THE SECOND WAVE OF FEMINISM Flashcards
THE SECOND WAVE OF FEMINISM
People began talking about feminism as a series of waves in 1968 when a New York
Times article by Martha Weinman Lear ran under the headline “The Second
Feminist Wave.” “Feminism, which one might have supposed as dead as a Polish
question, is again an issue,” Lear wrote. “Proponents call it the Second Feminist Wave,
the first having ebbed after the glorious victory of suffrage and disappeared, finally,
into the sandbar of Togetherness.” The wave metaphor caught on: It became a useful
way of linking the women’s movement of the ’60s and ’70s to the women’s movement
of the suffragettes, and to suggest that the women’s libbers weren’t a bizarre historical
aberration, as their detractors sneered, but a new chapter in a grand history of women
fighting together for their rights. Over time, the wave metaphor became a way to
describe and distinguish between different eras and generations of feminism. The
second wave of feminism begins with Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique,
which came out in 1963. The Feminine Mystique rails against “the problem that has no
name”: the systemic sexism that taught women that their place was in the home and
that if they were unhappy as housewives. it was only because they were broken and
perverse. they were all frustrated, some of them had become Alcoholics, some had
become neurotics, some had attempted suicide at least once, they were unsatisfied with
their environment in which they lived.
The keyword shared by these women was DEPRESSION: they were addicted to pills
and alcohol and alienated.
It had a unifying goal, too: not just political equality, which the first-wavers had fought
for, but social equality. It argues about sex, and relationships, and access to abortions,
and domestic labor of women.
The second wave worked on getting women the right to hold credit cards under their
own names and to apply for mortgages. It worked to outlaw marital rape, to raise
awareness about domestic violence and build shelters for women fleeing rape and
domestic violence. It worked to name and legislate against sexual harassment in the
workplace.
The second wave cared about racism too, but it could be clumsy in working with people
of color. As the women’s movement developed, it was rooted in the anti-capitalist and
anti-racist civil rights movements, but black women increasingly found themselves
alienated from the central platforms of the mainstream women’s movement.
Major legislative and legal victorie of the feminism
1) The Equal Pay Act of 1963 theoretically outlawed the gender pay gap;
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is a U.S. law that prohibits employers from paying
different wages to men and women who work under similar conditions and whose
jobs require the same level of skill, effort, and responsibility. It is part of the
amended Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
2) During the 60’s and in the ‘70s, one more important point of the second wave
feminism is at the academic level, because of this massive entrance of women
in universities, as both students and professors, American universities started
new academic programs in women studies, in the wake of African American
studies, ethnic studies, gay and lesbian studies started a little bit later, but even
academia was starting to feel like that there was a huge gap, between what was
taught at university level and reality. The first program in women studies was
held in 1970 at university of San Diego, in California: professors and students
had petitioned to get this course started and they obtained that, but only as an
optional class, therefore it wasn’t credited for students (students did not gain
credits for this class) and professors did not get paid for teaching it, but in the
following years these programs were born in several big universities and got a
better institutional stand.
3) In 1973, Roe v. Wade guaranteed women reproductive freedom. It was a
landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the
Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose
to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. The court held that
a woman’s right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by
the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
4) In the early history of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), middle-class
women were largely supportive, while those speaking for the working class were
often opposed, pointing out that employed women needed special protections
regarding working conditions and employment hours. With the rise of the
women’s movement in the United States during the 1960s, the ERA garnered
increasing support, and, after being reintroduced by Representative Martha
Griffiths in 1971, it was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on
October 12, 1971, and by the U.S. Senate on March 22, 1972, thus submitting
the ERA to the state legislatures for ratification, as provided by Article V of the
U.S. Constitution. So, The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed
amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal
rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. The first version of an ERA
was written by Alice Paul.
Sylvia Plath
She was born in 1932 in Boston. She was the daughter of a German immigrant college
professor, Otto Plath. His death when she was eight years ago, and her mother’s attempt
to sate for the loss suffering by a suffocating and over-protective love, became the
emotional timebomb that ticked ominously for the rest of her life. As an adult, she
began to suffer the symptoms of severe depression that would ultimately lead to her
death. During her junior year at Smith College, she attempted suicide by swallowing
sleeping pills. She survived the attempt and was hospitalized, receiving treatment with
electro-shock therapy. Her experiences of breakdown and recovery were later turned
into fiction for her only published novel, The Bell Jar. After graduating, she went to
England, at Cambridge University where she met, fell in love with Ted Hughes and
married him in 1956. However, the end of her marriage in 1962 left Plath with two
young children to care for and, after an intense burst of creativity that produced the
poems in Ariel. She felt that even the outer world was conspiring against her and she
committed suicide by inhaling gas from a kitchen oven.
