#8 - The Woman's Book of Superlatives
You held out your hand for an egg and fate pits into it a scorpion.
Show no consternation:
close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm.
Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture,
the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned a great lesson:
how to endure without a sob.
- Catherine Lim, The Woman's Book of Superlatives
I first read this book when I was eleven, the time when innocence and naiveness could not fully grasp the essence of Catherine Lim's stories within this treasure trove of women's fate. Spread across many different cultures and centuries lies the crux of female equainimity amidst suffering.
The Chinese girl screams and sobs as her feet are bound tightly to keep them from growing beyond the desired three inches. She is forcibly made to understand men of that society delighted in tiny feet that are significant of the female demureness and lack of power, which invokes masculine gallantry. The bones in her feet are crushed as the strips of cloth are wound tighter and tighter with each passing day. Her deformed toes will soon develop gangrene and fall off, but all in the name of beauty. She has to endure the life-long agony to please any prospective husbands.
There is the Victorian lady in a corset so tight, she feels faint. The Victorian society appreciated the hourglass form of the female body, so she does not have a choice but to contend with the restrictive garb. Prolonged attempts at cinching her waistline resulted in a disastrous distortion of her ribcage. She is deprived of the ability to breathe normally, much less the joy of breathing deeply, because her lungs have been majorly constricted by the lace. Her life is centered upon measuring up to the beauty standards set by men who lusted after women with tiny waists.
Rampant infibulation hits the African girl as she is compelled to undergo genital mutilation. Her virginity is ensured by stitching her genital lips, then the horrible procedure ensues even after she is married off to preserve the exclusive rights to her sexuality. Her husband solely will have the pleasure of bursting into her time and again, regardless of the anguish she goes through - a sick cycle that repeats itself whenever he leaves for a faraway place. Her life remains rooted to the carousel of painful chastity.
An Indian Suttee woman, clad in her white widow dress, leaps aboard the flaming funeral pyre of her dead husband. Steeped in customary irony, she is expected to accompany her husband even in death like all other prior examples of widowed women in India, despite all the pleas to be freed. Screams fades into whimpers; sobs into silent tears; resentment into disappointment. Like many others before her, Life to her is life lost in muted injustice.
Are women's lives deemed secondary to the pleasures of men? Do their opinions and rights not matter? The female population have come a long way to pursue an equal status in modern society. India even has a female Prime Minister, yet common folk continue to endure in the shadows of traditions, absurd or otherwise. I, too, must learn to endure, but I will learn to fight as well.
There is the Victorian lady in a corset so tight, she feels faint. The Victorian society appreciated the hourglass form of the female body, so she does not have a choice but to contend with the restrictive garb. Prolonged attempts at cinching her waistline resulted in a disastrous distortion of her ribcage. She is deprived of the ability to breathe normally, much less the joy of breathing deeply, because her lungs have been majorly constricted by the lace. Her life is centered upon measuring up to the beauty standards set by men who lusted after women with tiny waists.
Rampant infibulation hits the African girl as she is compelled to undergo genital mutilation. Her virginity is ensured by stitching her genital lips, then the horrible procedure ensues even after she is married off to preserve the exclusive rights to her sexuality. Her husband solely will have the pleasure of bursting into her time and again, regardless of the anguish she goes through - a sick cycle that repeats itself whenever he leaves for a faraway place. Her life remains rooted to the carousel of painful chastity.
An Indian Suttee woman, clad in her white widow dress, leaps aboard the flaming funeral pyre of her dead husband. Steeped in customary irony, she is expected to accompany her husband even in death like all other prior examples of widowed women in India, despite all the pleas to be freed. Screams fades into whimpers; sobs into silent tears; resentment into disappointment. Like many others before her, Life to her is life lost in muted injustice.
Are women's lives deemed secondary to the pleasures of men? Do their opinions and rights not matter? The female population have come a long way to pursue an equal status in modern society. India even has a female Prime Minister, yet common folk continue to endure in the shadows of traditions, absurd or otherwise. I, too, must learn to endure, but I will learn to fight as well.
posted by Lady Lazarus at 1:06 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home