{"id":9,"date":"2020-09-14T16:45:15","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T20:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/?p=9"},"modified":"2022-12-02T15:19:05","modified_gmt":"2022-12-02T20:19:05","slug":"fiction-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/fiction-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiction\/Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

“Marrying the Hangman” by Margaret Atwood\u00a0<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

In her poem \u201cMarrying the Hangman,\u201d Margaret Atwood narrates the true story of Jean Colol\u00e8re and Fran\u00e7oise Laurent. Held in adjacent jail cells during the 18th<\/sup> century, Colol\u00e8re is imprisoned for dueling and Laurent for theft. In this time in Canada, the only way for men to escape the death penalty was \u201cby becoming the hangman,\u201d and women \u201cby marrying the hangman.\u201d Though Colol\u00e8re is not sentenced to death, Laurent still convinces him to become the hangman and marry her, saving her from execution.<\/p>\n

In this poem, Atwood highlights the similarities between Laurent\u2019s imprisonment and her subsequent marriage to emphasize how both ultimately restrict female autonomy. Atwood writes that though the hangman \u201cis not such a bad fellow,\u201d \u201che does not wipe up what he accidentally spills.\u201d This scene\u2014the hangman creating messes and neglecting to clean them\u2014serves as an example of the theme of female partners taking on a majority of household labor in relationships. In her article \u201c’Women\u2019s Work?’ Women Partners of Transgender Men Doing Housework and Emotion Work,\u201d researcher Carla Pfeffer finds that although trans men have \u201cincreasingly liberal gender-role attitudes,\u201d their female partners still \u201cperform the bulk of house-hold labor\u201d (167). One partner, Lilia, declares that she always cleans up after her partner as a way to \u201ctry and take care of him\u201d (173). \u00a0Thus, both Lilia and Laurent are in arrangements where typical household chores disproportionately fall under their responsibility because they are women. Atwood continues that to Colol\u00e8re, Laurent represents \u201cnipple, arms, lips, wine, belly, hair, bread, thighs,\u201d and that she kept her \u201cpromise\u201d to provide these things when they married. This list centers on female body parts, invoking a sense of sexualization for readers, which we learn that Laurent plays into and satisfies later on. This connects to Kirsty Liddiard\u2019s research in \u201cThe work of disabled identities in intimate relationships.\u201d Liddiard finds that disabled women perform a disproportionate amount of \u201csex work,\u201d in which they continually manage \u201ctheirs and their partners\u2019 sexual desires and activities\u201d (122). For one subject, Jenny, this means constantly putting herself \u201cout to give him that pleasure,\u201d no matter the\u00a0 personal cost (122). Likewise, Atwood implies that Laurent performs sex work (keeping her “promise\u201d) in order to maintain her relationship, similar to many other female partners universally.<\/p>\n

At the poem\u2019s end, Atwood proposes the impactful question: \u201cWhat did [Laurent] say when she discovered that she left one locked room for another?\u201d By comparing Laurent\u2019s marriage to her jail cell (“locked room”), Atwood highlights the restrictions that women endure in relationships. This relates to Pfeffer\u2019s findings: women perform extensive emotion work in relationships no matter the \u201cpersonal and interpersonal stress and strain\u201d it causes them (174). One subject, Gail, reveals that in caring for her trans partner, she often feels \u201creally disconnected from the outside world\u201d (177). Thus, for many women, marriage often becomes another \u201clocked room.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“What I Learned From My Mother” by Julia Kasdorf<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

In \u201cWhat I Learned From My Mother,\u201d poet Julia Kasdorf details the lessons she learned from her mother, which all revolve around stereotypical gender roles.<\/p>\n

Through the course of this poem, Kasdorf emphasizes that gender is learned rather than innate. Kasdorf begins almost every sentence with \u201cI learned [\u2026],\u201d following with a feminine activity (making bouquets, prepping fruit salad, etc.). The anaphora of \u201cI learned\u201d affirms that none of these \u201cfeminine\u201d behaviors are intrinsic to the speaker; rather, she acquired them from her mother. This reflects Carla Pfeffer\u2019s findings in \u201c’Women\u2019s Work?’\u201d Pfeffer observes that even in non-cisgendered relationships, partners still follow typical gender roles.\u00a0 For instance, one female partner, Robyn, describes her supportive actions as \u201cone of the female roles [she takes]\u201d on as a partner (174). Pfeffer concludes that this process of \u201cbecoming a man or woman is an ongoing, iterative, interactional social process\u201d (169). This \u201ctaking on\u201d of roles in a relationship reflects how gender is socially conditioned, similar to how the speaker \u201clearns\u201d gender from her mother. In addition to emphasizing the learned nature of gender, Kasdorf also speaks to the extensive emotion work that society expects from women.<\/p>\n

Many of the activities that the speaker learns from her mother revolve around soothing the emotions of those around her. For instance, she learns to \u201coffer sympathy\u201d to the grieving, \u201cto ease awful pains [\u2026] like an angel,\u201d and to \u201coffer healing.\u201d The speaker even declares that she creates \u201cfrom another\u2019s suffering [her] own usefulness.\u201d These assertions highlight the great lengths that the speaker goes to in order to manage the emotions of those around her, actions which comply with traditional gender roles. This agrees with Pfeffer\u2019s findings on emotion work. Pfeffer defines emotion work as the \u201cactive management of [one\u2019s] own and others\u2019 emotions\u201d within the \u201cprivate sector of home\u201d (168), and she finds that female partners perform the bulk of emotion work in relationships due to gender roles (174). Female partners are expected to serve as \u201cislands of support\u201d for their significant others (176). Likewise, the speaker in this poem learns to perform extensive emotion work by continually comforting those around her, and she learns to prioritize this emotion work to the point where she finds her own value in it. This falls in line with gendered expectations for women to perform a majority of emotion work in relationships.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Marrying the Hangman” by Margaret Atwood\u00a0 In her poem \u201cMarrying the Hangman,\u201d Margaret Atwood narrates the true story of Jean Colol\u00e8re and Fran\u00e7oise Laurent. Held in adjacent jail cells during the 18th century, Colol\u00e8re is imprisoned for dueling and Laurent for theft. In this time in Canada, the only way for men to escape the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-posts","8":"entry"},"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2020\/09\/hangman-600x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2020\/09\/hangman-600x406.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"David Israel","author_link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/author\/disrael\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2310-fall-2022-group-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}