Salvage The Bones As A Feminist Critic Changes Your View...

Reading Salvage the Bones as a feminist critic changes your view on the story. When reading about Esch and how unfeminine she is I originally thought that is just the way she is, however, when I looked at it from a feminist critic point of view, my thought about why Esch is not feminine changed. In Peter Barry’s book on page 128 at the bottom is a section called â€Å"What feminist critics do†. Number seven on that list stuck out to me, it says, â€Å"Raise the question of whether men and women are ‘essentially’ different because of biology, or are socially constructed as different†. That question made me think of Esch, is Esch different because of biology or was she socially constructed differently? When you think about if Esch’s mom would have lived that brings up a new question would Esch be different? Esch is not very feminine because she was socially constructed that way. Randall and Skeetah raised Esch after their mother’s death. Esch’s mother was not exactly feminine either. There was no one in Esch’s life to teach her how to be feminine. From our in class notes on feminism, we wrote femininity construct, no â€Å"inherent† way to be a woman and I think it applies to Esch because every women is different and depending upon your upbringing determines what type of women you will be, feminine or unfeminine. Salvage the Bones is a little bit of both second and third wave feminism. Esch does not confine herself to the traditional beauty norms. A big part of the second wave is men