The Garden of Forking Paths
Is Margaret Atwood's rape fantasies a feminist story?When I first read the story, to me it was just a story about a woman narrating about a group o f coworker women bragging about how far they were able to go in their rape fantasies, how each of their fantasies was more interesting that those of the others, and in my opinion that was all there was about the story. But then, after reading the story a second time, I started noticing that in fact there was a connection between this story and feminism. The author, Margaret Atwood, show us this connection mostly by presenting us what we could call the opposite of what would be an ideal situation or environment, from a feminist perspective. This is not surprising at all once we get to know a little about Margaret Atwood, because she is very well known for using irony in her works, as well as for stating her point of view about issues such as: politics, social problems, and of course, feminism.Feminism is a movement, meaning a group working to accomplish specific goals. Those goals are social and political change -implying that one must be engaged with the government and law, as well as social practices and beliefs. And implicit to these goals is access to sufficient informatio
This is not very usual because normally, in society, it is not well seen that a woman expresses her sexual desires, and sometimes even her feelings towards it. Also, we see that, while these days a woman could aspire to be an executive or a supervisor, Greta's aspiration is to be a receptionist, which in my opinion is a low aspiration. When we come to think of it, we might think that this appeals to that common feminist saying: "Women don't need a man to feel like real women", but then when you analyze the situation a little bit further, you see that these women seem to feel quite lonely. Also, Estelle seems to not agree very much with what the women's liberation movement proposes, because she even said: "I'm with women's lib on that even though I can't agree with a lot of other things they say", when she was talking about going alone to get drinks in a nice place. A few examples of that are the following: Greta Roberto Rivera -3Wants to be a receptionist to meet more people, they fantasize about handsome men getting into their houses, and Estelle ends up having a lot of things in common with the rapists and being friends with them in almost every fantasy. This is clearly an anti-feminist politic. It is also interesting about this story that the main character, Estelle, has in some ways certain characteristics that, from a non-feminist perspective, a woman would have. Within the goals that women were fighting for we can outline the following: right to vote, the right to be treated equally, the right to work, and the right to make their own decisions. Another thing that caught my attention is that these women are not only fantasizing, but also speaking about their rape fantasies. When we read the story, one of the first things that we notice is that these four women are workers. This fact can definitely be connected to the feminist movement Roberto Rivera -2because one of the things that this women's liberation movement fought for was that women, like men, could, and should be allowed, to work. At first, one might see this as a very positive thing, but a little bit later in the story, Estelle, the narrator, mentions that she and Greta work in filing and Chrissy works as a receptionist, we start getting the idea that these women are only allowed to work in positions that were, and maybe still are, considered by men as women's jobs. Like I said before, I do believe this story is very well connected to feminism and I expect that the analysis of the facts that I've presented in this essay helped me prove I'm right. Estelle says that Darlene is divorced, and for what one can infer from the fantasies of Chrissy, Greta and Estelle, they are singles too.
Common topics in this essay:
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Acceptance Essays
