Simone de Beauvoir
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Simone de Beavoir
This famous line written by Simone de Beauvoir perfectly summed up the distinction between gender and sex. The line simply means that though one may be born with the reproductive organs of a female or male, the behaviours that they exhibit determine their gender. Further, Beauvoir believed gender to be quite fluid, and Judith Butler shares these two notions. Butler goes one step further to say that gender is a “performative accomplishment” — meaning that it is compelled by society and the taboos it sets. The identity of a person is dependent on the “repetition of acts” that may determine gender (Butler, 1988). These acts, according to Butler, determine not only gender but also express it. Some examples of these acts could be the way a person presents — the clothing and the way they carry themselves; the way they choose to speak or even their preferred pronouns. (Butler, 1988)
Maya Angelou
In such a way, Maya Angelou expresses her gender in her poem Still I Rise. It is a point to note that the poem was published during the second wave of feminism, which was when the idea that women must be treated equally to men was seen as a radical notion and that led society to paint women who believed so in a negative light. Feminism became a bad thing to be. Still, the poem by Maya Angelou expresses gender freely: in the second stanza of the poem, she refers to her sassiness, which is a “signature” trope for black women to express confident, feminine energy. She asks the reader if her confident expression of femininity upsets them, and why they seem so upset when she walks with the confidence of her success. Here Maya Angelou refers to the societal notion that women must be demure and docile, rather than show confidence or “show off” their success and wealth. The way Angelou expresses her femininity here is her way of saying that she can be a woman despite not following the norms set by society and that her gender is determined by her alone. In fact, the high success of this poem combined with its relatability has been helping women redefine their gender expression even today. (Kettler, 2020). In the fourth stanza of the poem, she asks the reader a rhetorical question: Did you want to see me broken?/Bowed head and lowered eyes? This stanza is another reference to the societal expectation for women to be meek and quiet, or perhaps even wait around to be “saved” by a man. The rhetorical note in the question. As well as the stanzas that came before it all make it evident that this is not the route Angelou has chosen to take to deal with the hits she has taken. A similar meaning is conveyed in the following stanza.
In contrast, the sixth stanza repeats the hook of the poem: essentially conveying that no matter what society says, she will continue to get back up and celebrate herself. The following “Does my sexiness upset you?” is a defiant expression of her sexuality, which is seen as abnormal. This is primarily in the time of second-wave feminism, where women either felt the need to behave feminine and “decent” to be “respected” or be more masculine to resist the system. She uses the lines in this stanza to express — or perform — her sexuality and make it part of her identity. The deeply personal nature of the poem combined with the raw and powerful energy that it channels drives the concept home doubly.
Thus Maya Angelou’s poem Still I Rise, which has been an iconic poem for decades now, is a vessel for the poet to express her resistance to discrimination based on race as well as a counter to those who criticize her expression of femininity.
Sadat Hasan Manto
In Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story Ten Rupees, it is seen that the same expectations of gender expression still prevail. Sarita’s mother speaks of her late husband with overtly masculine stories of macho comebacks and brawls with his manager. This gives the reader an idea, of the kind of person raising Sarita, and the hyper-feminine expectations that Sarita may be required to fulfil for her mother. Manto shows without really showing that the stories Sarita’s mother keeps saying are not true in the least — a skill he has proven to master in a lot of his short stories. Further, Sarita is expected to behave “like a grown woman” at the age of fifteen: though she has been pushed into prostitution, Sarita still has not changed her interests and enjoys being a little girl. The main focus of the story is a car ride that Sarita takes with the clients that hired her for the day. During the car ride, as the men make advances to Sarita, she plays with them with childlike innocence. By laughing, jumping from the back seat to the front and making the men sing along with her. A passage in the story reads: In that instance, Sarita saw goodness in everything and wished that all that was bad would also turn good […] that the motor would continue to race and everything around her would become part of the whirlwind. In a way, this becomes a reality for her for one night. She manages to engage the men and remind them that there are more ways to have fun. Her singing is significant here as it not only expresses her affinity for the more childish things but also shows that she is not entirely oblivious to what is happening. She is saving herself from what happens in the four walls of dingy hotel rooms and keeping herself in the motor car that is flying across the streets of Bombay. By doing so, she shows she has agency and can control what happens to her. Sarita is smart, and not as innocent as she seems. She chooses to be innocent, childlike, and feminine, while still showing agency and being smart about her choices, so she gets what she wants. Sarita seems to have learned something after being in this line of work, contrary to what her mother believes.
Sarita maintains the portrayal of a girlish personality while she uses it to her advantage. Her performance of gender in such a way is much deeper than at first glance. In a short story, it is not easy to have such a deeply fleshed-out character, but Manto does it with ease. He tells Sarita’s story from a third-person perspective, while still narrating her thoughts and her narrative. This is perhaps reflective of Sarita’s life: it appears as though someone else is crafting her story, but she is telling it herself. This impersonal narration also shows how any girl could be in Sarita’s position. She plays into the expectations people have of her based on the first impression she gives and performs accordingly. This exciting character is perhaps one of the few women in fiction who understands the intricacies of societal expectations, the limitations of her socioeconomic position, and still makes it possible for her to take control.
References:
Butler, J. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519. doi: 10.2307/3207893
Kettler, S. (2020). Maya Angelou: The Meaning Behind Her Poem “Still I Rise.” Retrieved 29 November 2020, from https://www.biography.com/news/maya-angelou-still-i-rise
Manṭo, S. (2008). Selected stories. Noida: Random House India.
Permatasari, I. (2016). An Analysis of Feminism in Maya Angelou’s Poems Using Historical and Biographical Approaches. Jurnal Ilmiah Bahasa Dan Sastra, 3(2). Retrieved from http://media.neliti.com/media/publications/81574-EN-an-analysis-of-feminism-in-maya-angelous.pdf
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