Lady Lazarus
It was written in 1962 and published two years after her suicidal death.
It is a free-verse lyric. The poetic persona describes her experiences from a subjective
perspective. That’s why it is a lyric poem. Apart from that, it is a confessional poem.
The poem is composed of tercets or stanzas containing three lines.
Summary
The poem begins directly with the main theme of this piece that is suicidal thoughts
and death. According to the speaker, she has tried to kill herself once every ten years.
The first time, when she was only ten, was not an attempt at all. It was just an accident.
But, the second time she was determined to accomplish her goal of self-destruction.
So, before the last attempt, she bluntly says no matter what happens in this attempt. If
she gets saved, she will rise like a phoenix and devour men like air.
Title
The poem alludes to the biblical story of Lazarus, the well-known bible character who
was brought back to life after three days in the tomb, will set the tone for the rest of
Plath’s poem. Since Lazarus was brought to life again, this poem will be one of victory
over death, just like the biblical story. However, Plath intends to identify with the
Lazarus decaying in the tomb.
Lines 1-3: Readers can gather that Plath is referring to suicide. She admits right off the
bat that she has tried to die once every decade of her life. Plath then begins to explain
to readers why she has tried to die so many times. She uses vivid imagery to compare
her own suffering to that of the Jewish people. In other Sylvia Plath poems, readers can
find such haunting and dark imagery.
Lines 4-9: In the second stanza, she compares her skin to a “Nazi lampshade”. This is
significant because of the idea that the Nazi people used the skin of the Jews to make
lampshades. Plath uses this horrifying metaphor to compare her own suffering to those
in Nazi concentration camps. Plath’s speaker conveys the heaviness of her pain by
comparing her right foot to a “paperweight”. This metaphor helps the reader to
understand that Plath’s pain was so real that it felt like a physical weight. The
“paperweight” conveys the nature of her emotional pain. The imagery of a featureless
face reveals that she doesn’t feel any identity. Such an expression is set apart for any
specific or important purpose. She feels like a face lost in the crowd, one that no one
would remember. Furthermore, she describes her face as a “fine Jew linen”. Jew linens
were used to wrap the body of Lazarus before they laid him in the tomb. Those were
also used to wrap Jesus’ body before he was laid in the tomb. Plath’s reference to the
“fine Jew linen” reaffirms that she already feels dead. Or rather, she feels nothing just
as the dead feel nothing and this inability to feel is precisely what causes her to suffer.
Plath continues to use imagery of death to reveal her deepest feelings in the following
stanzas.
Lines 10-15: When she asks the reader to “peel off the napkin” she is challenging the
audience to look at her for who she really is. She doesn’t believe that anyone would
want to really know her, to peer into her soul, and really know how she is. She believes
that if people were to do that, they would be terrified. The reason she thinks this way
is because she is afraid that people will become aware that although she is alive in
flesh, her soul is dead. This is why she continues to use imagery of death and
decomposition to describe herself. This is the point in ‘Lady Lazarus’ at which the
reader can become aware that Plath identifies not with the risen Lazarus, but with the
Lazarus who is dead and has already begun the decomposition process. For this reason,
she describes herself as having a prominent nose cavity, eye pits, and teeth. These
features would be most prominent in a decaying body. Moreover, Plath explains that
the sour breath, the putrid smell of death, will soon vanish.
Lines 16-21: In the sixth stanza, she continues to explain the effect of death. Plath uses
this imagery to explain the emptiness and numbness that tortured her soul. She uses the
description of physical decomposition to convey the way she feels that her soul is
decomposing. Plath then transitions from speaking of herself as an already dead woman
to revealing that she is actually alive. However, the tone of ‘Lady Lazarus’ reveals that
she is disappointed at being alive. It becomes obvious that she identifies with death far
more than with life. She thinks of herself as a rotting corpse, not the “smiling woman”
of only thirty that she sees when she looks in the mirror. She reveals an obvious
disappointment that she has not been able to die when she compares herself to a cat,
concluding that it will probably take many more attempts to reach death.
Lines 22-33: Plath then reveals that each decade, she has come very close to death.
