![]() ![]() When you have no respect for someone, let alone an entire gender, it’s almost impossible to characterize as them as legitimate people. His creation of characters exemplifies what Bukowski experienced and so he came to the conclusion that, “Women are aggressive and disloyal whores.” In Jani Korhonen’s essay, “The Portrayal of Women in the Novels of Charles Bukowski”, she discusses two critical components of misogyny and sexism: male perception of female hostility and male perception of women as sex objects. But, Bukowski seemed to have kept his work separate from what was happening around him. With the start of Women’s Liberation and second-wave feminism gaining tremendous notoriety, women were marching forth demanding change about their worth. “there are some women there who go where the money goes, and sometimes when you look at these whores these one hundred dollar whores you wonder sometimes if nature isn’t playing a joke dealing out so much breast and ass and the way it’s all hung together, you look and you look and you look and you can’t believe it”īetween 19, there were many social and political movements that attempted to forge justice and equality for women. In “a 340 dollar horse and hundred dollar whore,” Bukowski compares the body of a woman to racetrack betting: To be able to think about and view women in such a degrading manner for a space in literature only reinforces a biased, sexist representation. Growing up with a father who had a negative impression of what he considered “the weaker sex” deeply impacted Bukowski’s own understanding of women.īecause of the deep, concrete language and imagery in poetry, Bukowski’s misogynistic ways are thoroughly represented, and he seems to be fixated on the subject. His famous novels, Women and Ham on Rye are considered autobiographical, in that the main character, Henry Charles “Hank” Chianski, is the alter-ego of Bukowski. It’s important to understand Bukowski’s conception of women, and the time period in which he was writing them. Of course, there are many popular works featuring feminist characters and/or narratives, such as Jane Eyre, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and The Color Purple, but I want to highlight some of the challenges that arise when literary giants like Charles Bukowski butt up against feminism in their own writing. We hear a lot about female representation when it comes to television and music, but rarely does the mainstream media pay any attention to women in literature. ![]()
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