{"id":274,"date":"2008-10-23T15:19:07","date_gmt":"2008-10-23T19:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/?p=274"},"modified":"2008-10-23T15:19:07","modified_gmt":"2008-10-23T19:19:07","slug":"heroes-in-the-female-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/archives\/274","title":{"rendered":"Heroes in The Female Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first person I think of is Jael when I consider who the hero of The Female Man <\/em>may be.\u00a0 She seems to have overcome something in her transformation from “an old fashioned girl” to a “grown woman.”\u00a0 She’s also a cyborg, which is something of an idea in “Manifesto for Cyborgs.”\u00a0 However, her status as hero is problematic because I’m not sure that killing men is the way to resolve one’s issues with sexism or to regain one’s selfhood.\u00a0 Jael isn’t a very realistic character.<\/p>\n

Jeannine is another character who has undergone a similar transformation.\u00a0 This transformation happens after Jael asks Jeannine if she’s ever killed a man.\u00a0 Somehow this question leads to her becoming more self-possessed.\u00a0 She begins to sleep in late and play with her food–two activities she felt guilty for wanting to do because she wanted to a “nice girl.”\u00a0 She also decides not to marry Cal at the end of the novel and refuses her status as a mannequin.<\/p>\n

I don’t think Janet changed very much throughout the book.\u00a0 She is more of a static character than Jeannine.\u00a0 Joanna is the character that is most difficult for me to analyze in terms of change or heroism.\u00a0 Interestingly, the beginning of Part Nine begins with “This is the book of Joanna.”\u00a0 It’s not clear whether this is Joanna the character or Joanna the author, but I assumed that the rest of Part Nine was narrated from Joanna’s perspective (which one, I don’t know).\u00a0 At the end of Part Nine is this line:\u00a0 “Remember, I didn’t and don’t want to be a ‘feminine’ version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version or an adapted version of the heroes I admire.\u00a0 I want to be the heroes themselves” (206).\u00a0 I don’t know if Joanna ever got to that point, but it’s significant that she wants it.<\/p>\n

Jeannine, Jael, Janet, and Joanna (another ambiguous “I”) are described by “I” as Everywomen.\u00a0 This is at first difficult to believe, which “I” admits–especially concerning Janet and Jael.\u00a0 With Jael in particular, “I” says “Every woman is not Jael…but Jael is Everywoman” (212).\u00a0 I’m not exactly sure what that means.\u00a0 Perhaps it’s addressing the obvious issue that very few women, if any, are like Jael, but also asserting that there’s the possibility of Jael in every woman–just as there is the possibility of Janet, Jeannine, and Joanna in everywoman.\u00a0 This goes back to the idea that femininity is multifaceted and conflicted among the population of women but also inside each woman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first person I think of is Jael when I consider who the hero of The Female Man may be.\u00a0 She seems to have overcome something in her transformation from “an old fashioned girl” to a “grown woman.”\u00a0 She’s also a cyborg, which is something of an idea in “Manifesto for Cyborgs.”\u00a0 However, her status … Continue reading Heroes in The Female Man<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}