Hello,

So I’ve already done my blogging for this week, but I felt the need to post a little rant, and since it has everything to do with Arts One here it is:

I’ve heard multiple comments from my peers complaining about the amount of Feminist texts in this course. People are annoyed that there are books that either talk about women or are written by women with a female perspective, therefore we have had essay topics pertaining to this.

Now, I understand recently the course has been feminist heavy. Firstly, this is nothing to complain about. Most of your life (if you continue with English), you will be surrounded my male authors and male-centered books. Books where women are degraded or completely ignored, but books that nonetheless need to be read because they have some merit in their works. For there to be course that has a good amount of feminist literature is not only exceptional, but should also be the norm. There should be an equal balance of both male and female centred texts.

What’s even more frustrating is the fact that realistically, the course is not feminist heavy whatsoever! I just needed quick look at our reading list to confirm my beliefs, but we have only had two actual feminist readings: The Second Sex and The Vindications of the Rights of Women. Other than that, we have read two books I am pretty sure pass the Bechtel test: Antigone and Northanger Abbey (although I am not sure about the latter).

In comparison, we have read numerous books and authors that either do not speak about women or have no women characters (therefore failing the Bechtel test), or that do speak about women but only to degrade them. These include Gorgias, Leviathan, Rights of Man, Heart of Darkness, Doctor Faustus, Dora, and a few others.

This blog post is not here to start any arguments, offend anyone, or anger anyone. I just feel the need to point out these biases that people have, but may not be aware of. We could spend weeks reading books that have nothing to do with women, and the majority of people will not notice anything out of place. But when we read two books pertaining to women in the span of a few weeks, everyone quickly bores of it and is annoyed.

Just something to be aware of.

~Ola