Gynicide
Women in the Novels of William Styron
Description:... The other female voices in Styron's ensuing three major novels are violated, both physically and psychologically, by those men and women who, wittingly or unwittingly, enforce the structures of a pervasive patriarchal social consensus. The most egregious example is that of Sophie Zawistowska in Sophie's Choice, whose roles as Aryan dream girl, dutiful housewife, and sexy "survivor" eventually lead to her desperate suicide. Gynicide and psychogynicide are Hadaller's terms for the deaths female characters suffer as a result of the interplay of social forces in Styron's fictive discourses. Based upon the work of M.M. Bakhtin, Hadaller's rigorous and systematic evaluation of the important female characters in Styron's major works explores how women are silenced both by suicide and by male violence in the form of gynicide. Hadaller employs feminist dialogics, a method that is particularly useful in examining both gynicide and its variant psychogynicide, a psychic death-in-life.
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