DeBranda Scurry

ENGL 1102-90

4/3/13

                                                           Literary Research paper

 

        Throughout time literature has been expanded to an array of possibilities, to capture the

American culture. From the first novels published in America, to the modern ones of today, they

all display their piece of American culture. Americans were founded upon the principles of

morality, freedom, and hard work. As generations go by they start to loss their sense of morality,

become materialistic, and forget the true meaning of freedom which conflict in older novels and

contemporary novels. Being gender role specific emerged to be more prevalent in literature,

leading to women and men having stereotyped characteristics. In Palo Alto, Our town and Perks

of Being a Wallflower  the women were suppressed by their fixed roles in American culture,

ultimately showing that under the pressures of society, women submit to the superiority of men.

       

      Women cling to the ideology that to fit into society, they have to comply with men’s wants.

In Palo Alto Chinatown chapter Pam is new in town and to try to adapt she starts fulfilling the

sexual pleasures of men in town. Palo Alto states, “Pam came over. I got her into Jason’s

parent’s bed. I got her naked. She wasn’t even drinking. The guys lined up outside the bedroom.

We went in twos and threes at a time. / I kept going back in with everyone like I was the party

host. I didn’t put my clothes on when I ushered people in” (Palo Alto 87). Being the new girl in

town and not knowing anybody but Robert puts an immense amount of pressure on Pam to

satisfy him and do what he wants her to do. She is subjected to have sex with men because she is

seen as a sexual object and those men have no respect for her. The greedy sexual nature of men

constricts women to demean them in order to keep a man in power. In this case Robert knows he

has power over Pam so he sets her up to be passed around by a bunch of men. It portrays how

insignificant women’s roles are viewed. From a feminist perspective, “however diverse the ideas

may be, all are concerned with women’s inferior position in society and the discrimination faced

by them because of the social, economic, political or cultural order” (Chowdhury, Anupama 29).

Not just Pam but the women in Palo Alto are seen in an American society as socially beneath the

men. The culture allows years and years of traditional women’s roles such as being passive to a

man and having the man make their decisions for them, set the stage for all women.

     

       Hard work is a factor women possess today but in some literature, it still binds women to

just cooking, cleaning, and watching the kids, making them pressured to do their traditional

duties rather than have an education. Our town states, “You know the rule’s well as I do No

books at the table. As for me, I’d rather have my children healthy than bright” (Our

Town 9). Mrs. Gibbs is more concerned with her daughter being healthy enough to live the kind

of life she is. Also it says, “Mama Do you know what I love most in the world. Do you?

Money. / eat your breakfast” (page 9). Rebecca has the drive to be unlike her mother, she wants

to make money and have a higher education to achieve that. However Mrs. Gibbs just ignores

what Rebecca says because it was not a social norm for women to do that. Mrs. Gibbs is so

conformed into that traditional lifestyle that she believes there is no other option for women, that

books are for men and staying healthy in order to have the life she has is for women. `Mr. Webb

said, “George, I was thinking the other night of some advice my father gave me when I got

married. Charles, he said, Charles, start out early showing whose boss, he said. Best thing to do

is to give an order, even if it don't make sense; just so she'll learn to obey. And he said: if

anything about your wife irritates you…her conversation, or anything…just get up and leave the

house. That'll make it clear to her, he said. And, oh, yes! He said never, never let your wife know

how much money you have, never” (page 39). The significance of the traditions male

dominance over his wife gets passed down from generation to generation, keeping women from

rising up. It’s so common for men to be the boss and keep their wives obedient and dominates

them that it becomes a social norm in the society. From a feminine aspect, “In feminism, the

strong women still explain women’s oppression and men’s dominance, which are still

stereotyped and denigrated in literature” (Coleman, Jenny). In Our Town women are being

dominated but their invisible to it because a woman being oppressed is an everyday thing,

nobody in Our Town questions the culture. American culture embraces old values, which puts a

huge label on women in literature. Like women are so ignorant to the fact their husbands are

deliberately controlling them, basically training them to get use to that kind of treatment and

lifestyle. Women are being held down especially in Our Town because they are a product of their

parents and generations of oppression. They can’t escape the submissive life they live, when they

are afraid to make a change. Everybody and everything in Our Town  is ordinary, average. The

women are pressured to keep the normality of the town by playing their obligatory role.

    

      Being thrown into a society where men express their dominance over women by violence,

demonstrates a reason why women are pressured to keep their position under the man. Perks of

Being a Wallflower states, “This one night, she was saying very mean things about how he didn't

stand up to the class bully when he was fifteen or something like that. /.Anyway, after she leaned

into him for about four movie scenes, which I guess is about ten minutes or so, he started crying. 

Crying very hard. "And this guy got really red-faced.  And he looked at me.  Then, he looked at

her.  And he wound up and hit her hard across the face.  I mean hard.  I just froze because I

couldn't believe he did it.  It was not like him at all to hit anybody.  He was the boy that made

mix tapes with themes and hand-colored covers until he hit my sister and stopped crying. The

weird part is that my sister didn't do anything.  She just looked at him very quietly.  It was so

weird.  My sister goes crazy if you eat the wrong kind of tuna, but here was this guy hitting her,

and she didn't say anything” (Perks of Being a Wallflower 18). Charlie’s sister’s boyfriend

shows his control and supremacy over his girlfriend by hitting her, putting her back in her place.

Immediately the sisters attitude changed because she initially had the dominance but in a society

that where women “aren’t meant to have as much power” the roles were reversed. However the

fact that the action chosen was physically hitting his girlfriend embodies the strength men have

over women physically and mentally. Like most women the girlfriend becomes clueless that her

boyfriend is dominating her because she starts to like him even more after he hit her. It is said

that, “Because feminine prose is limited to self-experience and doesn't concern with others or the

scope of the social existence of others, the meaning of the discourse system applied by some

contemporary female subjects has no means to acquire the text thickness or text weight

constituted by participation of corresponding social connotation of the era” (Rongxiang, Chen).

Women have to go through their own experiences in society in their era to understand the social

existence of their oppression. Charlie’s sister also alike Aunt Rebecca and Charlie’s grandmother

had to go through physical male abuse. Through that they unconsciously understood the

existence of male domination first hand which made them weak later on in life.

          

      In Palo Alto, Our town and Perks of Being a Wallflower the women were suppressed by their

fixed roles in American culture, ultimately showing that under the pressures of society, women

submit to the superiority of men. On a feminist outlook the women are looking for a way out, so

they can be equal in power, control and dominance with men. The American culture and a lot of

other cultures also have always had the issue of women being dominated by men and it still

poses as a problem today. This global problem represents that people are so greedy for power

that they fail to understand that their just as powerless as the one they have power over.                    

     BibliographyWorks Cited Chowdhury, Anupama. "Historicizing, Theorizing, And Contextualizing Feminism." ICFAI Journal Of English Studies 4.1 (2009): 28-39. Literary Reference Center. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.COLEMAN, JENNY. "An Introduction To Feminisms In A Postfeminist Age." Women's Studies Journal 23.2 (2009): 3-13. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.Rongxiang, Chen. "Highlighting Women's Life--Analysis Of Distinguishing Feature Of Contemporary Feminine Prose." Asian Social Science 7.3 (2011): 145-149. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Apr. 2013.