(no subject)
Some people just cannot change. They are too entrenched in their beliefs and values, because they simply cannot adapt or take them out of their personal contexts.
Hedda Gabler is eliciting some of the most interesting comments around. :) I was oblivious of its existence up till I happened to read one of my friend's blog entries. I'd like to have added a comment but then I've realised that after such a long time it's been sufficiently debated upon and succintly put by Dr Gwee :) Haha and now i'll just post his comment and rush off to do some *ahem* business and try to work on my mid-term.. tata!
The issue of rape is actually less analogical than you think, Shafiqah; an analogy would be closer to saying that Hedda is like Angelina Jolie or Josef K. Whoever brought up this case of rape has highlighted a perfect example of the central disagreement in Hedda Gabler: at what point of a woman's behaviour should we it find it acceptable to "change our minds" and say that she only deserves what she got? In other words, as I have already posed in my lecture, at what point can our belief in unconditional equal rights for women become suddenly conditional again? At what point do we betray this fact that we aren't serious enough when we claim that we abhor gender discrimination and abuse and become ironic perpetrators of that work?
I have earlier given an "extreme" scenario of a naked person in public, to whom I said we should never respond with an outraged wish for rape; yet, one response has been that it should depend on the motive (and character?) of that person. No, it shouldn't -- and that's the crux! Either rape is wrong absolutely, as an act of intolerable violence against another, or it is not; if we say that some women "ask for it" -- when clearly they didn't -- we are already taking away these women's right to themselves, to represent themselves, and then teaching them with the violence of free-willing criminal masculine desires. I dare give you a further "extreme" scenario to make the point clearer: even if a person is a prostitute by profession, we should never think that she, too, deserves to get raped! Can you see the rupture in logic here in asserting otherwise?
Dr Roy and I have repeatedly emphasised such a radical manifestation of social hypocrisy in Hedda Gabler, where we would want to believe in everyone's right to happiness and yet distant ourselves from having to grant it to those considered unlikeable, mean-spirited, cynical, unstable, perverse, etc. Ibsen could have given us a perfect woman in every imaginable and societally acceptable way and then have her commit suicide to show that patriarchy is a suffocating, life-destroying, and self-congratulatory body of values. But what would that have proven? By giving us a female ideal who must deserve this right to her own life-choice, we would allow masculine social values in again from the backdoor; Ibsen would be saying "unless a woman is this and this, or wears this or this, or behaves in this or that manner, she does not deserve her freedom and, indeed, deserves to be taught, even with violence!" Ibsen gives us a conventionally unlikeable heroine precisely to frustrate our conventional response to want to see her happy in order to ask: does this woman then deserve to die from unhappiness? Can you see how, by saying that Hedda caused her own happiness, ie. she deserves what she got, we are again back to the same old problem, by thinking that she does have real options?
Now, please don't take all these challenges wrongly, ie. personally: remember that I have warned before how some of you, at some point in this module, would respond with a "Why can't I say what I want?" attitude. And this is one of those points in time, and those who have spoken out in the forum have at least been courageous to air their views; I know that Shafiqah is right when she believes that a silent majority see as she sees, even if there are speaking opposers online. But we are all in the University to learn first, and, if you're not interested in questioning personal assumptions and grow into more humane responsible people in society, then you really don't need to be here. And if you have come to take literature because you think that this is certainly one discipline where you can escape from the responsibilities of self and daydream, well -- surprise.
Dr Gwee
Hedda Gabler is eliciting some of the most interesting comments around. :) I was oblivious of its existence up till I happened to read one of my friend's blog entries. I'd like to have added a comment but then I've realised that after such a long time it's been sufficiently debated upon and succintly put by Dr Gwee :) Haha and now i'll just post his comment and rush off to do some *ahem* business and try to work on my mid-term.. tata!
The issue of rape is actually less analogical than you think, Shafiqah; an analogy would be closer to saying that Hedda is like Angelina Jolie or Josef K. Whoever brought up this case of rape has highlighted a perfect example of the central disagreement in Hedda Gabler: at what point of a woman's behaviour should we it find it acceptable to "change our minds" and say that she only deserves what she got? In other words, as I have already posed in my lecture, at what point can our belief in unconditional equal rights for women become suddenly conditional again? At what point do we betray this fact that we aren't serious enough when we claim that we abhor gender discrimination and abuse and become ironic perpetrators of that work?
I have earlier given an "extreme" scenario of a naked person in public, to whom I said we should never respond with an outraged wish for rape; yet, one response has been that it should depend on the motive (and character?) of that person. No, it shouldn't -- and that's the crux! Either rape is wrong absolutely, as an act of intolerable violence against another, or it is not; if we say that some women "ask for it" -- when clearly they didn't -- we are already taking away these women's right to themselves, to represent themselves, and then teaching them with the violence of free-willing criminal masculine desires. I dare give you a further "extreme" scenario to make the point clearer: even if a person is a prostitute by profession, we should never think that she, too, deserves to get raped! Can you see the rupture in logic here in asserting otherwise?
Dr Roy and I have repeatedly emphasised such a radical manifestation of social hypocrisy in Hedda Gabler, where we would want to believe in everyone's right to happiness and yet distant ourselves from having to grant it to those considered unlikeable, mean-spirited, cynical, unstable, perverse, etc. Ibsen could have given us a perfect woman in every imaginable and societally acceptable way and then have her commit suicide to show that patriarchy is a suffocating, life-destroying, and self-congratulatory body of values. But what would that have proven? By giving us a female ideal who must deserve this right to her own life-choice, we would allow masculine social values in again from the backdoor; Ibsen would be saying "unless a woman is this and this, or wears this or this, or behaves in this or that manner, she does not deserve her freedom and, indeed, deserves to be taught, even with violence!" Ibsen gives us a conventionally unlikeable heroine precisely to frustrate our conventional response to want to see her happy in order to ask: does this woman then deserve to die from unhappiness? Can you see how, by saying that Hedda caused her own happiness, ie. she deserves what she got, we are again back to the same old problem, by thinking that she does have real options?
Now, please don't take all these challenges wrongly, ie. personally: remember that I have warned before how some of you, at some point in this module, would respond with a "Why can't I say what I want?" attitude. And this is one of those points in time, and those who have spoken out in the forum have at least been courageous to air their views; I know that Shafiqah is right when she believes that a silent majority see as she sees, even if there are speaking opposers online. But we are all in the University to learn first, and, if you're not interested in questioning personal assumptions and grow into more humane responsible people in society, then you really don't need to be here. And if you have come to take literature because you think that this is certainly one discipline where you can escape from the responsibilities of self and daydream, well -- surprise.
Dr Gwee