Determination
As a young girl, the narrator experiences a lack of freedom. While her brother is free to roam around, play with his friends, and let his hair grow wild, she is closely monitored by her mother, not allowed to go out, and her hair is combed twice a day. One day, however, she sneaks out of her house and visits a hairdresser, where she loses what her mother calls “a woman’s crowning glory.” When she comes back home, her mother strikes her violently, but she is now immune to corporal punishment: “My challenging of authority had turned me into an immovable force, my victory over my mother had transformed me into a solid mass, unaffected by the assault. My mother’s hand struck my face and then drew back each time, as if it had hit a granite boulder.”
When she realizes that she is moulded into a submissive member of society, she develops a determination to defy her family and culture: “I was going to show my mother that I was more intelligent than my brother, than the man she’d wanted me to wear the cream dress for, than any man, and that I could do everything my father did and more.” She immerses herself in her studies, graduates top of her class, and decides to study medicine. Since this field is dominated by men, she is met with suspicion, which fuels her determination even more: “I’d make my mother tremble with fright and look at me reverently; I’d make my brother terrified and my father beg me for help. I’d prove to nature that I could overcome the disadvantages of the frail body she’d clothed me in, with its shameful parts both inside and out. I would imprison it in the steel cell forged from my will and my intelligence. I wouldn’t give it a single chance to drag me into the ranks of illiterate women.”
Patriarchy
The narrator’s path to becoming a doctor is remarkable in a patriarch society where men hold primary power. The very first paragraphs of the novel are a list of differences between boys and girls: For example, while boys are free to roam around and play, girls are groomed to serve them early on. For example, the narrator is not allowed to leave the house without her family’s permission, and she spends most of her day in the kitchen, where the women cook food for the men.
This expectation of being submissive is also evident in an encounter with the doorman, who tries to take advantage of it: “As he came closer again, I tried to hide my fear by staring fixedly at my brother and his companions as they played, but I felt his coarse rough fingers stroking my leg and moving up under my clothes. I jumped up in alarm and raced away from him. This horrible man had noticed my womanhood as well!”
At the faculty of medicine, the sight of an independent woman seems to be a novelty: “Hundreds of eyes directed sharp questioning glances at me. I looked squarely back at them. Why should I lower my eyes when they looked at me, bow my head while they were lifting theirs, stumble along while they walked with a proud and confident step?” During a dissection class, she asks, “Why had society always tried to convince me that manhood was a distinction and an honour, and womanhood a weakness and a disgrace?”
Moreover, her rejecting a man is portrayed as something unheard of: “Society impaled me with looks as sharp as daggers and lashed my face with stinging tongues like horse-whips.”Eventually, she meets a musician who treats her as an equal, which gives her reassurance: “I buried my head in his chest and wept tears of quiet relief.”
The Limitations of Science
The narrator approaches medicine with a sense of awe: “Medicine was a terrifying thing. It inspired respect, even veneration, in my mother and brother and father.” She chooses medicine because she wants to instil fear in her family members. What intrigues her the most is how a piece of tissue is able to control the muscles of the body and make people understand and feel.
Therefore, she dedicates herself to the study of anatomy: “I began to read and search and probe until I’d learnt the structure and organization of the human body by heart.”
Soon, she is able to explain most processes in the human body: “A vast new world opened up before me. At first I was apprehensive, but I soon plunged avidly into it, overwhelmed by a frenzied passion for knowledge. Science revealed the secrets of human existence to me and made nonsense of the huge differences which my mother had tried to construct between me and my brother.”
In the end, she comes to the conclusion that women are like men and men are like animals, which means that there are no differences between them: “I was delighted by this new world which placed men, women and the animals side by side, and by science which seemed a mighty, just and omniscient god; so I placed my trust in it and embraced its teachings.”
However, when a woman dies while giving birth, the doctor also realizes how fragile life is, which abruptly shatters her trust in science: “This arrogant, proud and mighty man, constantly strutting and fretting, thinking and innovating, was supported on earth by a body separated from extinction by a hair’s breadth. Once severed — and severed it must inevitably be one day — there was no power on earth which could join it together again. Science toppled from its throne and fell at my feet naked and powerless, just as man had done before."
