Published Online:March 2023
Product Name:The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type:Article
Product Code:
Author Name:Ruhina Jesmin U H
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:11
The study attempts to locate the politics of androgynous matrix in some of the poems written by twentieth-century American feminist poets Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich. It applies relational content analysis, Judith Butler’s theory of gender, and Adrienne Rich’s concept of compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence as its method and theoretical tool. Their poems deconstruct the politicized heterosexual dynamics which has been forcibly and subliminally imposed on women and construct androgynous identity/sexuality. The poets’ feminist/queer rage as a legitimate emotion questions the complex dynamics of gender as well as powerfully threatens monologic/masculinist gender asymmetry. The poets effectively deconstruct the cultural inscription of masculinity and femininity and also demonstrate that female sex, neither inferior nor the Other, must not be restricted to feminine/submissive, sensitive/nurturant gender-linked behavior. They refuse to adhere to hegemonic masculinity by which male sex exercises social dominance over female sex. They reverse the existing gender roles and postulate selfregulatory mechanisms of assuming androgynous identities to break the established gender binaries and violate gender-appropriate behavior, thereby threatening heterosexual hegemony
Maleness in female or vice versa characterizes human beings, and as such, at the core humans are androgynous. For Plath and Rich, androgynous identity or sexuality seems to endorse a liberated sexual preference, identity and an ideology of human rights, and as such, the presence of their choice finds a political dimension. Stimpson (1989, 54) argues, “an androgyny may reject patriarchy but not heterosexuality”—a contention that reverses Plath and Rich’s arguments in the selected poems: Plath’s (1983) “Ariel,” “Daddy,” “Lady