Jessica Peterson

The Abuse Debate: Empowerment or Mistreatment & The Female Gender

In our Western culture, our society views abuse as a form of maintaining an emotional, mental and physical hierarchy in the home, an oppressive force whose intent it to oppress, belittle and control the one in the role of subservient and submissive to its powerful abuser. There are many places that offer assistance and help to the victim, such as shelters, job assistance programs, self-defense class, support groups, and other positives channels that offer safety and support. The abuser can also attend support groups, have sessions with a therapist, or take anger management classes to overcome their abusive nature. Our culture offers many outlets for both victim and abuser to change, no longer be a statistic but a success story. On the other hand, the perspective of abuse in non-western culture is that it is culturally acceptable and a visible way for the husband or man in the relationship to assert his dominant role in the household. If a woman chooses to affirm her voice, she runs the risk of being abused by the man just so he can “save face” and maintain his role as the head and the controller of the home.

Throughout this essay, I will explain how the theme of gender in Jasmine and the article “Talking Their Way Out of a Population Crisis” display women that are empowered by their culture standing and make decisions that assert their identity, while in Things Fall Apart and the article on wife beating women are left without a voice or a choice when it comes to their mistreatment by the men in their culture. By making these comparisions between different textual genres, the reader can better understand Objective 1, “to bring classic literature of European colonialism and emerging literature from the postcolonial world into dialogue”.  Reading a variety of texts can bring into focus a more stark contrast between cultures and “provoke responses or dialogues from other texts, voices and traditions”. Reading a text “in dialogue with” another text inititiates a chain reaction of ideas, opinions and perspectives and extends the debate between writers and the readers that interact with those controversial texts.

Why is abuse so culturally offensive in Western culture but culturally acceptable in non-western culture? In the article on wife beating, it is evident that the concept of abuse in African culture is a black & white debate, no questions asked (but if they were they would be cause for abuse for questioning culturally acceptable practices).Beating is a visible consequence for being disobedient and questioning the figure of authority in the home. Because women lack access to education or viable employment opportunities outside the home, they are dependent on the male for economic reasons. They consider abuse a small sacrifice when it comes to financial security for themselves and their children, women are “loath to divorce their husbands for fear of social disgrace”. Women do not have a voice in traditional African culture, their mistreatment is a cultural norm because of gender hierarchy in that society.

In correlation, Things Fall Apart as includes the controversial theme of a disenfranchised female population whose mistreatment at the hands of their controlling and powerful men  seems to make “mere anarchy loosed upon the world” (“The Second Coming:, W.B. Yeats), at least their own private part of it. Reading the wife-beating article in conjunction with Things Fall Apart provides the reader with a response to the question of "How may literary fiction instruct or deepen students’ knowledge of world history and international relations compared to history, political science, anthropology, etc.?" posed by Objective 2. The novel is a good supplementary resource to understand and make a connection with the controversy of abuse against women in African culture. While world history, political science and other subjects can provide broad factual information on a topic, its literary counterpart can give a voice to those that are forced into silence and provide a platform for social change and justice. Okonkwo  struggles to maintain a masculine role, one of authority and power. Abuse was a tradional value in his village and indicates how cultural standards become acceptable, whether they are fair and just or not. Using literary fiction as an accessible tool for various cultures can make this genre of writing a strong proponent to educate the uninformed and raise awareness on global issues.

On the other hand, Jasmine refuses to settle for the status quo in her small native village of Hasnapur. She is empowered by the opportunity to leave behind her cultural roots and use her exoticism as an Indian native to her advantage to easily adapt to new surroundings and experiences throughout her life of adventure on a road to self-discovery. Her native Indian roots dictated to her a lifestyle of limited financial and educational means. Although she proved her intelligence at a young age, her mother knew that Indian custom made it clear that knowledge was pointless to women and even went so far as to spitefully declare God’s cruelty “to waste brains on a girl”. Jasmine denies that she wants to become a steno or teller, which are “good opportunities” in her village, to which her father replies that “bright ladies are bearing bright sons, that is nature’s design”. He emotionally abuses her by assuming she is content with her current status in society and doesn’t have a unique vision for her life but to be the wife and mother her culture expects her to be, but she has a dream to be a doctor which is assumed as “insanity”.

While Jasmine does leave her Indian village behind, she struggles with her identity throughout the course of the novel. When she marries Prakash, she immediately wants to get pregnant for fear of being ostracized by her fellow villagers. She relies on her feminine mystique to draw Prakash to her and uses her sexuality as a decisive tool for finding common ground in her marriage. She is in an abusive relationship with Prakash because she allows his opinions to influence her own, unable to have an identity independent of his. When he is killed, her role as Jyoti is killed with him and she must assimilate into her next identity, a victim at the hand of life’s experiences.

 Jasmine realizes Bud is not in love with her, but is experiencing an infatuation controlled by his attraction to her cultural exoticism. Internally, Jasmine suppresses a warning for Bud that “to want anything so much…was unwise. Too much attachment, too much disillusion”. This internal dialogue seems to express how Jasmine has treated her own journey in life. She remains carefully detached from her life experiences to avoid being hurt by them. Whether it is her multiple marriages or rape at the hands of the ship captain, even her meager upbringing, she is able to shift from identity to identity without the abuse fully being absorbed by only one of her many identities. Because of these multiple personalities, she can shift from victim to goddess to wife and mother and never fully embrace any of those roles.

In the article “Talking Their Way…”, the Kassena-Nankana women are becoming empowered and are determined to increase the education of other women in their village to increase usage of contraceptives and the family planning method while also offering domestic violence workshops to prevent against further abuse in their homes. These women recognize the importance of asserting their identity as strong and educated, which gives them a voice they had not previously had in a predominantly male-dominated society. They realize now the value of their gender and their as women and human beings. They know they can be more than a victim, they have the right to take charge of their safety and their conception.

Throughout the semester, the 2 novels and 2 articles mentioned in this essay did much to raise awareness of the role of women in non-western culture. Creating a dialogue between different types of texts allows us as the Western reader to understand how other cultures view the concept of modernity. We must treat the concept of abuse delicately and be aware of the culture perspective of this controversial topic if we are to raise awareness and create social change for the betterment of all cultures. Linda Strong-Leek’s article Reading as a Woman: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Feminist Criticism, she provides the valid argument that “One must acknowledge as well that male and female roles are societal constructs, and thus, the entire female identity is based more upon societal constraints rather than physiological realities. Women are taught to mother, while men are conditioned to dominate and control. Hence, we know that men may also read as women, if they are willing to rethink their positions, as well as women's positions within patriarchal constructs”. It is imperative that we raise awareness on the social expectations in different cultures of each gender, while also giving them each gender an equal voice to find common ground and be successful, safe and content – no longer victim to any form of abuse but a success story.