By rebelling against the text, the female reader not only has to understand the point of view of the author and the male audience, but she also has to formulate her own opinions and create a sort of dialogue between the text and herself. But in so doing, she is also distancing herself from the text, not fully embracing it or its meaning in her life. By misreading a text, the woman reader understands it in a way that is conventional and acceptable to the literary world. Mitty, I realized that it is imperative that women rebel against the texts that would oppress them. But after reading the story again and paying attention to the portrayal of Mrs. Mitty would just let Walter daydream in peace. I found myself initially wishing that Mrs. It is certain that women misread “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” I did. The first draft of Amy’s paper begins with a journal entry that she wrote to generate ideas for her paper: Now Amy was in a bind: as a female reader, how was she to find humor in such stereotypes of men and women?Īmy’s paper blends textual and cultural reader-response theory-the use of gap filling with the notion that gender influences reading strategies.

Mitty becomes a stereotypical nagging wife and seems to take on the active male role, while Walter becomes passive, more in line with another stereotype that is placed upon a woman. And Amy realized that the humor in Thurber’s essay results because he inverts these binaries, because Mrs.

Such a chart, of course, suggests that one category is privileged over another: reason over emotion, good over evil, light over darkness, active over passive, strong over weak, and husband over wife. zip file containing this book to use offline, simply click here. You can browse or download additional books there.

More information is available on this project's attribution page.įor more information on the source of this book, or why it is available for free, please see the project's home page. Additionally, per the publisher's request, their name has been removed in some passages. However, the publisher has asked for the customary Creative Commons attribution to the original publisher, authors, title, and book URI to be removed. Normally, the author and publisher would be credited here. This content was accessible as of December 29, 2012, and it was downloaded then by Andy Schmitz in an effort to preserve the availability of this book. See the license for more details, but that basically means you can share this book as long as you credit the author (but see below), don't make money from it, and do make it available to everyone else under the same terms. This book is licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license.

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