Feministic Analysis on ‘The Sleeping Beauty'

            ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ is a fairy tale orally narrated from generation to generation which is liked by children of all time and all geographical location. In Nepal, the very story is compiled by Madhav Khatiwada in his text ‘World Famous Fairy Tales.’ Although the story begins in a classical way and has good plot, it has its loopholes too. The story presents female character as a protagonist but fails to provide justice to her character.

            The title ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ is negatively representing the female character. ‘Beauty’ is used to materialize the females. It indirectly indicates that females are merely the objects to gaze on. So they must be beautiful. Similarly, ‘Sleeping’ is a word meaning laziness, tiredness, weary, passive, still, etc. Here, we can easily understand that the protagonist is lazy which she is not expected to be. Females are expected to be beautiful, full of ornaments and hard-working by the patriarchal society. The same insight is presented here too forgetting that the females are not a commodity to objectify and they possess equal rights as males.

            Male characters in the tale seem to be kind whereas females are the cause of rise and fall of the action. Females are presented some negative attributes to move the story forward. At surface reading, we may feel that males and females are presented equally however it’s not the truth. The writer seems very clever to use his diction so as to confuse the readers.

                        He invited not only his kindred, friends and acquaintances, but also the wise women so that they might be kind and well disposed towards the child. There were thirteen of them in kingdom, but, as he had only twelve golden plates for them to eat out of, one of them had to be left at home.

The above lines use the words like “kind”, “wise”, etc., however they also provide a condition to ruin the good atmosphere. The word “thirteen” itself indicates the meaning that least females are good enough. “…but also the wise women” in the first line of the above quote indicates that the females aren’t supposed to have a gathering or a party. Here the writer is biased towards females. So, the text is unfair towards females’ beliefs and actions.

            ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ has created the “princess ideal,” which is a representation of gender that young females should idolize. It also portrays women in a negative light. So, this is an unrealistic and inappropriate promotion of harmful body images and a narrow ideal of marriage as a happy ending for women. Not only this, the male characters in the text upholds the role as “alpha-male” and they stand for all things that are stereotypically patriarchal. The alpha-male is known for having physical power, social dominance, as well as status and leadership. With the female heroine’s inability to act assertively, she has to rely on external rescues and this makes female subordination romantically desirable. Prince from ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is the definition of a stereotypical leading male character. He is wealthy, regal, and saves Aurora from eternal sleep.

As Lisa Tuttle asserts, we need “to interpret symbolism of literary texts so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view”. Here, in this tale also, many things remain in shade only because the text epitomizes the males’ prospective. The princess faces her downfall because of her action i.e. pricking herself with a spindle. She was taken care by the three little fairies when she was in eternal sleep. This illustrates that the females are subjected for caring and rearing the relatives, family members and the dear ones.

There she lay, so beautiful that he could not turn his eyes away, and he stooped down and gave her a kiss. But as soon as he kissed her, she opened her eyes and awake, and looked at him quite sweetly. Then they went down together, and the king awoke, and the queen and the whole court, and looked at each other in great surprise.

The above lines signify that the authority or power of a male character. He is presented as if he is a god so that with a single kiss he could have revived the princess from eternal sleep. After the princess woke up, she did raise any questions to the male character. Here the author renders his pre-occupied male ideology to place the females in subordinating position or in the second position.

Similarly, the text fails to articulate the voice of females because of its linguistic structure. The symbolic system of language expressed by the text is not sufficient to give space for the females and is making them just passive objects. The writer provide household filthy conversation to the female protagonist and her mother whereas a macho type of conversation to the male protagonist. The princess and her old mother engage in a talk of “spindle” and “spinning”. But in the dialogue of youth, there lies bravery when he says “I am not afraid, I will go and see the beautiful Briar Rose.” In this way, the writer established the female position as secondary stereotyping them as household workers. This binary opposition is a clear discrimination to the females which just advocates males’ superiority and power in the society. On the contrary, it places the females’ in subordinating position making them powerless.

