle i n education was still separate and unequal. In the early eighteenth century, boys and girls were assigned to sex-segregated classes to prepare their class and to be educated due to their gender difference. Those colleges which firstly enrolled women still offered female students less rigorous courses than male students and required female students to wash those male students clothes, and many of those colleges which enrolled women were for the economic force not the equity. In 1870, two thirds of all universities barred women. By 1900, more than two thirds of them admitted women with struggling. Consider that as late as the 1970s the all-male Ivy League Colleges did not admit women, and even now state-supported Virginia Military Institute fights for its all male status. The entry of women into professional work is similar. The professional power has the history it does and it would be difficult to make the entry for women into professional area as a matter of fact. These default rules existed long and still remain in the territory of the development of professional power in ways which sustains invidious distinction between female and male labor. All the false ways women have to face and, now, it is time to wake up. Doris Lessing, in the novel of A Woman on A Roof, yells out her equity require by depicting the unnamed woman defying the men and the bias those men represents. She endows the unnamed women with many facets and some mysteries. No information to be deduced for her background since gender bias here means everything at all. She is only a human being more than a woman, disliking being tagged with labels and not being easily categorized. She is free and has successfully defied the gender bias by her own silent behavior, which is also a pretty good example that women follow the Womans Declaration of Independence 1848(coauthored by Elizabeth Cady Stanton) against the gender bias since then. 3 Self-consciousness Raise and Feminine Subversion Consciousness of women is the studies of the whole gamut of women with extensive observation and becomes a way of perceiving women from getting sidetracked into maintracked or from single issue to masses and it would be a reform carrying theory about women further than it had ever been existed before. Regarding it, Kathie Sarachild writes about her one time experience in New York Radical Women, a newly formed organization, having heard one spokeswoman named Ann Forers speech below:I think we have a lot more to do just in the area of raising our consciousness, she then added:Ive only begun thinking about women as an oppressed group and each day, Im still learning more about itmy consciousness gets higher[Amy Kesselman,1999:489]. Self-consciousness raise of women challenges the old ideas and set up new ones. It is about feminism and how women consider and treat themselves. It should be the self-salvation from the inner heart of women and the awakening of themselves. They could dare to speak out what they really feel and revolt those unfairness and burdens toward women since long time ago. The unknown women, as protagonist in the novel, subverted the power men have asserted and did it successfully. She clearly knows what kind of life she really wants and takes into action to symbolize the raise of her self-consciousness. She uses her indifference and silence as weapon to fight and never yields. Confronting with the five days continuous provocation from the three working men, she sometimes stayed on her blanket, turning herself over and over, ignored them no matter what they did; Sometimes looked up at them, cool and remote, then went on reading again, or keeps on laying. In the end, she uses quite few words to express her anger when Tom is near her, which is her feminine subversion towards the gender bias. The tension between the women and the men emphasizes the feelings and experiences when women struggle to defend their rights if they encounter humiliation and unfairness. Just like Kathie Sarachild says: It seemed clear that knowing how our own lives related to the general condition of women would make us better fighter on behalf of women as a whole. We felt that all women would have to see this truth about their own lives before they would fight in a radical way for anyone. Go fight your own opressors. [Amy Kesselman, 1999:490] 4 Silence, your Name is Subversion Silence refers to the relative or total lack of audible sound. By analogy, silence may also refer to any absence of communication in media or in speech. Silence gets its colour from surrounding and emphasizes the soberness, rebellion, discontentment, or other complicated emotions comparing with the chattering person under certain circumstance. Silence is used for the purpose of being quite in some occasions or used just in daily communication. Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher and theologian, has noted: Silence gets its significance from surrounding religious language and in its turn gives this language depth. Only the person who can remain essentially silent can speak essentially. (TA 97). Onno Zijlstra,1998:143] Throughout the novel, the unnamed womans indifference and silence leave many readers the unforgettable impression of her silence. She does not speak a word when those men are provoking her, or speaks quite few words behaving as cold as ice in the end of the story: When Tom comes to her to show his admire, she tries to speak in a slow reasonable voice, where anger was kept in check, though with difficulty and says, Listen, if you get a kick out of seeing women in bikinis, why dont you take an sixpenny bus ride to the Lido? Youd see dozens of them, without all this mountaineering. Toms self-revealing of his love doesnt earn him any chance to let the woman speak more but impassively reply with one word of thanks. The situation is still as before:She lay there She said nothing. She had simply shut him out. Silence, here, becomes a powerful weapon that is more effective than language. Although language, implying the rationality and logic, relates to the universe and is the ideality that breaks up immediacy, silence is still more valid in some occasions than language to express the inner emptiness of the demonic as well as the inner fullness of faith. The unnamed woman, using her silence, delivers her faith of being the new women in the new society successfully and fight with all unfairness burdened on her like an intrepid woman warrior. Her silence, as a vivid symbol, represent all womens subversion toward the gender bias long existed. One of Margaret Atwoods poems named Spelling in 1981 shows how to master the power of speaking but also emphasize the might of being silence if it is correctly used. .. A word after a word after a word is power. * At the point where language falls away rom the hot bones, at the point where the rock breaks open and darkness flows out of it like blood, at the melting point of granite when the bones know they are hollowthe word splitsdoublesspeaks the truththe body itself becomes a mouth. This is a metaphor. 5 Conclusion Doris Lessing is a feminist. In the short story the unnamed woman is also the sharp and firm flag of feminism. She used her silence fight against the three men. Female should be equa l in rights and independence as human being with the male.