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A Study Guide for Margaret Atwood's "Rape Fantasies" (Short Stories for Students)

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The story brings out the inner feeling of the characters on how they feel about the subject of rape and how they look at it.

Sus propios esfuerzos por seguir siendo humano, el trabajo inútil, el amor estéril, ¿qué ocurría cuando todo se agotaba?, ¿qué le sucedería a él? Many of the stories dealt with young women and their first jobs, first apartments, first lovers and first babies, which is to be expected given that this was one of her earliest books, comprised of stories originally printed in various magazines and periodicals at the start of her career. One can assume she was struggling to find her way as a young author in the midst of '70s feminism, with not much hope yet for a happy and balanced relationship. Although "Rape Fantasies" is one of Atwood's most popular stories, little criticism of her work focuses on it specifically. Several critics have noted that Estelle seems to be a naive protagonist, but that view is rejected by an equal number of reviewers. Estelle and her female coworkers have very different ideas on what romance is and how to obtain it without falling prey to the insidious forces in society. The story is often used as a starting point for discussing the gap between men's and women's perceptions of each other. Yo soy el círculo. Tengo los polos en mí interior. Lo que debo hacer es seguir intacta, depende de mí. Cred că memento mori e, de fapt, fața cealaltă a iubirii care nu moare, stă mereu într-un colț al creierului protagonistei, deși povestea de dragoste s-a încheiat de mult timp, deși nimic nu mai e cum a fost, iar ei doi sunt acum alți oameni, cu familii si job (se cunoscuseră în studenție). Și...daca își amintește des că va muri, ea își aduce imediat în paralel și imaginea lui, pentru că el este tinerețea ei și viața aceea plină, romantică, de neegalat cu viața de acum.Confieso que no soy muy amiga de los libros de cuentos. Incluso de autores que considero mis favoritos, nunca termino conforme del todo con la lectura. Por lo mismo, no me atrevería a decir que Chicas bailarinas me gustó cabalmente. La tematica è la vita, in ogni sua sfaccettatura: amore, nascita, morte, follia, paure, solitudine. L'ambientazione è quasi sempre grigia, sporca, sciatta, fredda. I desideri, una volta soddisfatti, sono niente, le relazioni sono tutte segnate dall'incomprensione e dall'insoddisfazione. But it is the clear similarities between Estelle and the women, shown vividly during this collective speculation on the “rape fantasy” topic, which realizes Estelle’s character to the audience. Of all the women at the table, only Estelle tosses out obnoxious humor, and it is the reaction to this obnoxiousness that unifies the group and identifies Estelle: they’re thinking of her the same way she’s thinking of them, but with better reason to do so. Analyzes how estelle scolds her co-workers for their romanticized view of rape. she portrays them as fitting the stereotype depicted in the magazine. Clearly, the discussions in “Rape Fantasies” are grounded on the Rape Fantasy versus Sex Fantasy binary. The narrator deconstructs the binary when she says, “I mean, you are getting raped, it’s just some guy you haven’t met formally who happens to be more attractive than Derek Cummins…and you have a good time. Rape is when they’ve got a knife or something and you don’t want to.” Accordingly, a consensual sex fantasy triggers unconscious gratification and utility whereas a rape fantasy results in belligerence and discomfort .

Estelle is above such criticism only because she can relate to her own feelings, and she is ready to trivialize and criticize the other characters because she believes she cannot relate to them, considering mostly their flaws. The basis of the story is rape. Rape, as defined in the Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, is an act of power and dominance; although 15% to40% of American women are victims of rape or attempted rape, there is also the chance that a man is assaulted also. It is said that women are more than likely going to get raped by someone they know. More than half of the nation’s rape assaults have been placed in the victim’s home. Many rape assaults are continued or completed because the victim didn’t use verbal or physical force as resistance. For more than 3 decades and now till this day, feminist organizations have been fighting successfully to change the publics’ attitude toward rape as well as how society treats rape victims. Estelle’s dominant posture is offset by her belief in being nice and thinking that other people are nice too. Wondering if’ squirting lemon juice in a rapist’s eyes could be considered vicious and believing (or hoping) rapists can be deterred by kindness, understanding and sensitivity. Claiming to be honest shows us another aspect of Estelle’s personality exposed to us in the context of her conversation with the other women. Estelle says she is honest when Chrissey can not believe Estelle’s rape fantasy, thinking that she is making a joke out of their serious intimations: ‘I’m being totally honest,’ I say. Her next story begins the same way as the first. This time she describes the rapist. She makes you believe that all rapists are lonely depressed guys who feel that their last resort in getting “some” is to rape a female. So being the kind hearted victim that she is she advised him that he got a makeover he wouldn’t have to go around raping everyone. All of Estelle’s stories end with her helping out the rapist or getting out of being raped. To me that is what a rape fantasy should be. It starts off as a unpleasant scenario but plays out to be a good ending. Fantasies are desires and wants no one wants to be raped and in a fantasy. In a rape fantasy the out come is that you don’t get raped. The themes of this story are the quotes that are displayed through the paper and the definition of rape, why it’s taking lightly and how is the issue getting solved.

The way they’re going on about it in the magazines you’d think it was just invented, and not only that but it’s something terrific. Incluso quienes jamás irían a los lugares que ella describía, quienes no podrían permitírselo, no querían oír hablar de peligros, ni siquiera de incomodidades; era como si desearan creer que quedaba un lugar en el mundo donde todo iba bien, donde no ocurría nada desagradable. The author paints Estelle’s character into a vaguely defined landscape that the reader can only surmise is a singles’ bar or comparable locale, and peoples it with a solitary, unidentified male listener. Due to the first-person narration and the monologue style of delivery, the reader is exposed to a limited, likely unreliable, reality—that of Estelle and her delusions of competence and control.

Her last fantasy is, in Estelle’s words, “the most touching… and kind of dignified” (pg. 35) rape fantasy where she is dying of leukemia and is grabbed by a man in the same condition. She woos him and they move into an apartment where they die together. Estelle likes power; she is not helpless in her fantasies. Her fantasies of being a Kung-Fu expert demonstrate her wish for control over her body and her safety. Estelle can outwit, confuse, and fool her fantasy rapists; in fact she hopes she is not too vicious to them. Analyzes how women like estelle and her co-workers were content to be categorized into such roles. the women's rights movement fought hard for equal pay, equal employment opportunities, birth control, and the right to control their own bodies.

Only when we reach the end of ‘Rape Fantasies’, however, do we realise that the story’s actual – and very relevant – setting is the one from which the narrator speaks, the ‘here’ that she mentions in the story’s penultimate paragraph. ‘Here’ is a bar where our lonely, single, chatterbox speaks to a man… Estelle has a clouded vision of herself and how she appears to others; she seems unaware that the judgements she levies against her co-workers may be one reason she is friendless.” The story begins with the narrator, Estelle, commenting on the wide number of references to rape she’s seen in the popular culture recently, noting many magazine articles that seem to take a light and flippant tone towards the subject. She then describes a conversation she had at her lunch hour with four co-workers, Chrissy, Greta, Sondra, and Darlene.

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