Articulating the Female Subject: The Example of Marian Engel's Bear

Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska, sectio FF – Philologiae

Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

The question of how to stand in solidarity with the animal and respect its "divergent agency" (Plumwood 201) without instrumentalizing it as an extension of the human self is one that has long preoccupied Canadian writers. In her seminal work of literary criticism Survival, Margaret Atwood observed that Canadian literary texts often rely on images of suffering animals as symbols of Canada's status as a "nearly-extinct" nation threatened by American imperialism (Survival 95). According to Atwood, such representations are driven not by a genuine concern with conservation ethics or animal agency but by a compulsion to police the integrity of the national self against external cultural others. In Surfacing, Atwood ironizes this logic of incorporation through the figure of a nameless narrator who attempts to consolidate her individual and national selfhoods by aligning herself with animal figures whom she regards as victims of American imperialism. Confusing human-animal solidarity with human-animal sameness, Atwood's narrator eventually feels herself morphing into an animal. Her transformation is ironized, however, by revelations of her own complicity in the colonization and exploitation of the very animals with which she identifies. Marian Engel's Bear similarly dramatizes

Graeco-Latina Brunensia, 2022

The relation of bear mythology with the transformation of girls into women, as well as the connection and involvement of Artemis and bears with the beginning of woman's adulthood and motherhood is considered. Particular attention is paid to the worship of Artemis Brauronia and to rituals like the Arkteia rite. Finally, the connection of bear mythology and customs and beliefs from ancient Greece and the film Brave (2012) is discussed.

1995

There was some connection, some unfingerable intimacy among them, some tie between longing and desire and the achievable. MARIAN ENGEL, Bear [P]eople often judged by what they feared or knew existed in themselves. ELIZABETH JOLLEY, The Well Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: "Here are our monsters," without immediately turning the monsters into pets. JACQUES DERRIDA, "Some Statements and Truisms. . .

Both men and women constitute the species of human beings but men have dominated over women since time immemorial and have neglected and seem to have denied their rights altogether in many situations. Women very often have been deprived of human rights and society seems to have played with them as if they were cards or puppets to serve the purpose their superior 'others' have liked. This reductionist position of women has been reflected in literature, firstly, by male writers and then by female writers. Unfortunately the portrayal of women in the hands of many male writers appears to have been either more reductionist than what it is/was in reality or more exaggerated while most of the female writers appear emotional and over sentimental in their portrayal of women characters. This paper attempts to briefly study the condition of women as reflected in literature in relation to the actual condition of women of different times. Women did not have much scope for institutional education and very few had the opportunity of reading at home because of conservative society in the past. The male dominated conservative society did not think that women were human beings and they needed education. Society understood by human beings only men who would earn and dominate the others serving them. As women were kept confined to homes and hearths and did not earn, they had the status like that of servants. To make and keep women subordinate and subservient to men, men had concocted different texts and associated them with religion. The uneducated women, brought up under the shade of religion, believed those texts without questioning their authenticity and the more they believed the more they became subservient. Any deviation on the part of a woman was treated with physical cruelty, and women tolerated in silence even being bitten by their

IRA International Journal of Education and Multidisciplinary Studies, 2021

Ernest is often stereotyped as a masculine writer as much of his work focuses on hunting, fishing, boxing, and bullfighting. With the rise of the women movement in the 1960s and feminist criticism in the department of literature, Hemingway became Enemy Number One for many critics, who accused him of perpetuating sexist stereotypes in his writing. By analyzing some female characters in his major works, this paper argues that as a skilful writer in depicting the male sphere, Hemingway has created many female characters that deserve commendation, and the mainstream of his female consciousness is positive. On the whole, his attitude toward women is fair.

Philip Roth Studies, 2012

2011

MANUSYA, 2006

Laura Esquivel, Mexican, Joanne Harris, British, Fannie Flagg, American, and Isak Dinesen, Danish, are women writers who have written contemporary world popular fiction: Like Water for Chocolate, Chocolat, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, and the short story 'Babette's Feast'. Out of their desire to reflect their female identity, these women writers of four different nationalities have concertedly rejected the long-running male literary tradition, in which male characters rule and dominate and, in turn, have created a female literary tradition in which their female characters not only assert a solid and secure place in the world but also are allowed to display their female strength, resourcefulness and dominance. These contemporary women writers have brought about significant changes in contemporary fiction in which they terminate literary stereotypes and discard traditional female roles and 'untrue ' images imposed on women. These women authors red...

his article seeks to broaden theoretical paradigms commonly used in the social sciences to analyze representations of gender, especially girlhood, in children's literature. In particular, I attempt to add to liberal feminist frameworks for conceptualizing gender that have "been virtually unchallenged, despite problematic findings and a significant shift in feminist thought" (Clark, 2002; Clark, Kulkin, & Clancy, 1999). Liberal feminisms theorize gender through the lens of sex-role theory, a paradigm rooted in humanistic discourses in which social roles are allocated to men and to women on the basis of biological sex. This article builds on this important work, which brings attention to sex-role stereotypes in children's literature, and approaches the topic from another perspective.