In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader  by: Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin I found many critics opinions on Feminism and post-colonialism. In the introduction to Feminism in the text says, “The notion of ‘double colonization’ - i.e. that women in formerly colonized societies were doubly colonized by both imperial and patriarchal ideologies - became a catch-phrase of post-colonial and feminist discourses in the 1980s. (This theory is later discussed in Oyeronke Oyewumi)

  Kirsten Holst Petersen wrote ‘First Things First: Problems of a Feminist Approach to African Literature’. She discusses German feminist trying to defend African feminist. Petersen then says, “This was not a dialogue! It was two very different voices shouting in the wilderness. and it pointed out to me very clearly that universal sisterhood is not a given biological condition as much as perhaps a goal to work towards.” She shows that people from other places cannot speak for women who are being oppressed, but they can sympathize and try and help (if help is wanted). Then Petersen asks the question, “which is more important, which comes first, the fight for female equality or the fight against Western cultural imperialism?” This shows how much both controls a persons life. Both powers are strong and need to be defeated, but by whom? The answer being the person who is under both powers/pressures. To be truthful they may not want to be freed from either power. France for example putting a law on Muslim women making it illegal for them to wear their veils. That is a strict observence of their religion and they may not want to be free of this confinement. Authority should not be able to take away rights nor restrictions in some cases. The Muslim women in France are not restricted to what they can do, because they are without their veils. How is this justice? So the best question from this is who should be in charge of giving “freedom”?

    To conclude Petersen’s article she discusses Buchi Emecheta (author of Second Class Citizen) saying, “Buchi Emecheta… can recreate the situation and dificulties of women with authenticity and give a valuable insight into their thoughts and feelings. Her prime concern is not so much with cultural liberation, nor with social change. To her the object seems to be to gie women access to power in the society as it exists, to beat men at their own game.” This is Emecheta’s whole goal throughout Second Class Citizen. Emecheta wants to not take away restrictions, but give women more power. This gian of power would/can allow them to take hold of their own destinies. True, this giving of power takes away their socieites restrictions, but to change things you need power. Power which otherwise would not be obtainable to these women.

Well I started out not knowing what to do for this project, but as the semester has progressed I came in contact with feminist writers/critics. I really like feminist critique, but did not have anywhere to go with that. In one of my other classes though we discuss post-colonialism which I have come to enjoy surprisingly. I came across some texts that discussed feminism and post-colonialism, and how that effects women and creates a double colonization. I have come in contact with several types of material that has a double colonization effect on women, such as; Fire, Earth, Whale Rider, Second Class Citizen, and Shadow Lines. I have seen how women are not only supressed by their societal norms and expectations, but also a colonial aspect also has brought new pressures on women who are being colonized.

  You can see this in Shadow Lines with Ila. She is so tired of Indian society telling her how to act, so she escapes to England (ironically that is the country that colonized India) to be free.

   Then in Fire the two women charcters were so bogged down with pressure from their own household and lonely that they turned to each other to find another human to love them and care about them.

   In Earth there was Lenny who was a child and unaware of th dangers of colonialism or the pulling away of colonization. Lenny trusted everyone and did not discriminate against people based on their religions. Then the nanny has a group of friends made up of all religions.

   In Whale Rider, Paikea is faced with her tribe (mainly her grandfather) telling her she is not good enough to be a leader of the tribe. She is not satisfied with her not being able to be the leader, so she takes matters into her own hands. She changes everyone’s opinion about a female leader (including her grandfather).

   In Second Class Citizen Adah fights the whole book to obtain knowledge, because she knows it will set her free. Her society (family and husband) believes she should be more womanly instead of trying to do educate herself. Adah makes sure she lives according to her happiness and not other’s.

  These women have had not only pressure from society, but an additional pressure. With the double pressure put on them they still strive to persue their dreams and love. Just because they have the extra pressure does not mean they should give up, but push harder to achieve things.

Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism

      I enjoyed Elaine Showalter’s essay. Is “Ophelia ‘essential’, as Lacan admits; but only because ‘she is linked forever, for centuries, to the figure of Hamlet.” This is true but isn’t Ophelia still worth studying and observing. Showalter then says, “I would like to propose instead that Ophelia does have a story of her own that feminist criticism can tell; it is neither her life story, nor her love story, nor Lacan’s story, but rather the history of her representation.” Then she goes on to discusee the different actresses who protrayed Ophelia. Showalter says, “the most celebrated of the actesss who played Ophelia were those whom rumor credited with disappointments in love.” Then she says, the romantic Ophelia is a girl who feels too much, who drowns in feeling. The romantic critics seem to have felt that the less said about Ophelia the better; the point was to look at her.” Ophelia was just eye-candy. Women actresses began to explore different ways to interpret and betray Ophelia - who was thought to be schitzophrenic. To sum it up Showalter says, “There is not ‘true’ Ophelia for whom feminist criticism must unambiguously speak, but perhaps only a Cubist Ophelia of multiple perspectives, more than the sum of all her parts.”

When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision

Rich starts off with, “Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity:it is part of our refusal of the self-destructveness of male-dominated society.” She believes we are “drenched” in societies standards created by men. Then Rich says, “Until recently this female anger and this furious awareness of the Man’s power over her were not available materials to the female poet, who tended to write of Love as the source of her suffering, and to view that victimization by Love as an almost inevitable fate.” Is that only women who succum to emotion and are dictated by them? Is it a bad thing to be ruled by “Love”? Is Love not the goal of most humans— to find and keep it? Love cannot always last outwardly  - but that does not mean it has not thrived inwardly. I like when Rich says, “But poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know.” Rich then goes on to use herself as an example. She says, “Because I was also determined to prove that as a woman poet I could also have what was then defined as a ‘full’ woman’s life, I plunged in my early twenties into marriage and had three childen before I was thirty.” —- A”full” life is to be marriend and have children in her definition. A “full” life to me is to do the things you love and to enjoyr the things you do.