The Theory of Feminism - Subordination and the Undesirable Sex in “Mulan”

The issue of the oppression of women is a constant unraveling of what has been an establishment that has been forming since the beginning of time. The constant struggle for women to overcome their role that is considered the “weaker sex” is prevalent in our world history. Obviously the most impact and progress for women was during the civil rights movement of the 1960’s where women decided that they did not want to be told what they were supposed to be or do. For example, “For the women’s movement of the 1960’s and early 1970s the subject of feminism was women’s experience under patriarchy, the long tradition of male rule in society which silenced women’s voices, distorted their lives, and treated their concerns as peripheral” (Rivkin 765). Women were to be seen and not spoken to in many cultures and were good for only a few things in the culture…to procreate and serve the desired sex. For example when Mulan finds out that a few of the Huns survived the avalanche that she created with the fire cracker and tries to ask for help from the men of China she is not only ignored but pushed aside. For example, “Please sir can you help me the Huns are alive we need to stop them from taking the Emperor”. She responds to their indigence with a comment to Mushu, “Why won’t anybody listen?” Mushu replies with, “Cause you a girl again, remember. Nobody’s going to listen to you” (Mulan). In many cases women felt as if they weren’t even there, “To be a woman under such conditions was in some respects not to exist at all” (Rivkin 765). The theory I’m going to be talking about is that there is a desired sex and that subordination, oppression, and the silencing are an expression or extension of this theory.
My argument comes down to the fact that throughout history the favorable sex has always been the male. Men are physically stronger than women giving them already a dominant quality; men were educated while women were not, and having limited options to provide for themselves women were forced to depend on men to support them, leaving them no other option but to marry so that they would be taken care of. For example, “Banished from education and from public life, women writers had found refuge in literary forms despised by men, in diaries and letters and in sentimental fiction” (Rivkin 766). In the Disney movie “Mulan” you see this idea of the favorable sex throughout the movie. For example when Mulan ends up at the training camp for the Chinese army, as they are training you hear a number of degrading comments towards women, “Did you send me daughters? When I asked for sons.” (Mulan)

Implying that men are not only the more desired ore preferred sex but more honorable. Women’s limited roles in China are demonstrated with Mulan’s struggle to live up to her culture’s expectations. For example when she goes to see the matchmaker to set her up with a husband she is criticized for being too skinny for not being able to bare sons, “Too skinny. Not good for baring sons” (Mulan). Men are what is considered the desired position but you do not have a desired position without having an undesired position which is the role that women play. It is what makes it so great because when you are not a king or emperor without people to rule over, so the position of the subordinate is very important to the superior because it makes it what it is. You can’t have one without the other. In “Mulan” the position of man is glorified making it the ultimate seem what should be striven for. For example, “You’re the saddest bunch I ever met but you can bet before we’re through, somehow I’ll make a man out of you” (Mulan).
Adrienne Rich is a famous writer who helped in opening to the public eye the changes that were taking place not just in society itself but also in how literature was look or criticized of the roles that women play or played throughout history in her essay “When We Dead Awaken”. For example, “‘When We Dead Awaken’ seemed to Adreienne Rich a justified title for an address regarding women at the Modern Language Association in 1970” (Rivkin 766). Her role to inspire a look at women’s roles in literature and how they have affected women’s idea of how they view themselves guided her main arguments of women experiencing silencing in literature and taking on the role of the oppressed. For example, “…Rich inspired into life a school of feminist literary criticism that took the history of women’s oppression and silencing of as twin beacons to guide its work” (Rivkin 766). Even certain phrases within our culture have used women for the brunt of its insults because to mimic the undesirable sex would make one of lesser value. For example when playing sports a phrase that is often used to insult the skills of a player is, “You play like a girl”, tying women to the negative insult. Meaning to be a woman is an insult even for women themselves. Rivkin and Ryan talk about the impact of language and how it has affected Feminist theory. For example, “Feminist literary criticism moves with time from the criticism of writing by men and the exploration of writing by women to a questioning of what it means at all to engage with or in language” (Rivkin 769). Our culture has designed an ideal of what the woman’s role is to play so that everything works together to play out the roles in society that we are obligated to fulfill. Karen O'Brien talks in the magazine of the Cambridge University Press about Isobel Grundy’s book “Slaying Knights in Quest for Equality” addressing the issue of socially constructed roles that are created by society and that are pressed upon the genders to fulfill, which affects how women view themselves. They are trapped in a sense and do not or did not have the role models in society and in literature that would help them towards equality, “As philosophy came to define the human being less in terms of mind and more in terms of social organization, women became more central but not more equal” (O'Brien318pp ). With this need many out breaking role models for the women’s movement began to take place in a patriarchal society that was difficult to penetrate. Writers like Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay took on this role to try and change the view of women in society and in literature. For example, “Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft found they had to rewrite the accepted history of civilization before they could challenge the "cult of chivalric manners", the belief that woman was weak so that man might be not only strong but also generous and forbearing: in a word, civilized” (O'Brien318pp ).
In Mulan there is a section that talks about how men want a woman worth fighting for. Their very existence of masculinity comes from the comparing of what is feminine. They are in a sense using women’s role in society to build up their own sense of what is masculine in a patriarchal society and bounce and use that position of privilege to give themselves the superior position. Irigaray for example talks about this use of building up the masculine roles by using the feminine roles as somewhat of a stepping stool, “What she calls ‘feminine’ – everything having to do with matter and the contact between material planes – has to be subordinated to a masculine idealizing tendency that uses the feminine as a mirror for its own narcissistic speculations” (Rivkin 795). In other words you only have the masculine because of the feminine. It’s like you only have a king because you have the subjects. Not only were women told by society what was a woman’s role is in the movie, but Mulan discovers how shallow the men’s actual perspective on women are. There is a scene in the movie where they are all talking about what type of girl they would like and they all were talking about women that would do something for them, not a what they like in a woman. For example, “I want a girl who’s pale as the moon with eyes that shine like stars” and “I want a girl who adores my battle scares” and last, “I don’t care what she where’s or what she looks like, it all depends on what she cooks like” (Mulan). Mulan counteracts their comments with her comment about what she’d find attractive in a girl because she’s pretending to be a man, “How bout a girl who’s got a brain, who always speaks her mind” (Mulan). The guys respond negatively with a “Nahhhh” (Mulan). Demonstrating the limited idea of what a woman can be and that they are only there to please men. Irigaray talks about how even the language construction itself keeps women in the position of subordination compared to men because language was constructed under a patriarchal system. This causes the very utterance of words even used to combat the desired sex to become weak and have less of an impact because the weapons or tools used by the undesired sex have been made to favor the desired sex. For example, “An organization that maintains, among other things, the break between what is perceptible and what is intelligible, and thus maintains the submission, subordination, and exploitation of the ‘feminine’” (Rivkin 797). This handicap makes fighting what has been ingrained into the system very difficult to combat because there are not the tools to use to combat it, “This language work would thus attempt to thwart any manipulation of discourse that would also leave discourse intact” (Rivkin 797).
The use of not just language itself but the literature that has impacted society itself is affect by this idea of the patriarchal society. Gilbert and Gubar talk about the negative impact that literature has placed upon women because it has given women an image of what they should act and look like. Their argument was in order for women to move away from the patriarchal idea of what a woman should be or act like is to change the roles and the way that women are portrayed in literature in order to break the cycle. For example, “Their argument in this selection is that even the positive images of women in literature express negative energies and desires on the part of the male writers” (Rivkin 812). She’s basically saying that men cannot express women the women want to be expressed because they are the very source that has shaped the mold of what women should be in society. So in order for women writers to express positive images in literature they need to see positive roles themselves. For example, “Drawing on the work of Harold Bloom regarding poetic identity, they argued that women could not become writers and assume a writer’s identity until they found appropriate models for themselves in the tradition” (Rivkin 812). However, beginning a role model for those to come is a difficult challenge to overcome, like what Mulan faces in the movie. When she is discovered as woman the member of the emperor’s council completely disrespects Mulan once he finds out she is a woman. He is absolutely disgusted by her because she has taken on a role that is not hers to take and in doing so he degrades her by calling her a snake. For example, “Tis a woman….a trechurous snake” indicating that women are sly creatures that must be kept in their line or place because they are cunning and deceptive. To forge a way in a place that has not been forged is very difficult but Gilbert and Gubar are trying to say that change is not possible without sacrifice of those who pave the way.

