i feel as though this is a hard ask unless you're looking for the people who memorised their essays, haha (and those are less likely to have scored highly anyway). speaking from personal experience, i can tell you the things i wrote ABOUT last november but not give you the exact words!
nonetheless, this is the last essay i typed before i moved onto handwriting my exam prep essays. i remember it being super rushed and it's making me cringe looking at it, so it's in a spoiler. my teacher gave it a 9 but i'm still convinced it would be a stretch to call it that, so bear that in mind i guess? obviously not what i wrote in the exam, but close enough that i can probably pin some of my 47 SS on it.
Spoiler
okay i already did my 'this is cringey' disclaimer but i just. use less run on sentences than i did please. also, i was at a catholic school and we couldn't email anything containing 'inappropriate' words, so yes, i had to censor murder.
Despite fleeting moments of agency, both Atwood and Murray-Smith conclude that women are ultimately imprisoned by men. Discuss.
Although it is doubtful that either Joanna Murray Smith’s ‘Bombshells’ or Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Penelopiad’ truly intend to disenfranchise women, both texts demonstrate that despite there being the possibility for a woman’s agency in society, since, as Atwood’s Penelope was advised, it can “slip” around the confines of the patriarchy to gradually erode and wear away at it, it is not solely the hegemonic influence of men that confine women within the imprisonment of their gender. The nature of society is instead bolstered by the women who, though they often note their malaise in such an unwelcoming community, are less unable than unwilling to act upon and against the ennui they feel, preferring instead to conform to society’s expectations to attain some control and power within their own sphere. Ironically, it is this particular misdirected and selfish action which sacrifices the possibility of societal improvement and is in both texts ultimately responsible for reinforcing the endless patriarchal paradigm which entraps women within it.
Despite the fact that it is in the end women who must take on responsibility for their adherence to the patriarchal society that keeps them firmly condensed into their prescribed gender role, blame still rests partially on the shoulders of men. Though they are capable in 'The Penelopiad' of being “apparently fond” of women, there is always underlying wariness and “reserve” present, as at any moment the power society’s construction affords them could be utilised against women. Just as Penelope is “thrown into the sea” by her father, once physically as a child and once socially as a newly “possess[ed]" wife, the Maids are “control[led]” by any man who wishes to claim them, treated as little more than “meat” utilised solely for temporary entertainment, and eventually m*rdered on a whim. Atwood unequivocally decries the unfamiliarity and abandon with which men treat women, denouncing it repeatedly through the actions of men, and in particular the petulance of Telemachus, who describes his defiance of “parental authority” as simply “showing some backbone” to escape “the thumbs of women.” Murray-Smith is equally critical of this tendency of society’s to uplift men by tearing down women: Zoe Struthers’ repeated references to the “terrible country of men” are an unmistakeable condemnation of the entitlement men feel towards women. The texts differ only here in the expediency as to when they pour scorn upon the overtly “pushy” gender, as Atwood’s criticism is long and drawn out, Penelope noting within the first few pages the “unscrupulousness” of Odysseus, but Murray-Smith choosing to wait until the final monologue to blatantly make her opinion known.
Paramount in each text, though their settings of ancient Greece and modern day society respectively are aeons apart, are the constrictive societal expectations that serve to belittle and reduce women, attempting to package them, like a gilded "piece of meat,” into the ideal, archetypal woman. Meryl Louise Davenport’s monologue, which opens Bombshells and thus sets the tone for all that follows, is is fraught with anxious repetition: Meryl frets constantly about whether she is a “total failure” for eschewing small tasks that often are eclipsed by large ones, contrasting herself against other women in comparisons that invariably leave her, in some aspect, wanting. Murray-Smith utilises Meryl to indicate that under the layers of “the … lipstick,” all women are constricted by the same social expectations that require them to be young and beautiful, even when such beauty is no longer obtainable by anything less than unnatural means such as “plastic surgery.” Conversely, Atwood’s women are only imprisoned to a lesser degree, as although Penelope is prevented from looking after her husband and child, since she is considered too young too young to provide “only the best” for them, this prevention is done by Eurycleia, the female nurse who asserts her authority through the expectations society places on other women. In this way, although Atwood undoubtably disapproves of the way in which women are treated by society, in her ancient Greek setting women contribute greatly to this treatment of each other, which stands in stark contrast to Murray-Smith’s modern day conception of women who are brought low only by their beliefs of who society as a whole perceives them to be.
Although they differ in other aspects of imprisonment, both Bombshells and The Penelopiad are in agreement in regards to the way women imprison each other in an effort to advance and fulfil their own agendas. Atwood’s Penelope sacrifices first the dignity of her Maids, when she encourages them to “flirt with” the Suitors who seek her hand despite the risks to their safety, and finally their lives, when she pretends to sleep whilst they are hanged, “feet twitching,” from a ship in the harbour. In Bombshells, Murray-Smith elucidates the depth of this horizontal aggression: Zoe Struthers’ own daughter prefers to “say … [uncomplimentary] things to” tabloids to tear down her mother for presumably adopting her out at a young age. It is through this that the agency of women, though it is fleeting, is truly fleshed out, as Penelope is able to gain some semblance of control over the Suitors through the eyes of the maids, who “accompan[y]” her constantly in her interactions with them and act as her spies at night. This is less prominent in Bombshells, although Mary O’Donnell gains great confidence when she labels her competition as talentless and “[un]attractive.” Murray-Smith, similarly to Atwood, can thus be seen to suggest that despite the fact that women are imprisoned in a myriad of ways, their imprisonment by women is doubly successful as it serves to reinforce the patriarchy and allows the cyclical nature of their society no reprieve.
In this way, both Atwood and Murray-Smith ultimately view the imprisonment of women as perpetuated by both genders, but it is that repression of women which is perpetuated by women that is responsible for furthering the cycle that fuels the patriarchy; therefore although men are liable for the oppression and imprisonment of women within societal constructs, it is this same action completed by women that truly is most detrimental.
i feel like i should also say that nothing is ever 'as good as it gets' because there's never a perfect essay, and even if there was, english is quite subjective: two people can write quite differently and get the same score! but i hope this helps a little anyway (:
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