When she says, “this is number three” she reveals that she has tried to die a number of
times. Plath then focuses on herself and her own misery and begins to criticize the
people around her. She calls them the “peanut crunching crowd” suggesting that they
are only in her life to scoff at her and make a spectacle of her. This same view of people
is conveyed when she compares herself, yet again, to Lazarus in the following lines.
This time, she doesn’t compare herself to Lazarus who is dead in the tomb. She
compares herself to the one who has risen and is coming out of the tomb still wrapped
in burial cloth. Only Plath’s tone is not triumphant, but rather skeptical.
She calls her exit from the tomb, “a big strip tease” revealing that when she came close
to death but was brought back to life, the people around her were there not to rejoice
with her or comfort her, but to be entertained by her. Her sarcastic tone reveals her
frustration with the spectators and her disappointment that she was unable to stay dead.
At this point, she realizes that she is alive, though she wishes she were still in the tomb.
This gives the reader the imagery of Plath looking at her hands, her knees, her flesh,
and realizing she is still alive, at least physically. She realizes that she is just the same
as she was before experiencing death.
Lines 34-42: This stanza explains that she is the same woman she was before her neardeath experience. Plath then begins to give the reader some history on her experiences
with death, explaining that the first time was an accident, and she was only ten years
old. After reading the lines, it becomes clear that the first accidental near-death
experience was traumatizing to Plath but somehow left her wanting another taste of
death. She does not reveal the age of her second encounter with her own death, which
was her first suicide attempt. However, since she says she has tried once every decade,
we can assume she was around 20 years old.
The thirteenth stanza of ‘Lady Lazarus’ reveals that Plath came so close to death, that
she believed she had actually experienced death. She also “meant to last it out” which
reveals that she truly does not wish to live any longer. Plath identifies with death more
than life or anything in life. She says during her second encounter with death she kept
herself coffined like a seashell. The “seashell” is a symbolic reference to the body
which kept her soul caged. She somehow tried to break through the shell and release
her soul from her decaying self. At that time, those who found her had called her out
of that suffocating chamber. She imagines if she would have died they would pick
worms off her like “sticky pearls”. The reference to the “seashell” was far better than
this comparison. Here, she in exasperation compares the worms to “pearls”.
Lines 43-51: It is one of the most important stanzas of the poem ‘Lady Lazarus’. In
this section, she explains her own interest and “talent” in this “art” of dying. As she
has tried to die a number of times, she has become an artist in this artform. She performs
it better than others who die only once and forever. Like an artist tries throughout her
life to creating an everlasting masterpiece. Plath is trying to complete her magnum opus
in this art form. In an inflated and confident tone, she says she does it exceptionally
well. It makes clear that she has tried her best to die. But the circumstances were not
favorable in each of her previous encounters with death. Each line of this stanza begins
with the word “I”. The sound scheme of this line seems as if the speaker is making her
point strongly and confidently. This scheme is followed in the next stanza too.
In the first few lines, she claims she is always working with the art of dying. It means
that the thoughts of dying are always rampaging in her head. According to her, it turns
her mind into hell. So, she can claim that the concept of hell is real. It exists, not in an
imaginary place but in her mind.
When she claims that death is her “call”, it reveals that she feels no purpose in life other
than to die. She reveals that her only relief from suffering, emptiness, and numbness
was what she experienced in her encounters with her own death. But every time she
gets a taste of death, she ends up surviving, only to resume her former suffering.
Lines 52-63: She reveals that the hard part is coming back and facing the crowd. It
seems to her as a theatrical process. That is rather performed than felt. When she returns
to her normal life again, everything seems theatrical to her. It seems as if she already
knows what is going to happen after her comeback. If she is unsuccessful in her
attempt, she has to return to the same place. The same, brute faces will be starting at
her in disdain and amusedly shout at her. She feels she is being put on stage when
people call her life “a miracle”. The sound of these two words just knocks her mind
out. That’s why Plath takes on a tone of sarcasm when she suggests that there should
be a charge for looking at her or touching her.
Lines 64-72: For the first time in ‘Lady Lazarus,’ Plath makes her readers aware of the
source of her suffering. She writes, “So, so, Herr Doktor./ So, Herr Enemy.” “Herr” is
the German word for Mr. The use of the German word “Doktor” refers to the Nazi
doctors who brought the Jewish victims back to health, only to resume their suffering.
