Commentary of the office

Commentary of The Office :

At that time, women were considered inferior to men and their place was in the home. The document that I am going to common upon is an extract from the first part of The Office by Alice Munro. To sum up, the main female character who is a writer asks for an office to her husband which was not common at the time. As a consequence it will be my contention to study the place of women in society at that time. First, I will show the presence of the traditional view of women. Then I will prove that there is an emancipation of the woman.

First of all, we don’t know much about the first-person narrative “I” ; “my”; “me” but we have a focus on her own feelings and impressions. There is no specific name, no specific geographic location and no specific mention of the time, we are in a total confusion. We just have one information : that she has a husband “my husband”. Therefore we can conclude that the speaker is a woman. Moreover she is “ironing a shirt” which is a stereotypical cliché of feminin activity. Then, she asks for an office to her husband which is untraditional “I think I ought to have an office” but on the one hand the word “think” show that it is a just a suggestion to her husband and that she does not assert herself in front of her husband. In addition to that, she is looking for the right way to say that she is a writer so that sentence sounds good. “I am writer. That does not sound right.” It shows that she has no self-confidence and that she is afraid of ohters people’s opinion. Thus we understand that she knows that a writer is not supposed to be a female. In line 49 the words “against nature” emphasize the opposition about the stereotype that the woman is always associated with her husband or children “A woman who sits staring into space, into a country that is not her husband’s or her children’s islikewise known to be an offense against nature.” Besides the sentence “She is the house ; there is no separation possible.” is a stereotype about women because it shows that women are the house which is a personification. Therefore they have to stay at home to take care of it so we can say that they directly are the home. Moreover this sentence is said as a general truth, we can say it because of the presence of the gnomic present with “is”. This shows that it is no longer even considered as a stereotype or an idea but as a general truth to be realized. So we can notice that there is a very stereotypical view of women in this extract but she is also doing a rebellion.

In fact she is making a beginning of a rebellion, we can see it with her request for an office to her husband. We can notice that the sentence “I think I ought to have an office.” is an important sentence because it is in the direct speech so it is transcribed as it was said. Moreover she is doing the description of the home where she lives but even if she lives in a luxurious house “I have a house ; it is pleasant and roomy and has a view of the sea” she is not completely happy since she doesn’t have an office or a place to write. Therefore she is not happy about following her socially ascribed role as a woman : being married, taking care of the house and children. Then she lists the things that are

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