The Wave metaphor and beyond. Feminist agendas of female protagonists in Meg Wolitzer's "The Female Persuasion"
Katharina Spreier
Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar 1), course: Flappers and Philosophers: American Modernist Women Writers, language: English, abstract: Meg Wolitzer’s 2019 novel "The Female Persuasion" explores the past, present and foreseeable future of the women’s rights movement in the USA, which is commonly categorized into three Waves. The author focuses on the Second Wave and the Third Wave, for which she exemplarily uses two protagonists of not only different generations but also with very contrasting personalities - Faith Frank and Greer Kadetsky.Wolitzer, given her birth year of 1959, is to be allocated with Second Wave feminism and says that she "feels like a feminist and therefore writes like a feminist". She portrays the difficulties the two generations need to overcome to unite for the same cause. This paper explores to what extent the protagonists align with the characteristics of the Waves they are ought to represent, and in what ways they might act contrary to them. Furthermore, it will analyze the relationship between Faith and Greer which represents the attitudes of Second Wavers and Third Wavers towards each other. This paper will include the definition of the Second Wave and the Third Wave, as well as the main analysis of the novel. The analysis will not only include the points mentioned, but will also contain a general analysis of each of the protagonists' personalities and behaviors which will continuously be drawn back to the individual Waves.The aim of this paper is to show the parallels between Wolitzer's novel, which is oftentimes based on facts just as much as it is fiction, and the patterns of real-life feminism in the USA. It is supposed to underline the dynamics of the movement and how changing times may change people’s beliefs as a result.
