When I used to meet boys, because they were still boys then, they used to ask me all these seemingly deep but actually surface questions about myself. I grew bored, and began answering by saying, "I am a paradox". Apparently I am also an enigma because I would never give these boys an explanation. I didn't feel one was necessary. To me, it was obvious that....I am new
and old. I am conventional
and rebellious. I am. A Woman.
For class right now I am reading
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. I am having Woman question issues. General opinion would say that the Victorians were repressed when it came to women and
OMG sex. But I sometimes wonder if modern day America is just as repressed as we would
like to say Victorian England was. There is a question of what women are allowed to want. About what is deemed appropriate. About looking back at characters steeped in history and yet judging them as a modern day person and STILL punishing women.
In the novel is a character, Sue, who is at once impractical/sharp witted/impulsive/etc. She sounds kind of modern right? Full of paradoxes?
Some women in my class criticize her for using men for her own gain. I would like to say - freaking finally. Someone who gives as good as she gets. I would like to ask: WHY IS IT ALWAYS ABOUT MEN. Why is everything we do as women contextualized according to men and what they think and how they feel. What about us? What about Sue?
Let's take a look at her motivation. Sue is pulled in two directions: that of intellectual autonomy and that of loving being loved.
She has been called manipulative, conniving, and calculating. Why must we, modern day readers, attach the same stigma Victorian society placed on her? What do people fault her for? Going after what she wanted? Recognizing that personal relationships sometimes get in the way? Men realized this ages ago. So when a woman realizes it...she is needing punishment.
Something Sue is heavily criticized for is withholding sex. She withholds sex from three different men. I will say that withholding sex for power is looked down on in our current culture because it is perceived as "playing games" and because "powerful" women explore other avenues to gain power, and isn't withholding sex just punishing yourself? But, maybe there is also a little residual threat of a woman having power over a man?
So, if we look through society's point of view we say: I can’t believe she is so selfish, manipulative,
cold and
unfeeling. But if we take a step back and look at the situation, we might see that -at the time- Sue was exerting her ONE arena for agency. I can't tell if people are upset about Sue exerting agency/power or upset because sex is involved. Look at the words we use for when Sue finally (and even the use of finally I take issue with, as if her “fall” is inevitable) has sex. She has: given in/given it up/succumbed. The 'it' she is giving up is not simply sex. These are words of subjugation. She is handing her power over. She is giving up on intellectual autonomy. In a way, she is sacrificing herself.
Maybe Sue is conventional after all.
I don't have conclusions yet, as I am only halfway through the novel. But I hear there are children. I hear there is allegory. I hear bad things happen. Stay tuned...
"I have been thinking...that the social moulds civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am...but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies..."
Sue Bridehead, Jude the Obscure
