The French Lieutenant's Woman Film - Feminism Flashcards
Feminism - Element 1
Feminism is a range of social movements, political movements, and ideologies that aim to define, establish, and achieve the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes.
Quotes - Feminism, Element 1
“I was introduced yesterday to a specimen of the local flora” - Charles
“I hoped to spare you the pain of it”
“Or yourself the shame of it!”
Feminism - Element 2
Feminism incorporates the position that societies prioritize the male point of view, and that women are treated unjustly within those societies.
Quotes - Feminism, Element 2
Anna - “They’ll fire me for immorality. They’ll think I’m a whore”
Mike - “You are”
Anna - “You offend your boss, you lose your job, you’re out on the streets. That’s the reality”
“I was fully and exactly apprised of her rank in society, her character, marriage portion and future prospects before my engagement to her hand”
Feminism - Element 3
Efforts to change that include fighting against gender stereotypes and establishing educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women that are equal to those for men.
Quotes - Feminism, Element 3
“Sometimes I pity them. I have a freedom they cannot understand”
“You’re a free woman”
“I am free to do my own work. They have encouraged it”
“It has taken me this time to find my own life. It has taken me this time to find my freedom”
Feminism Context
The film was produced towards the end of the period of “second wave feminism”, a movement that spread across the Western World in the 1960s and 1970s.
Second wave feminists called for more than just enfranchisment, and broadened the feminist debate to include a wider range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities.
The second feminist wave was very much concerned with taking on the patriarchal institutions of society.
Feminism Theorist
Simone de Beauvoir - Author of ‘The Second Sex’
Woman is consistently defined as the other by man that takes on the role of the self
The myth of the ‘eternal feminine’ (the mother, the virgin, the motherland, nature etc) traps women into an impossible ideal by denying their individuality
“The idea must be rejected like that of the eternal feminine”
One is not born, but rather instructed, to become a woman - constructed to be such through social indoctrination
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”
Social systems must be altered for equal treatment of women, but women themselves also should take on their existential responsibility
“Self knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it”
Filming Techniques
Whilst Sarah lives in Lyme, enslaved by societal and gender expectations, she is always dressed in black or grey, surrounded by sombre or shadowy landscapes.
However, when she joins the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, she is transformed - she
wears brighter clothing and is surrounded by sunlight, symbolising her freedom.
The metafictional narrator of the novel is replaced by a love affair between the two actors that are creating the movie.
The film visualises self-knowledge through the metaphoric use of mirrors. At important moments of the story, Sarah and Anna sit before looking-glasses while making key decisions.
