Research Information System
MULTIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES IN EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, vol.3, no.2, pp.73-83, 2022 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
Gender relations in the Carol Shields novels The Republic of Love and
Larry’s Party may be investigated critically from the symbolic perspective of
mythological attributes that femininity and masculinity manifest in love and
marriage. This approach is supported by a psychological insight into personal
interactions from such positions of unequal power.
The American feminist Dorothy Dinnerstein was the first author who
thought of the combination between the difficulty of gender conundrum with
the changing possibility, which she called “sexual arrangements and human
malaise”. She based her analysis on an allegory of the female and male
principles expressed in the symbols of the mermaid and Minotaur. Mermaid,
considered in line with the concept of femininity in other feminists such as
Juliet Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, Jane Flax, Jean Baker Miller and Adrienne
Rich, is recognized as a valuable representation in contemporary feminist
psychology. Nancy Chodorow, Jane Flax, Teresa Brennan, Hester Eisenstein,
Marianne Hirsch, Mari Jo Buhle, Adrienne Harris, Louise Taylor and Jessica
Benjamin share Dinnerstein’s account of femaleness and women's subjectivity
concerning the development by interaction on the strenuous way to adulthood.
The Minotaur, symbol of masculinity, is a violent creature, half-man and halfbull, who ate human flesh. One year, the hero Theseus volunteered as a
victim, intending to kill the Minotaur and rescue Athens from its terrible fate.
With the help of Ariadne, the king’s daughter who had fallen in love with
him, he succeeded. (Philip 56)