The feminist critic Luce Irigary believes that women are not sufficiently represented by “existing symbolic systems of language” and women are not given proper place in the patriarchal world. She insists on the subversive potential of the women who must work within the phallocentric symbolic system into which the women are placed.  She also criticizes the phallus as restrictive monolithic singular and fixed. Furthermore, she rejects fixity of phallocentric meaning. She argues that women can get sexual pleasure with their multiple sex organs. For her, it is the stupidity of patriarchy to define women according to their lack of phallus as well as it is mistake to define their language, their existence under the symbolic system according to masculine model.

Taking the Luce Irigary’s argument into consideration, the tale “The Sleeping Beauty” fails to judge the multiplicity and diversity of women. The story writer repeatedly uses the words that symbolizes phallus and dehumanizes the women. The words like “old tower”, “rusty key”, “spindle”, “horses”, “dogs”, “bed”, and “thorns” are used to establish males’ superiority complex over females. These words indicate the phallic symbol which means females are inferior to males because they lack phallus.

In the same way, the writer defines the females with the symbols like “black hen”, “evil”, “flowers”, “pigeons”, “kitchen”, etc. These symbols, as mentioned by Luce Irigary, considered to be feminine. These words either speaks about the dark part of the life, lack of phallus, something deficient or household. ‘Black hen’ refers to a female being that is considered something not good according to Hindu mythology. The word ‘evil’ itself signifies something worse. Words ‘flowers’ and ‘pigeons’ are feminine words which indicate something pleasant, beautiful or someone who is responsible to deliver a message. In the same way ‘kitchen’ word is directly associated with females. Male patriarchal society regard females as the beings who spare their whole life in the kitchen. So these words placed the females’ in powerless position mentioning them as ‘something lacking’ or ‘incomplete’.

The feminist critic Hélène Cixous also refers to the 'woman' as being the physical expression of her own voice." Contrary to her definition, this text presents the woman as a dependent voice, an object to gaze on, a subject who has to face downfall, and so on. At conclusion, the text consists prejudice to the females and is totally biased.

Works Cited

‘Hélène Cixous.’ Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Nov. 2016. Web. 16 Dec. 2016.

Khatiwada, Madhav, comp. ‘World Famous Fairy Tales.’ Kathmandu: Sujal Press, 2011. Print.

Warner, Arielle. “Someday My Prince Will Come: A Feminist Critique of Women Portrayed in Disney Animation.” 22 Dec. 2013.Web. 16 Dec. 2016.

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Patriarchal Prospective in Parijat’s ‘Blue Mimosa’: A Critical Study

Parijat, who was the nom de plume of Bishnu Kumari Waiba, is renowned all over the world through her literary writings, especially from her first novel ‘Blue Mimosa’. The very novel which is the English translation of ‘Shirish ko Phool’ is also regarded as the modern novel which incorporates the vibes and intentions of modern generation. The novel is the written from the Suyogbir’s point of view in which the speaker tries to show the way Nepali women are perceived by men in contemporary patriarchal society, and expected to behave.

From the very start of the novel, the writer tries to catch up the so called ‘patriarchal readers’ mind’ providing the narration of Shivaraj’s home visit by the speaker i.e. Suyog. The novel also projects the Nepali male culture at home and out of the home from different characters. Shivaraj and Suyog, they met three times in the bar and after the third meet Suyog was invited to visit his house. This clearly depicts the picture of Nepali society where males are set free for gambling whereas in the same society, the very act by the females is considered as immoral and unjust. Males in the patriarchal society are free to weight or judge the females. They simply take females as baby-producing machines, domestic slave or just merely an object t gaze on. Females are objectified as a beautiful object to look at in the novel too.

“My name is Sakambari.” Her voice burst in on us like a bullet. Startled, I turned toward the door and saw a woman of twenty-four. She was about five-feet-three, fair, with very large breasts on an extremely thin body. She wore gold-rimmed glasses on deep-set, sparkling eyes. Her hair was cut very close to her head, in the style of ancient Hebrew soldiers, and her small, white lobes wore earrings of black stones.

            Above lines from the novel clearly gives the vivid picture of objectifying the females in patriarchal society. Sakambari’s voice is compared as bullet and emphasized her physical structure. “Young woman” with “very large breasts” having “fair” complexity with ornaments are good to look at. The very sense can hit on reader’s mind. That’s how the writer uses the clever use of language to show the males perception on patriarchal society regarding the females.

