Where is our Feminine Rage?: Don’t you absolutely adore it when a woman gets reduced to no more than a meek, supple, delicate creature that needs tending to every one to two minutes — truly a damsel in distress, no?
A perfect sculpture of a human being that runs only on happiness from the emotional spectrum, unfeeling of anger, unfeeling of rage and unfeeling of everything else that makes her human.
The Damsel Myth
There are countless indomitable examples of women who have consequently been forgotten through the decades, only because their “spirit” was uncalled for and considered too reckless and unladylike.
How they refused to bow before, eagerly raised their voices against injustice or harboured tempers strangely fierce enough to be scrubbed out of textbooks, leaving silhouettes of the sanitised perfect woman behind. When you even glance upon these “perfect examples of womanhood”, you really start to wonder: how many women must have been displaced for these vessels to form?
You and I both know the complex feelings only a woman harbours; no emotion outweighs them, nor can they be flattened into purity idols. But rather, true womanhood comes from women reclaiming what was rightfully theirs: their flaws. These “flaws” are essential in building a woman and often play a significant role in shaping her narrative.
The Scrubbing Of Rage From History:
Be it the tenth century or the nineties, the air has always lingered with a fear of the feminine. If the woman isn’t pure, she must have been evil, for an angry woman was no woman at all.
A rebrand has taken the world by storm — specifically the one where our rage gets scrubbed from the pages of history and stamped upon as witchcraft or perhaps hysteria, and if we’re lucky enough, reduced to victimhood and irrevocable patience.
If a woman spoke up, she’d be considered “mad”, her thoughts and ideas reduced to mere noise. If she was smart enough to think, what was left for the men? Better to undermine their credibility than fracture a man’s ego, no?
Case 1: The Salem Witch Trials
Let’s dig a bit deeper, push farther into the depths of oppression. What better example of this than the infamous “Salem witch trials”, sprouting from tempers being compressed and finally exploding to being reduced to a hysterical rebellion by the females?
What began as superstition quickly morphed into something even more sinister. In Puritan Salem, two girls displayed unusual, contradictory behaviours that could not be explained. A community steeped in superstition had a vision of the devil’s hand playing out its hand.
When enquiries went around for these strange happenings, three women were withheld: an enslaved woman, a poor female beggar and an elderly woman who rarely attended church — each easy targets, hence why they were chosen as scapegoats. The independence they wore, the role of “outsider” they played, and their imminent poverty made them prime suspects.
Instead of asking them if they had the slightest idea of what they were getting roped into, these women were rewritten into witchcraft. This perplexing narrative shift could only be interpreted as the intolerance of independence, temper and refusal to conform to society’s thoughts, transforming them to be entitled as “hysterical witches” rather than complex women.
Burnt at the stake, several were found guilty. Salem was never rooted in witchcraft but simply a fear of the feminine.
Case 2: The Suffragettes
Seen as too “emotional”, women were wrongfully stripped of one of their basic rights as law-abiding citizens: the right to vote. Beyond Britain and elsewhere, the demand for equal representation and the right for women to vote was seen as quite problematic.
Believing the Suffragettes to be innocent bystanders, the onlookers had been invited to a protest they would’ve never seen before; long gone were the quiet petitions; it was a moment of factual truth — a call for now or never.
For if anger had a face, it would’ve been this: windows smashed, chaining themselves to railings, screaming for hunger strikes and a movement that openly defied the state. All this just to earn the right to vote for their precedent future.
Alas! Not everyone studies a situation similarly; rather than being seen as a politically active movement, the females participating in the Suffragettes were considered hysterical, mad or irrational. The press mocked them; doctors diagnosed them as if they were fighting for a right that was considered yours only and was considered mental.
As the centuries unfolded, months shifted into years — the steely fury of these women softened into patient protesters, who worried about their gloves getting soaked. Ignoring the fuel and fire that had built up the Suffragettes into what they were.
Even though the rage had laid a path for justice, it was hardly seen as such, instead opting for being remembered as “persistent protesters”.
Another lesson our history tried to shove into our diminutive brains was that only quiet protests were respectable, whereas change fuelled by rage needs to be buried.
Case 3: Colonised Women
For if the land was colonised, then what of its residents? Women in these regions carried weights far heavier than imaginable — weights of imperial domination basking in patriarchal silence.
If you had stepped into South Asia during the British Raj, the view would have been significantly different. Seeing their beloved homeland suffer at the hands of colonisers was enough to move these women, who battled injustices and protested against unfair taxes, forced labour or mismanagement. Their advances were erased, leaving only the image of a pious mother suffering — a simple icon persevering through her hardships rather than baring her chest and retaliating.
In Africa, as opposed to the British-imposed tax, mass protests were hosted by the African women, just as those in the Aba women’s war (1929). Several of these brave figures marched through singing war songs and confronting officers with no fear whatsoever. Neglected were they, and termed simply as supposed rioters instead of freedom fighters. Undermining their fury to reincarnated chaos.
It became quite clear even then that the world was accustomed to seeing women grieve rather than take action, and it would do everything in its power to keep it at that.
The Perfect Heroine
Enough with history; what about right now?
The media we consume lurks with remnants of the perfect womanhood, ranging from the docile mother, the innocent pious daughter, the virgin, the bride, and lastly the manic pixie dream girl.
Let’s revert to my original point, where it was stated that women’s flaws were what made them real. So in every tale, you’re introduced to the selfless female heroine with concealed flaws, trying to fit in in a world which downplays them, yet still she’s content to simply exist.
Now, if we look at some of our male heroes, it becomes quite clear that their flaws were deliberately placed to make them seem courageous, gritty and more appealing. For if you want names, we could most certainly list down several, starting from Jay Gatsby, Hamlet or even Raskolnikov, each sporting flaws that are momentarily supported and thought to be “in character”.
Each complicated character gets their spotlight on the main stage, their temper gets written off as “real human emotion”, and the acts they commit are titled as necessary in the face of anger. So why are the heroines pious saints, born to sit and look pretty, as if the upper portion of their brain remains hollow, stuffing information only the man gives her and considering oppression her entire existence and yet she is content?
Why are men allowed complexity, while the female must practise divine femininity?
Flaws and Rage Matters:
This centuries-old scab wound was never ripped off all in one go; it let its infection spread through the decades, piling on top of each other one after the other.
A woman’s anger has been displayed as destructive, something to tame or conceal. Yet in truth rage is what we call the body’s armour — the humane need to refuse injustice. Our anger directs them to the wound, and yet they shrug it off.
To reclaim rage is to reclaim the woman’s humanity. For a heroine, be it a wife or mother, is no heroine at all if not for her to feel. She may be a mere projection of the perfect woman.
We need more than the hollow empty vessels offered to you; we require real heroines who lash out, stumble, scream, and have regrets, but despite it all, oozing out of her, you can clearly see that she is her own person and not someone’s ideal wife.
True representation demands complexity; grief and bitterness are not stains on our women, they are their eternal stars. To flatten it away is to demolish the spectrum of life.
From the Suffragettes’ protests to chants at the forefront of the #MeToo movement, anger has always been the spark to build a foundation.
Feminine rage is a fire — once set off, can not be extinguished, for in its eternal flame rises not wounds but transformation for all time to come.