Female Representations in “Gulliver’s Travels” - 2336 Words

Female representations in â€Å"Gulliver’s Travels† In Jonathan Swift’s satire, â€Å"Gulliver’s Travels†, the representation of women can be seen, at a superficial level, as offensive and extremely misogynistic and in broad lines corresponding to the image of the woman in Swift’s contemporary patriarchal society. The woman was almost objectified, thus reduced to her physical appearance and its status as obedient wife, whose sole purpose was to attend to her husband’s need. This perception of women was what triggered the emerging feminist movement. With pioneers as Mary Wollstonecraft with her XVIIIth century â€Å"A Vindication of the Rights of Women†, the philosophy of feminism has reached its peak in the XXth century, starting with Simone de†¦show more content†¦McGrath’s quotation perfectly summarises the main guidelines in the feminists’ fight for emancipation: purpose of existence, social accountability and education1. Simone de Beauvoir deals with the same concept s in her work, emphasising the dependent nature of women’s existence (reference to the Hegelian theory of subjection – the dichotomy Master/Slave), their status as the â€Å"Other† and their reduction to sexual objects. All these were directly linked to the way in which women were educated, being taught to accept their own marginalization, the entire perception becoming a vicious circle. Only an acceptance of one’s own femininity and the different set of values would be the solution to this ardent problem. As an existentialist, Beauvoir embraces the precept that existence precedes essence (Bergson’s devenir); hence â€Å"one is not born but becomes a woman (Beauvoir, 267). She also contradicts Mary Wollstonecraft’s perception that women must renounce their femininity in order to be respected in a men’s world. Nevertheless, Wollstonecraft lived in the first phase of the feminist movement, in what 1 Terms borrowed from Krystie Podobinsky, â€Å"Jonathan Swift, Proto-feminist† Elaine Showalter described as the feminine stage in which one had to give up their status as a woman and behave more as a man in order to be taken seriously. Simone de Beauvoir lived in the age of the female, when a womanShow MoreRelatedThe Body In Gulliver’S Travels . Gulliver’S Travels, Published1200 Words   |  5 PagesThe Body in Gulliver’s Travels Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726, by Jonathan Swift, is a travel narrative about Lemuel Gulliver. Europe, around the time Swift published his novel, was dominated with ideas of Enlightenment which privileged rational thought and reason. Man during this time believed to be superior to all creatures, based on his ability to reason. 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