Feminist Critical Lens Close Reading Weber

"The welcoming cool of unchiseled headstones; the one she selected to lean against on tiptoe, her knees wide open as any grave... Ten minutes, he said. You got ten minutes I'll do it for free." (Page 5, Chapter 1, Beloved)

To be completely blunt, this passage means that the tombstone engraver gave Sethe the deal that he would engrave Beloved on the tombstone for "free" if she had sex with him for 10 minutes. The things that stood out the most to me are how this passage portrays to how men seem to have a tendency to manipulate women to do what the man wants to satisfy his desires. The man manipulated Sethe to have sex to get Beloved engraved for "free" but I ensure you she did not believe it was free. There is an old view that men are the intelligent ones and that women are dumb and won't realize if they are cheated but in a way this passage shows that Sethe knew well that she wasn't getting this for free. Her price was her body, selling herself to the desires of a man, submitting herself to slavery once more. And then there's how that memory is still with her shows how aware she was of that price and how her slavery still haunts her.

This passage also shows the concept of men paying women for sex. It shows the "male sexual desire" and the stereotype of women being looked at as objects of desire and as toys meant to satisfy the desires of men. When I read this passage or I see other men that have the same view as the man in the story it makes me sick. They have taken their views and subject others to their wishes and "beliefs" that the man is the one that is always in control. It is a problem that is still very prominent in society today, more so in some places than others. But it is still a disgusting view still held by others. And in places that still have those views a culture is made out of it and it is subjected on those around them. Whether it is a man being shunned for looking at a woman as his equal or stronger than him, or the women who are forced to be subjected to this culture as nothing more than a woman to be married off, give birth to kids, raise the family and cook and clean, and satisfy her husband.

It needs to stop!