Professor Grosskopf
LA, 9/3
2/11/13
In the novel “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, femininity is giving you the lower perspective of life and not living it to its fullest just because of your sex, but then masculinity is exactly the opposite. In this novel, we find many examples of when the women are treated as lesser then the men. We are finding examples where it is made fun of or even frowned upon. Not just being a woman but in men’s case having femininity. Things much like this will come across often in the book. One of the obvious reasons this is an issue is that the men have multiple wives sometimes many. “No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and children (especially his women) he was not really a man”(Achabe 53). First of all, how they say, “rule his woman” already shows what the relationship is like. It’s more of a dictatorship that a respected relationship. Nowadays you could use the same sentence but use the word respect instead of rule, and it would make perfect sense. Of course they would be speaking of one woman instead of many. Which brings me to my main point. Having multiple wives is against the law in our country and even a sin in Christianity. It is basically putting down the woman of that country. You are much lesser of a person and automatically have no say in anything. This relates to my main idea because it shows how masculinity has the upper hand in life because of their control over women. A second example is that femininity is frowned upon and sometimes even made fun of. Men like to think of themselves as masculine as they can for self-confidence and other reasons. Even in our culture guys will make fun of other guys using put downs that are related to femininity. On page 65 of the novel Okonkwo is feeling week and is trying to understand what is going on with himself. “When did you become a shivering old woman” […] “Okonkwo you have become a woman indeed” (65). Like I was saying femininity is stated as a failure or a weakness. This relates to the topic directly.
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