            Furthermore, the novel never revealed the reason for the silence that was present in the female character’s life, that is; Sakambari’s life. As in the novel, the female voice is hardly presented by the writer. The actions and thoughts of the male characters are described a lot. The text also fails to make a strong standpoint on female characters side. The voices of three younger sisters of Shivaraj - Mujura, Sakambari and Sanu - are suppressed time and again in the text. This acts as a mirror to know how female voice is dominated in the patriarchy.

            Not only this, Shivaraj’s job was also not mentioned and the carelessness he shows, leaving his three sister home alone, does not justify that he really cares about his sisters. Men are just to earn the means of living; the patriarchal belief is carried out by the novel. However, at the end when there remains no hope of surviving, Shivaram goes to take care of her. This action really makes readers understand that people in patriarchal society like Nepal pay attention to their relatives when they undergo through critical situations.

            An ex-army serviceman and male protagonist, Suyog, who fought against Japan in the Second World War, lives in Kathmandu valley. His daily routine has become to drink alcohol in the evenings in the bar. He brutally raped and murdered several indigenous girls and he remembers several incidents during the war. These descriptions of the protagonist in the novel pictures the freedom that male are exercising in the existing society. Males’ brutality is described as masculine act whereas same act, if done by females, is considered as crime or inhuman act.

            Various critics argue Sakambari as brave and rebellious girl. However the truth is reverse. They tried to build their arguments from the act of smoking that does by Sakambari. They did have presupposition in their mind that smoking is a rebellious and strong act which women are not supposed to do in patriarchal society. However the fact is, the more the society has strong patriarchal values, the more the women are indulged in smoking cigar, bidi, hukka, etc. It doesn’t mean that men do not consume. They consume too but women consume too. And the only reason of consuming them is to pass their leisure time.

It makes me proud every time I think of how Sakambari always stood up for herself in those years when women were not supposed to have opinions on anything else except the kitchen. She is a woman us women should look up to, who does not care what the society has to say and who does not believe that women’s purpose in life is determined by the men in her life (father, brother, husband, son). She smoked and did not fear death; she called people out for drinking, and was proud enough to voice her opinions…

            One of the critics, Moana Kanel from Hanover, Indiana, USA wrote a book review potraying Sakambari as bold, free and independent girl. However, she fails to feel he inner feelings of Sakambari. She and her two sisters are left carelessly at home by Shivaraj. What a female like Sakambari do in that condition except indulging herself to some kind of addiction to pass her leisurely time? She further says that Sakambari is a girl who does not believe that women’s purpose in life is determined by the men in her life (father, brother, husband, son). She fails to prove her standpoint here again. She along with her sisters is living a dominant life. Her life is determined by her brother, a male, Shivaraj. During the first visit of Suyogbir at Shivaraj’s house, he ordered her to bring them some tea which shows that her life is limited inside the house and is compelled to live a life full of boredom without exercising any sorts of freedom.

            So, the novel ‘Blue Mimosa’ strongly outlets the masculine attributes, their actions and behaviors and intentions in a society where males acts as a supreme power to govern and act upon. Even the ending of the novel portrays the same. According to the text, Sakambari dies at last and Suyogbir explains that “even one-sided love kills” which means the love of Sakambari and her kiss with Suyogbir is just an act of vain that has no meaning at all. In this way, the entire novel presents the patriarchal values and norms, its way of judging and behaving the females, and it also illustrates how females are compelled to live a voiceless, suppressed, dominated life.

Works Cited

Parijat. “Blue Mimosa.” Trans. Tanka Vilas Varya and Sondra Zeidenstein. Third ed. Kathmandu: Orchid , 2012. Print.

Kanel, Moana. "Sirish ko Phool." Book Review for the month of January. Kamkura.com, 31 Jan. 2011. Web. 19 Dec. 2016.

Dolma, Sonam. "A book review on: Shirish Ko Phool." The Odyssey. N.p., 3 Apr. 2013. Web. 19 Dec. 2016.

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