In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir wrote a captivating piece about the role of women in society. In her Introduction section, she describes how the efforts of women to gain control over men have always been futile, to say the least. That is not to say that women have not gained some freedom in certain aspects of life -- the ability to vote, to receive formal education, to join the workforce -- but these abilities are just that: gained. Women are still disadvantaged in many regards -- they receive less pay and they are generally looked down upon in many occupations and contexts. de Beauvoir states that "...the women's effort has never been anything more than a symbolic agitation. They have gained only what men have been willing to grant; they have taken nothing, they have only received". What a revolutionary idea! And how true.
The most intriguing part of her work is that the binary relationship of women and men are not like any other binary relationships within history, with blacks and whites being the most prominent example. Women have never been "apart" from men, in the sense that there is no female-only community in the world; if that were the case, there would be no reproduction of the human species in that community. de Beauvoir best states that "[women] have no past, no history, no religion of their own; and they have no such solidarity of work and interest as that of the proletariat. They are not even promiscuously herded together in the way that creates comunity feeling among the American Negroes, the ghetto Jews, the workers of Saint-Denis, or the factory hands of Renault. They live among dispersed among the males, attached through residence, housework, economic condition, and social standing to certain men...more firmly than they are to other women". If women share no common background and need men to survive (as loosely as I can use the term, as in, plainly for reproductive purposes) there is no ground on which to create revolution. With this logical argument, women and men should be considered equals in all senses of the word.
Did Cameron Crowe, writer and director of Jerry Maguire, mean to portray certain gender stereotypes when he constructed the 1996 film? Regardless of his intention, the extremes of the female role in society is very apparent in the women that appear in the film. Kelly Preston plays Avery Bishop, Maguire's first love interest and wife. She is portrayed as a modern, independent woman. A leader in her own right, independent, and strong, it is difficult to tell who controls the marriage. She establishes her dominant-personality from the beginning, and even when Maguire calls it quits with her, she doesn't let him break up with her without letting him know who's boss. On the other end of the female spectrum is Dorothy Boyd, played by Renée Zellweger. Reserved, a follower, and submissive, Boyd ends up living happily ever after with Maguire. Some would say that she is the epitome of the desired woman. After all, in the standard romantic comedy, why would Maguire end up with anyone except the one? The one that completes him - and yet, I have to step back and ask why. Is his completion in her found in her dependency and the fact she is not as strong and overbearing as Bishop appeared to be?
French linguist Saussure wrote about the idea of this binary relationship of signs, which can be applied to the sign of woman. What do we think of when we hear the word woman? What picture do we paint? Submissive and dependent housewives and mothers, juggling multiple jobs at once is what comes to my mind. Furthermore, using Derrida's theories, the word "woman" should only exist in certain contexts, but is there a society in the world that holds the concept of woman differently than others? Although Saussure, Derrida, and de Beauvoir lived in the late 19th and 20th centuries, their ideas and the general notions of gender have continued to implicitly shape modern-day society's take on who females should be and what females should do.
de Beauvoir, Simone. "The Second Sex." marxists.org. Penguin, 2005. Web. 22 Aug. 2010.
Derrida, Jacques. "Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Post-Modernism: Diff'erance." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 385-407. Print.
de Saussure, Ferdinand. "Structuralism and Liguistics: Course in General Linguistic." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 76-89. Print.
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