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Atwood's Speech On Gender Inequality In Literature

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Atwood's Speech On Gender Inequality In Literature
Atwood’s speech, delivered to a group of well-read women in 1994, highlights how gender inequality is prevalent due to certain social delimitations of that time due to the ongoing inaccurate representation of women in literature. Throughout her speech, she highlights the polarising dichotomy that the society, at that time, has placed on women as either being “very very good” or “horrid.” The intertextual reference to a nursery rhyme emphasised through the binary opposites strengthens her argument as she presents that women have been oppressed into the Angel/Whore split categorisation from a young age. The oxymoron Angel/whore split further highlights the needless strict categorisation of women in literature, and challenges the audience to question
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