Femininity and female sexual desires in \u201cThe Lang Women\u201d: an analysis using Halliday\u2019s theory on transitivity

Thu Hanh Nguyen

doi:10.1186/s40554-018-0060-1

Abstract

sThis article deals with the linguistic representation of and the relationship between femininity and female desires and needs in Masters’ short story “The Lang Women”. Based on Halliday’s theory of systemic functional linguistics, particularly Transitivity, this story is examined for what it can tell us about how Masters represents and explores female desires and needs in her work. In particular the article focuses on Carrie’s consideration of her own physical attributes. The article also discusses Masters’ view of the relationship between femininity and female sexual desires and how Masters’ work can be read as a common on debates about female sexuality and its depiction current at the time of her writing. The article then claims that through female sexuality women can expand their self, agency and social status.

Highlights

This paper is an account of one of major themes in the writing of Olga Masters, using a discourse analysing method based on systemic functional linguistics
Research methodology The current paper employed the methods and the suggested set of linguistic tools adapted from Halliday and his associates’ theory on Transitivity to find out how female sexual desires and needs were depicted in Masters’ “The Lang Women”
The current paper aims to acknowledge that Masters’ fiction interrogates and advances ideas about female sexuality that escape the bonds of social conventions and patriarchal oppression

Summary

Introduction

This paper is an account of one of major themes in the writing of Olga Masters, using a discourse analysing method based on systemic functional linguistics. Masters’ linguistic representations of female sexuality and needs in her work was considered not to strengthen a political point on women’s equality, but because the themes of femininity and female sexuality are important but under-examined in Masters’ work. There are several critiques that her stories focus too much on women’s familial and social subjectivity they fails to articulate her own sense of gender representation or express a feminist sensibility (Daniel, 1985; Wallace, 1984). These studies are mainly from socio-literary perspectives. It is worth investigating whether the women linguistically depicted in Olga Masters’ fiction adopt the desired behaviours for Nguyen Functional Linguistics (2018) 5:7 being appropriately feminine, accepting of domestic roles or on being feminine in a modern way, fighting for their own desires

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Conclusion