I am Woman Synthesis - Essay Example

"Medea" by Euripides, "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen, "Raise the Red Lantern" by Zhang Yimou, and "Size 6 The Western Women's Harem" by Fatema Mernissi-the three works of fiction and the article by Mernissi, have been lauded for their portrayal of the agonies of women, though in different contexts and cultures. All the three female protagonists in the first three stories have made unbelievably brave sacrifices to win the affection of the men whom they loved. In the fourth, Fatema Merinssi is narrating her views on how Western women are tailor made to suite the beauty fancies of men by the fashion industry and how that result in physical and mental problems for women (Mernissi).

But all these four stories convey one single point across- there is a boundary point of suffering reaching where, women regain their strength and become invincible so that their sacrifices do not go unaccounted for. Passionate in love and fearless in death- this is the catch phrase that can be written on any monument, any memento, in memory of Medea, the mythical Greek woman. Medea is one of the strongest female characters of Greek tragedy because she decided to give up her life and her children’s lives rather than allow her deceitful husband to separate the children from her, after leaving her for another woman (Euripides).

But what makes her sacrifices worthwhile is the final act of her, in which, she kills her children as well as the new bride of her lover to avenge him who left her and was trying to steal her children from her. The love of Medea was really blind as is evident from her description of her love to Creusa (Euripides, 12). She says, “he spoke again-to me-to me! It seemed as if some God had poisoned me with joy! I raised my eyes to his-I looked-I loved” (Euripides, 12). Medea’s acts in support of her lover, Jason, were so extreme which she recollects in the words, “to arm his valor I must despoil my father-I did so; betray my country-I did so; defy the Gods-I did so” (Euripides, 12).

But her courage knew no boundaries once she knew her sacrifices were all in vein. She, with her children, set out in search of her lover, found him, and stood face to face with him to question his deception (Euripides). But the inherent male character that swings towards power is illustrated in the final scene where she calls her boys to go with her but they hesitate and want to stay back with the father in the kingly comfort (Euripides, 30). After killing the children and her lover’s bride, Medea tells her lover that actually it was him that she had killed (Euripides, 32).

In this way, Medea even rises above the compassion of a mother in honour of her female self which, in contemporary feminist thought can be seen as the heroic act of a great woman. To shut the door behind and go- In "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen, it is the protagonist, Nora, who leaves her pretentious and patriarchal husband after noisily shutting the door of their house behind her and entering the outside world to fight the battle of life, alone (Ibsen). The title of the play itself is reflective of the realization Nora arrives at in the end of the play- the house, the family and the husband that she held so close to her heart were only part of the great puppetry show of male chauvinism (Ibsen).

The same husband who used to call Nora lovingly by names like, “little squirrel”, and “little lark”, calls her “miserable creature”, and “thoughtless woman” whem he comes to know that she is involved in a financial fraud, though for the sake of helping him (Ibsen, 7-9). It is in this moment Nora realizes how fake the love of a man is and how a man gives priority to his position in the society as compared to love (Ibsen). So she faces the truth, tells it on the face of him and leaves (Ibsen, 139-142).

Nora who had sacrificed her self- esteem and risked her security for the sake of her husband leaves her home, a new person-one who has gained immense strength from the experiences of her life. Just like Medea, she leaves the secure, protected world of marital bliss to become a woman having her own will. To give the world a valuable rear view- In "Size 6 Western Women's Harem", by Fatema Mernissi, the author herself is the protagonist. She begins her narration about a trivial incident in which she was unable to locate a cloth of her size because the store did not have that size which was considered abnormal in women in US (Mernissi, 147-148).

This incident becomes an inspiration for her to go in search of the meaning and politics of beauty. Mernissi soon finds out that the yardstick of beauty is decided by a bunch of men who control the multi-crore beauty industry (150). From this point, Mernissi discusses the health problems that have been afflicting beauty conscious Western women owing to extreme weight loss and anxiety of keeping slim (150-151). Here the duality of sacrifice and redemption are associated with the woman folk and Mernissi herself.

While the women in general do all kinds of sacrifices to make them attractive to men, Mernissi is least bothered and she tells why, with great clarity (151). And she is able to state without doubt, “the educated modern Western woman” is turned into a “harem slave” by the beauty concepts of the Western man’s world. It is this thesis, this declaration, that becomes the slogan for liberation from the so-called beauty concepts. And it is at this point, that Mernissi follow the footsteps of Medea and Nora.

To escape to the world of insanity- In "Raise the Red Lantern", a film directed by Zhang Yimou, the protagonist is a young educated woman, Songlian, who had to leave her dreams behind to become the 4th concubine of a wealthy old man (Raise the Red Lantern). The expansive house of the rich ban becomes her prison and she is caught in the wars that the concubines wage to win the attention of their owner (Raise the Red Lantern). She even fakes pregnancy to become his favorite concubine but is proved cheating and punished (Raise the Red Lantern).

Finally, she understands that to fight to win the favor of her master is futile and that each woman in his house is just a “robe” for her master, which can either be worn or discarded (Raise the Red Lantern). So, Songlian withdraws into solitude (Raise the Red Lantern). Finally she looses her sanity and thus become totally immune to the exploitations that she had been subjected to (Raise the Red Lantern). It is through the door of insanity that she passes into the world of freedom. It is a symbolic defiance against the patriarchal system that imprisoned her.

She once sacrificed her self by becoming a concubine, but she regains it through rejecting the sanity of the common world, which is really insane. Medea, Nora, Mernissi and Songlian thus become comrades in arm in the eternal struggle for freedom and dignity of women. They nourish the dreams of freedom through time and space. The relationships and similarities among these texts are important because they show the emergence of a self-ascertaining woman who can go beyond her suffering and come up with great strength.

They also stand proof to the fact that such women and their spirit of freedom are not limited to a particular period in history. These four narratives place women’s liberation as a continuous process in the path of progress traced by humanity. Works Cited Euripides, “Medea”, In Medea: A Tragedy in Three Acts, by Ernest Legouve, and Matilda Heron, New York: S.French, 1857. Print. Ibsen, Henrik, “A Doll’s House”, New York: Plain Label Books, 1925. Print. Mernissi, Fathima, “Size 6 Western Women's Harem", In Gender Relations in Global Perspective: Essential Readings, by Nancy Cook, Ontario: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2007. Print. Raise the Red Lantern, Dir.

Zhang Yimou. Perf. Gong Li. Chiu Fu-Sheng, 1992.Film.