Author
In this work, I am going to analyze Confessions of a Female Chauvinist Sow, written by Anne Roiphe. Anne Roiphe is an American feminist author, and her work is noteworthy for its examination of the conflict between the desire for family and relationships and that for career and self-determination. This writer grew up in a real Jewish family with its rules and restrictions. Her father was an alcoholic and a kind of womanizer. Her mother had nothing to do but accept this, be ready to complete all the chores, and be abused. Anne Roiphe wanted to be a writer from her childhood, be a good mother and wife, and take into consideration all cultural norms and traditions. However, her first husband turned out to be like her own father. “I once was married a man I thought was totally unlike my father, and I imagined a whole new world of freedom emerging.” (Roiphe, 1982).
Audience
The main readers of Roiphe’s work are mainly women. Anne tries to convince her readers that women must put faith in the idea that they are equal to men, not superior. Women who want equality must be prepared to give it and believe in it. Personal anecdotes, contrast, and comparison are techniques Roiphe skillfully uses to create a strong, convincing essay. It is quite possible that ladies of different ages may use this work and learn something from it. Teenagers can see how the relations between parents may considerably influence the future of their child. Grown-ups may find out something similar to their own situations and follow the ideas Anne suggests in her work.
Text
Roiphe begins her essay with a personal anecdote describing the “horrifying” realization that she married a man exactly like her father. This technique immediately establishes the essay as informal and personal. It is a great way to capture the reader’s interest. This particular anecdote is also used as background information for the first point Roiphe makes in the following paragraph – that “… people… have at one time or another been fouled up by their childhood experiences.” (Roiphe, 1982) Another anecdote in the essay explains how Roiphe’s mother used to give Roiphe “mad money” before going on dates. “My mother and I knew young men were apt to drink too much… mad money was for getting home on your own, no matter what form of insanity your date happened to evidence.” (Roiphe, 1982). Such anecdotes are entertaining and tend to describe the mood of the essay. This essay may also help the readers to relate all events to their personal experiences. Another function of anecdotes in this essay is to substantiate and support main ideas. At the end of one paragraph, Roiphe states, “The hidden anti-male feelings, a result of the old system, will foul us up if they are allowed to persist.” (Roiphe, 1982) This is directly followed by the anecdote explaining the necessity for “mad money” – that men are untrustworthy, inconsiderate beasts. The anecdote clearly provides evidence and support for the fact that women have anti-male feelings.
Exigence
Shortly after capturing the reader’s interest with the introductory anecdote, Roiphe begins using contrast. The numerous examples of contrast throughout the essay portray men and women as being drastically different, especially morally. Boys are thought to be incapable of engaging in “easy companionship” as girls are able to do, and men are generally believed to be “less moral” like lots of women are. “Everyone assumes a mother will not let her child starve, yet, it is necessary to legislate that a father must not do so.” (Roiphe, 1982). Roiphe uses contrast to illustrate the common anti-male attitudes women have, and in doing so, makes it obvious that women feel superior over men. This exactly, Roiphe points out, is the barrier to equality between men and women. It is clear to the reader that equality between the sexes will never exist as long as women continue to feel superior to men. The contrasts also function to support points Roiphe makes later concerning the similarities between men and women.
About midway through the essay, Roiphe makes a transition from the contrast to comparison. She begins focusing on the idea that women are actually quite similar to men. She bluntly states that “intellectually I know that’s ridiculous” to assume “that women given power would not create wars.” She admits that “aggression is not… a male-sex-linked characteristic.” (Roiphe, 1982).
Comparisons like these smoothly lead Roiphe into making one of her strongest comparisons. “Us laughing at them, us feeling superior to them, us ridiculing them behind their backs” is “inescapably female chauvinist sowness.” (Roiphe, 1982). Such comparisons, particularly the last one, are shocking and cause the reader to reflect on previous ideas in the essay. “What they have done to us, and of course they have, and they did and they are” – this is one of Roiphe’s statements, which momentarily make readers believe that men are mainly to blame for the inequality between the sexes. However, through effective comparison, Roiphe leads her readers to infer that women must also be responsible for the inequality between men and women. It then becomes clear to the reader that the “secret sense of superiority” women feel is what makes them equally as chauvinistic as men.
Constraints
The thing that is more important than the functions of the techniques she uses independently is how Roiphe uses them together. For example, she bluntly states in her essay that women are “female chauvinist sows,” without preceding it with contrast; a quite different effect would have been created. Her readers, particularly the women, would have undoubtedly been offended. This approach would certainly have prevented the essay from being convincing. It is obvious that Roiphe purposely used the techniques in a planned way. This allowed her to create a specifically designed essay that turned out to be beneficial and helped the writer present her ideas comprehensibly.
Timing
One of the most peculiar features of this essay is its timing limitations. We cannot say for sure what concrete time will be appropriate for a clear understanding of the message. It was written in 1982, the time when people could not protect their rights completely and had to fight for personal desires and dreams against the existed moral norms. Of course, nowadays, women have much more rights and can easily decide what they should and should not do, whom they can live, and who will be the father of their future children. The work by Anne Roiphe underlines the problems which women had some time ago. Lots of Jewish women still face the same troubles, and Anne says one simple truth that should inspire any woman “hard as it is for many of us to believe, women are not really superior to men in intelligence or humanity – they are only equal.” (Roiphe, 1982). Is it possible to say something more? Hardly, if only our society does not decide to degrade and return to the norms, we have already lived.