Searching Within a Female Body for the One Beyond Control

1. Searching Within a Female Body for the One Beyond Control Texts: The Female Body Holy

2. Tentative Thesis • Atwood satirizes the way how the female body is treated differently from the male one and insinuates a possible escape from women to get away from men’s control is through her power within, like the speaker in Holy that searches for the purity and a serene sense of self even though the cost is her life.

3. Margaret Atwood’s The Female Body • A practical and useful female body (1+2+3+4) • A female body attached with items that define femininity (2+4) • The objectified female body (5+4+3) • The body which is biologically different from the male body (3+6+7)

4. A practical and useful female body • Body is like a machine • A machine that works without a break (p.40-1) • A machine with a reproductive system (p. 41-3) • Female body as a model • A model of discipline (p. 40-2, 41-4, 42-4) • A model of biological function (p. 41-3) • A model that gives definition of femininity (p. 40-2, 41-3, 42-4)

5. A female body attached with items that define femininity • The female body that is to be trained • Accessories used to “normalize” women into disciplined one that fits the society and the definition of “femininity” • The image of an idealized woman been miniaturized so as to cultivate the young generation and carry on the traditional and cultural definition of femininity • The female body that is taught to bear sexual implication

6. The objectified female body • The female body being objectified • as a biology mannequin whose body parts can be taken away, learned from • as some token and symbol (p. 43-5 1st paragraph) • becomes exchangeable item (p. 43-5 3rd paragraph) • The biology mannequin indicates similar body structure between man and woman • implying the equality between both sexes?

7. The body which is biologically different from the male body • There is difference, but not much • The removable productive system • Biological structure of brain • The binary opposition of chromosome pairs • Biological difference might be over-emphasized • Irony • Historical conception of opposition: men are reasonable, rational and objective whereas women are unreasonable, emotional and perhaps subjective

8. The body which is biologically different from the male body • A bound body but a free mind – is it possible? • Women are expected to be domestic, be bound, disciplined and controllable • Though body being bound, her imagination and mind could be uncontrollable.

9. Holy by The Golden Palominos • The concept of “holy anorexia” • Sense of serenity, purity and essence • Free from want, free from need, free from fear • Free from judgment, ideology and authoritative instruction

10. The concept of “holy anorexia” • A religious asceticism which was especially performed in the later middle ages. • Margery Kempe and St. Catherine of Siena • “self-starvation offered both a renunciation of the ties of kinship and marriage and a route to mystical union with God” (Benson 137). • “[S]tarvation is framed by a religious discourse which permitted these women to redefine the mortification of the flesh” (138).

11. Sense of serenity, purity and essence • The speaker is detached from the material world • She is transcendent to the fear of death • She passes only by water, sleep and air • She feels herself being purified like water • The speaker communicate only with the self that she ascertains her own existence through the mirrors. • Image in the mirrors: formation of her sense of self

12. Free from want, free from need, free from fear • She lives off the parts of herself and throws out things that she doesn’t need anymore • Body becomes the church and the temples where she stays inside. • She is not afraid of pain or other threat • She is the source of power; she is the master of her body

13. Free from judgment, ideology and authoritative instruction • As a self-mastery anorexic, the speaker is not affected by the ideology of beauty • She imagines people’s judgment and opinions on her would remain a doubt whereas she herself knows the answer of herself dying form anorexia. • She wonders what the actresses that play the role of her would feel.

14. Questions • In Atwood’s The Female Body • In Part 2, why does Atwood include “bed” and “head” in the accessories of the basic female body? • In Part 4, why does the male speaker concludes, “I guess we’re safe”? What do you think the girl is like? • In Part 5, the 3rd paragraph, what does that “it” mean? • In Part 7, do you think Atwood suggests that female body is abusable and manageable?

15. Questions • In Holy • When the speaker says, “this is my greatest performance,” who do you think she is addressing to? To whom is the performance showing? • Is that God the speaker mentions the male omniscient God with authority indicated in Bible? • In the last part of the lyrics, where do you think the speaker is going to as she mentions that “I’ll go outside”?