PARODİ KADINLAR

In this paper I have aimed at presenting a reading of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, which is deemed his most perennially popular play, in terms of the representation of the female. Within the reading process in question, I have focused on the motif of pen the writer elaborates in his characterisation of the female figures. Viewing from a feminist perspective the mode in which the writer links the female figures with this phallic symbol, I have tried to draw an analogy between imperialist rhetoric and patriarchal rhetoric on the grounds that both of them are based upon a binary system of thought that invariably deploys binary oppositions. It is a widely recognised fact that within the patriarchal discourse thought is bounded by a dichotomous system of values which is constructed upon the gender roles ascribed to the couple man/woman. Wilde seems through his celebrated inversions and subversions to overturn the normative values of masculinity and femininity which stemmed from the separate spheres ideology – man for the world at large/ woman for the home – of the nineteenth century England. And when viewing the play in question within the historical context, one might detect in it the influence of the early feminism that caused unease through a shift in gender relations in the societal structure towards the end of the nineteenth century. However, taking into consideration the fact that what the female characters of the play write with their pens is confined to issues such as love and marriage one can conclude that ultimately Wilde creates in this play a picture of a basically male- oriented society, rendering the female an extension, or rather a parody of the male, an approach reflecting in a sense an endeavour to reassert the male’s ownership of the pen.