Ideologies in It's Raining in Mango, The Good Corn, and Eva Luna Monica Palumbo 11th Grade

An Ideology is a system of ideas beliefs and attitudes. They can lead to motivated reasoning, the subconscious desire not to find the truth, but to defend the version of reality that makes us feel most validated. In truth, an ideology is an umbrella that encompasses various different philosophies, that cannot always be deemed either all true or all false at once. Consequently, depictions of ideologies in literary texts such as It's Raining in Mango by Thea Astley become complex and even contradictory, as they attempt to validate or invalidate whole belief systems such as gender stereotypes and religion. This Australian novel can be seen as a series of short stories that span four generations of the Laffey family, from when they move to Australia in the 1860's right through to what would have been Astley's present day in the 1980's. Through the various pivotal points in each character's life, different aspects of these societal ideologies can be seen. Among those are the commonly held perspectives of gender, and religion. It's Raining in Mango is aimed to demonstrate how women are subordinated in society, and how religion has an effect of preserving the patriarchal structure that allows for this subordination. The complexities...