By putting an emphasis on the word “Herr” twice in this stanza, Plath reveals that men
are the enemy and the cause of her suffering. Plath then begins to explain why men are
the enemy when she writes the quoted lines. This reveals her belief that she is valuable
to men only as an object, beautiful, but hard and lifeless. She does not deny that she is
valuable to some people, particularly men, but only as a cold, hard object of beauty,
not as a human being. Plath feels that her death would be nothing more than watching
a beautiful piece of jewelry burn to the people around her. She uses heavy sarcasm
when she says, “Do not think I underestimate your great concern.” Here, she feels that
her death would be nothing more than watching a beautiful piece of jewelry melt to the
people around her.
Lines 73-84: Plath continues to imply that the people in her life, particularly men, value
her only as an object. This is revealed when she writes, “Ash, ash…there is nothing
there”. They only pike and stir the ashes of her mind and try to trigger her bodily
emotions. But, their hard work will be worthless as she says, “Flesh, bone, there is
nothing there”. It means she has already detached herself from her body. What remains,
is only her mind that is also traumatized. The Nazis were known to use the remains of
the burned Jewish bodies to make soap. They also rummaged around heaps of human
ashes to find jewelry and gold fillings. This is how Plath views her value to other people
in the following stanza. In the next stanza of ‘Lady Lazarus,’ Plath turns to a tone of
revenge. She continues to blame men, God, and the Devil, specifically pointing out that
both God and Lucifer (the Devil) are men. This also reveals that she feels powerless
under men. She refers to the “Doktor”, God, and the Devil all as men who hold some
kind of power over her. That’s why she tells other women to keep a safe distance from
them. “Beware” she harks to all those who are going through similar mental turmoil. It
is difficult to tell whether Plath is referring to herself when she “rises from the ashes”
as a physically alive woman who has failed yet again at trying to end her life, or as one
who has died and will return as an immortal. She may plan to stop attempting suicide
and take her revenge on men instead of herself. Or she plans to come back as an
immortal after she has died to take her revenge on men. The “red hair” suggests that it
could symbolize the mythical creature, phoenix, who can burst into flames and then be
reborn from its ashes. Either way, Plath warns men everywhere, that she is no longer a
powerless victim under them, but that she is ready to take her revenge.
Literary Devices
1) Allusion: The title of the poem ‘Lady Lazarus’ is an allusion to the biblical
character, “Lazarus of Bethany”.
2) Enjambment: The last line of the second stanza is enjambed with the first line
of the next stanza. Plath uses this poetic device for maintaining the flow.
3) Simile: “Bright as a Nazi lampshade”.
4) Irony: The rhetorical question “Do I terrify?”
5) Palilogy: “Soon, soon the flesh”.
6) Alliteration: “Face a featureless” (alliteration of the “f” sound)
7) Anaphora: In the sixteenth stanza
Anne Sexton
She was born in 1928 in Newton, Massachusetts. She attended Garland junior college,
which is a women liberal college. She used to strongly dislike school and lacked the
ability to concentrate. She also got married and had two children. After the birth of her
first daughter, she suffered her first breakdown and was admitted to a neuropsychiatric
hospital. Her depression worsened after the birth of her second daughter and she sought
therapy once again. For this reason, she met Dr. Martin, who became her long term
therapist and the one who encouraged her to write poetry. One of the main reasons
behind her mental illnesses was believed to be sexual abuse by her parents during her
childhood, which led to fear and trauma from an early age.
She had shared some tapes with her doctor, which were released after her death. Those
tapes are said to have revealed her inappropriate behavior towards her daughters. She
wrote a lot of fiction books, including children’s books, and a theater play. She
collaborated with many literary magazines such as The New Yorker and ‘Harpers’
Magazine’ and ‘Saturday Review. She also worked together with a group of musicians
and formed a jazz-rock group that used to add music to her poetry. She won the Pulitzer
Prize for Poetry in 1967 for her book ‘Live or Die’. Some of the poems are in free
verse, while others are in rhythm. The poems, which were written in chronological
order are mainly about Sexton’s troubled relationships with her mother and her
daughters, and the way she dealt with her mental illness.
She wrote ‘Transformations’ a book of poem-stories which was a strange retelling of
seventeen Grimms fairy tales, like ‘Snow White’, ‘Frog Prince’, and ‘Red Riding
Hood.’ The retelling of these popular tales was accomplished in a very personalized
way that was much appreciated by the critics.
She wrote ‘The Awful Rowing Toward God’ which was published posthumously in
1975. Her meeting with a Catholic Priest who had given her the willpower and desire
to continue living and writing, inspired her in writing this book. She also analyzed
various things in this book like the existence of God, as well as the meaning of life.
