Page 126 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

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succinctness with which male authors can be mentioned imply
the untruth that their works have proved more lastingly
significant than texts by their female contemporaries, and so the
well-informed reader will need less guidance to identify them?
In fact Jane Austen is now far more widely read than Sir Walter
Scott but your tutor may still reject ‘Austen’ as inadequate
while accepting ‘Scott’ as a sensible economy. Think about it.
Then, whether you conform to the old discrimination or
embrace the new equity, you will know what you are doing and
be ready to defend it.
Many of the most frequently taught works of literature do
construct men and women as essentially different in their
aspirations and their abilities. A few texts may enforce sexual
stereotyping by bullyingly obvious methods but the majority are
more discreetly manipulative. Your essay might, for instance,
need to observe where and how some text suggests that its own
voice should be heard as masculine or feminine rather than
neutrally human. The work under discussion may also subtly
portray its ideal reader as a man or a woman. Often your essay
should be identifying those literary devices that implicitly
support some squalid or idiotic myth about half of our species.
Do check that your own prose has not imitatively stumbled into
using any of the sexist techniques that it discusses.