Dont overthink this.

Write down 3 of your

favourite books

Do you know gender and sex are different
things? Gender is a socially and culturally
constructed role which is often assigned to a
sex. How we expect men and women to behave
is learned. How do we learn it? Where? From
who? Is it helpful?
Women in Literature
Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and
wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a
boy; for girls it's like promotion. But for a boy to
look like a girl is degrading, according to you,
because secretly you believe that being a girl is
degrading.

Ian McEwan
Why gender stereotype
are damaging to men
The thing about women
characters in literature

1. The Mary Dichotomy
2. The Damsel in
Distress
3. Victim Blaming

3 of the reoccurring patterns in stories
The WHY?
Why are these
appealing in
stories?
The Mary Dichotomy
The Mary Dichotomy
Damsel in distress
The WHY?
Why do men and
women keep
writing /reading
about DiDs?
Unsex me here -Lady Macbeth
Alfred Hitchcock used the dichotomy as an
important mode of representing
women.
[7]
In Vertigo (1958), for example, Kim
Novak portrays two women that the hero
cannot reconcile: a virtuous, blonde,
sophisticated, sexually repressed "madonna"
and a dark-haired, single, sensual "fallen
woman".
[8]


Mary: One woman? Or two?
Victim blaming


Challenging the stereotypes?
Why a story isnt just a
story
You, too, can be a feminist
and do a feminist
reading
Critical Questions about
Female Characters
Is she a Mary?
Who determines this characters fate?
Is this character crucial to the plot?