Brad Bowman
Period 4
Dominguez
Things Fall Apart, Through A Feminist Lens
Feminism is no longer something that the world can ignore. Women didn't always possess the rights that they do today. As far back as biblical times, all the way up to today, women women have been pushed aside and belittled by their male counter-part. Men were always strong and did all the dirty work, where women were expected to maintain the house by cooking and cleaning. Feminism is all about breaking away from such stereotypes such as “women belong in the kitchen.” (lol). The feminist movements really started the transition from “housewives” to “equal beings.”
Women deal with different day-to-day problems then men. Women are under the constant pressure of maintaining that model figure, and that has gone so far as to cause many women to develop eating disorders. These disorders are caused the the primitive thirst of mans craving for the perfect woman. Women had began to accept this “stay in the kitchen” type of society, but who's to blame them with the type of advertising that was being shown throughout the past. It wasn't until the 1970's that, “books that defined woman’s writings in feminine terms flourished. Having successfully highlighted the importance of gender, feminist theorists uncovered and rediscovered a body of works authored by women that their male counterparts had decreed inferior and unworthy” (Feminism 175).
In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe , she shows that women were treated as property. This is reflected by many characters in the novel, including the main character. In Things Fall Apart women from rival villages were handed over to create a peace offering. I believe that the feminist lens is the correct lens to use in order to fully analyze this reading.
