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by sillypog
2678 days ago
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She is depicted as a deeply flawed and vindictive character. As a reader, it's easy to hate her and as I was reading it I imagined the author must have hated her too. But there are other women/girls in the story who come off in a much more positive, almost angelic, light so I don't think the author could be accused of misogyny here. Nor the husband in the book - his mariage seems to be something unpleasant that happens to him but he never seems to hold his wife's apparent flaws against her. |
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I don't think this is the best defence. Maybe 'misogyny' is a dangerously ambiguous word here, but certainly sexist writing can contain positive portrayals of women. You've also got to take into account how much humanity and depth the female characters are invested with, the types of traits they are celebrated or derided for, and so on. (If a book contained only hateful and angelic women, that would be suspiciously reminiscent of the Madonna-whore dichotomy, which is a bit of a wanky phrase but I think has some truth to it.)
I think it would be fair to say that we don't get a full portrait of anyone but Stoner, so the fact that Edith is arguably a bit of a caricature of the broken, bitter woman doesn't necessarily tell us much about Williams's attitude to women generally. And there's enough nuance in her portrayal to leave space for her to be a real person behind the scenes.