She committed suicide on 4 October 1974. She locked herself in her garage and started
the engine of her car and died by carbon monoxide poisoning, maybe because She also
allegedly had an affair with one of her therapists, which was another reason for
controversy during her lifetime.
In Celebration of My Uterus
It came out in 1969. The title suggests a poem about the female identity, in particular
about her body right. In fact, the uterus is a symbol of motherhood and femininity.
It began as an exploration of Sexton’s conflicting thoughts on her own femininity.
When speaking of a proposed operation to remove her uterus, Sexton writes “They
wanted to cut you out / but they will not” (lines 3-4). Here, Sexton doesn’t
directly address the conflicting emotions of such a major surgery or how that changed
her perceptions of her femininity, neither does she dwell on the psychological effects
of her experience. Rather, Sexton writes about “a nation,” “the populace,” “any person,
any commonwealth,” and “many women,” (21-23, 27) centering the poem around a
shared experience.
She recognized the long term disposition of her depression and often used her poems
to seek extended relief from the suffering it caused her.
This transformation of suffering may have given Sexton cause to declare “They said
you were sick unto dying / but they were wrong. . . . I dare to live” (lines 5-6, 15). Her
triumphant declarations throughout “In Celebration of My Uterus” appear to be neither
statements of her own opinion nor expressions of a depressed experience. Rather, they
are more likely products of her therapeutic writing, a transformation of her suffering.
Sexton writes of singing “like a school girl” and celebrates “the central creature and its
delight” (lines 9, 14). These and other images connote the levity of a school girl and
the cheerfulness of a creature’s delight and stand in stark contrast to the threat of
illness and a corresponding surgery. Sexton, in using positive, celebratory images
transforms her suffering until “there is enough here to please a nation,” (line 21). These
lines reflect Sexton’s transformation of her opinions, emotions, and experiences
through their optimistic and unifying portrayal of a threatening illness.
Sexton directly explores female connection and universal identity in “In Celebration of
My Uterus.” Sexton’s transformation of her personal suffering was combined with her
desire to connect with others and was subsequently applied liberally, albeit indirectly,
to the female experience to situate her personal experiences within a collective whole.
This motif is most clearly expressed in “In Celebration of My Uterus” through the
Whitmanesque catalog of women “singing together” of their femininity (line 27).
Although “one is / anywhere and some are everywhere” in the world, they all “seem to
be singing, although some can not / sing a note” (lines 40-43). The women of the poem
are living in different settings, are experiencing different lives, but they are connected
“in celebration of the woman I am / and of the soul of the woman I am” (lines 12-13).
By standing in as the woman for whom they are celebrating, Sexton demonstrates to
the reader that her experience is a shared experience and that it is one that can be shared
by the reader who may be suffering. Sexton admits the differences in the experiences
of each woman, but allows them to sing together, offering a shared community both to
the reader and to herself.
Sexton’s desire to participate in a larger community reveals itself in the final,
culminating lines of “In Celebration of My Uterus.” Two refrains of the final two
stanzas reflect Sexton’s attitude towards this larger community (lines 46-49, 52-55).
The continual repetition of the phrase “let me” demonstrates Sexton’s yearning to
integrate herself into the chorus of femininity. The second refrain, “if that is my part”
shows her desire to identify her personal role, her own contribution to the grand design.
Sexton had found a reason to live, despite her fascination with death, and therefore
sought to situate herself within the jubilant chorus of womanhood. Even as she wrote
her poetry to reach out to others who suffered the same pains as she did, Sexton wanted
to receive the same association from a community who had come to know, in different
ways, how to transform their suffering into celebration. These two final stanzas reflect
each aspect of Sexton’s therapy: a polished form and style indicative of extensive
revision, a transformation of personal suffering “in celebration of the woman I am,” a
desire to be admitted to a broader cause by helping others experiencing similar
suffering, and a search for a wholesome part in the vast feminine experience.
It is a poem, highly charged emotion, often found in confessional poetry.
In fact, in the first part she wants to create a dialogue trough the female connection and
universal identity, while in the second part of the poem the idea of connectivity is most
clearly expressed in this poem through the catalog of women that singing together
about their femininity. Sexton demonstrates to the reader that it is a shared experience
by each woman. For this reason, it is written like if it’s a conversation and dialogue.
She uses this type of language because this topic is supposed to be natural on everyday
conversation.