Women in society also have enormous pressure to live up to what is considered beautiful, gorgeous, and sought after by me. This is another social construction by a patriarchal society in which the idealized woman is placed on a pedastool that must be mimicked and copied so that every woman should strive for this same idea. Gardiner talks about this in her on her brief article on a book review of Carol Dyhouse’s book “Glamour” that addresses these issues in society. For example, “Glamour has always been about women not knowing their place. From the late 19th century, when the word first gained currency with its undertones of sorcery, it has had an edge of opprobrium and envy” (Gardiner). This idea of a woman needing to fulfill her identity as a sexual object is something that has infiltrated many if not almost all. There is not a social equality in a sense that there is this idea pushed upon women to be what men want them to be, “It is about allure, about wanting and yearning, about transformation and the democratisation of desire” (Gardiner). Not only have women been infiltrated with this idealized look that they must attain but also a psychological idea of what true success is, to find and man and to live happily ever after. This illusionary idea put upon the females brain makes her feel the need to fulfill her dreams to be rescued by a prince. Women who strove towards the feminist thought recognized this fake reality of a dream that they had been fed as a child and realized as females they are given this idea of a fantasy lifestyle because they are female, “…feminist fiction chronicled the psychological and sometimes literal journeys taken by women who come to a gradual understanding of the ways that gender prescribes their lives” (Leonard). The efforts to try and deter women from this one track way of thinking that their one and only goal in life is to find a husband was through revamping of literature and the way women were portrayed themselves, “…feminist fiction tends to defamilarize and demythologize heterosexual romance, and in particular, the way it channels women into matrimony” (Leonard). Leonard talks about the dreamlike idea of what marriage will be someday because the culture has placed upon it this type of status. Many films including Disney create the ideal place for a woman to be in her life is when she is finally wed to her prince. Just look at all of the films that we have grown up with. “The gesture to turn a critical gaze on marriage was informed by rhetoric emerging from the Women's Liberation Movement, which often encouraged a rethinking of the coercive power of love and romance” (Leonard). In Mulan she does end up in the end with her prince and he does the typical going after her, but what is different in this case is that she realizes that she does not have to be rescued anymore in order to be happy. Sorry to make a cliché but it’s like she has found the hero inside of her. She does not need the matchmaker to honor her family anymore. She has broken the barriers of her culture. Ad although this contemporary sort of tale is told in an older generation where we could not see so much freedom to be given a woman, the positive impact on the female child is much more affective.


Works Cited
Gardiner, Juliet. "Glamour: Women, history and feminism." History Today 60.4 (2010): 59. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 May 2010.
Leonard, Suzanne. "'I really must be an Emma Bovary': female literacy and adultery in feminist fiction." Genders 51 (2010). Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 May 2010.
O'Brien, Karen. “Slaying Knights in Quest for Equality: Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain”. Cambridge University Press. Pg. 52 No. 1909 Web 3 March 2009.
Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael “Literary Theory: An Anthology” Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. United Kingdom: P, 2004. Print.