Feminist Narratives: White Rabbit (Essay Sample)

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Gender roles have been greatly explored in literature. Many works, including films and books pose as feminist narratives. These books explore the position of women in society and how this affects their lives as well as society as whole. Some of the texts we’ve covered in this course explore femininity through characters and through the plot. “White Rabbits,” “Eraserhead,” and “Replacements” are great examples of feminist narrative since they portray violation of traditional gender roles. These texts explore women’s traditional gender roles, how they perceive these roles and how these roles affect their lives. However, these texts differ how they extend they violate these roles. “White Rabbits” violates virtually all of them, while “Eraserhead” and “Replacement” stick to mimetic orders. “White Rabbits” delivers a more meaningful message to the readers since it perfectly portrays feminism as the story violates all the mimetic orders.
“White Rabbit,” as an effective feminist narrative as is portrays virtually all violations of realistic gender roles. In “White Rabbits,” femininity is portrayed differently from the way society defines it. Generally, from a typical femininity perspective and from the book’s historical perspective, women are expected to be very much concerned about their, including their beauty and hygiene. Besides, society expected women to be submissive, especially to males, including their husbands, fathers, uncles, and even brothers. There domestic duties should also be limited to taking care of the children and meeting husband’s needs. However, these societal ideals are violated in “White Rabbits.” In this story, women are less concerned about their body. They can do whatever they want with their body, including neglecting body hygiene and beauty. This shows feministic ideals; a woman’s body is her own property and she is at liberty of doing whatever pleases her with it. The woman the narrator encounters uses her long black hair to clean the dish she used to carry bones fed to ravens when the raves are done feeding on them. The woman also carries around decomposing meat which she feeds to her pets, the rabbits. The way the narrator reacts when to the women when she asked rotten demonstrates that society does not expect a woman to mess around with such filth.
Besides, the story shows that a woman can make decisions without the permission of her husband or other significant male figure. Traditionally, all decisions, including who lives with the family would be a man’s decision. However, in the story, the woman also disobeyed her husband by letting the narrator enter the house, without the husband’s permission. The women’s husband, Lazarus, appears upset, but her wife defends the narrator and even suggests she should stay with them. She says to the narrator, “In seven years, your skin will be like stars, in seven years you will have the holy disease of the Bible, leprosy!” (Carrington 279). However, the narrator becomes terrified and runs away as to her this is one the least thing one can expect from a women. This behavior as well as personal attributes shows that the woman does not follow rules of greater society, but instead follows what she thinks is right for her. Additionally, the woman takes on duties that are not assigned to her. Taking care of domestic livestock is a duty that was reserved to men as it is one of the economic activities that help support the family. During the World War era, men were responsible for feeding and nursing cattle, goats, sheep, and rabbits and not women. However, in this story, this role is reserved for a woman and the man does some of the economic activities.
Besides “White Rabbit,” femininity is also explored in “Eraserhead.” Like “White Rabbit,” Lynch shows that both men and women play different roles as assigned to them by society, but they don’t stick to these roles. A woman can assume a man’s role and vice versa. However, there are still areas where men and women stick to their society-assigned roles. For example, Mary X is demonstrating a typical role of a woman of her time. She is pressured by her mother to get married and have children. “You wouldn't mind marrying me, would you Henry?” Mary believes that she needs to rely in his husband for social and economic support. She is also meek and fragile, with plain dressing style. Mary take care of her hair and has a designed them into serpentine coils hanging all over her forehead. These traits make her an idea candidate for a submissive wife, a trait that society expects from women. Mary also lacks a job that brings her any income and that is why she is forced to marry Henry so that she could be able to raise the baby.
However, she starts to violate these gender rules following the birth of her child. Contrary to what most women would do, Mary X is the least concerned parent regarding nursing their new-born. She becomes frustrated by her hideous spawn and start to demonstrate cruelty, bitterness, and disrespect. She lacks empathy for her husband and leaves him alone with their child. In a patriarchal society, this decision would be considered abandonment and blatant disregard of wifely duties by a mother. Besides, Henry’s failure to stop her wife from leaving and even her duty of looking after the baby and doing other domestic chores when her wife is around shows his characteristic passivity. For example, Mary asks Henry to carve chicken for with confidence and Henry just accepts, with happiness and gladness. “Of course. I'd be happy to. So I just, uh... I just cut them up like regular chickens?” This shows how M