Doris Lessing's “To Room Nineteen”: A Materialist-Feminist Reading of Woman's Oppression
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A major concern of a Marxist-feminist approach deals with the material, historical structure that limits sexuality and gender. In “To Room Nineteen,” Susan Rawlings’ oppression and self-destruction can be explained by materialist feminism. I want to show that Susan is a victim of a family mode of production determined in capitalist society. In the first part of this paper, I elaborate that the family set-up in “To Room Nineteen” is part of what is known as the sexual division of labor to which the patriarchal ideology of maternity is attached. The second part deals with the process of the protagonist’s buying maternity and domestic labor with money and how the sexual divisions of labor eventually repress the heroine, leading her to retreat from the confinement and controls represented by society. The last part is allotted to explain the symbolism of the room and the heroine’s death in feminist perspective. Ultimately, I construct an adequate materialist-feminist view of woman’s oppression to the extent to which relationships between men and women are ultimately determined by the logic of capitalism and patriarchy.
Abstract
A major concern of a Marxist-feminist approach deals with the material, historical structure that limits sexuality and gender. In “To Room Nineteen,” Susan Rawlings’ oppression and self-destruction can be explained by materialist feminism. I want to show that Susan is a victim of a family mode of production determined in capitalist society. In the first part of this paper, I elaborate that the family set-up in “To Room Nineteen” is part of what is known as the sexual division of labor to which the patriarchal ideology of maternity is attached. The second part deals with the process of the protagonist’s buying maternity and domestic labor with money and how the sexual divisions of labor eventually repress the heroine, leading her to retreat from the confinement and controls represented by society. The last part is allotted to explain the symbolism of the room and the heroine’s death in feminist perspective. Ultimately, I construct an adequate materialist-feminist view of woman’s oppression to the extent to which relationships between men and women are ultimately determined by the logic of capitalism and patriarchy.
참고문헌 (15)
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