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Oxymorons
Definition of Satire
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of satire, but satirists can take... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Serving Girls/Men:
In Chapter 1, the narrator observes the various (all-male) scholars who flit around Oxbridge's campus. She utilizes imagery rather curiously to describe these men, crafting comparison for the purpose of satire:
Certainly, as I strolled round the court, the foundation of gold and silver seemed deep enough; the pavement laid solidly over the wild grasses. Men with trays on their heads went busily from staircase to staircase.
Note that in the above passage, the narrator describes these scholars as "men with trays on their heads." These "trays" are not actual trays, but rather the square, flat-topped caps worn by elite scholars. Associating these scholarly hats with trays draws to mind an image of serving girls, scurrying around transporting platters of food on their heads. This imagery functions as a form of satire, critiquing these scholarly men who consider "women's work" beneath them. As an instance of figurative language, this passage also comments on women's relative poverty within a male-dominated society, juxtaposing the jobs women are allowed to take (secretarial work, domestic work, teaching) with the work men can engage in (scholarship, science, writing, politics). The narrator's use of imagery in the above excerpt both elevates women and challenges the elitist presumptions of upper-class men.
Related Themes:
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Professor von X:
In Chapter 2, the narrator uses satire to describe the works male authors have written about women, using an ironic tone to criticize male writers' misplaced sense of authority. In the following passage, she imagines a fictive scholar named "Professor von X" penning a misogynistic diatribe:
I had been drawing a face, a figure. It was the face and the figure of Professor von X. engaged in writing his monumental work entitled The Mental, Moral, and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex. He was not in my picture a man attractive to women. [...] He was very red in the face. His
expression suggested that he was labouring under some emotion that made him jab his pen on the paper as if he were killing some noxious insect as he wrote.
This passage, through the pairing of simile and satire, undermines masculine authority. The narrator pictures Professor von X as a fundamentally unattractive man, taking out his feelings of personal inadequacy on women. She uses this caricature to subvert the credibility of male authors who write about women and make vast, inaccurate generalizations about the "female sex." In her imagination, such men are petty and trite, compelled by their ungenerous feelings towards defamatory, misogynistic writing.
Related Themes:
