Who Had Killed Canaries?
-Mrs. as A Term for Binding Women.
Who had killed canary? This was the first question I came up with when finishing reading this work. Canary, which was raised by Mrs. Wright, was found to have been dead, with its neck wrung. Mrs. Hale and Peters assumed that canary was killed by Mr. Wright. However, it does not merely mean that a bird was killed here. Rather, it should be read that a human was killed with her neck twisted.
Minnie Foster had been ‘kind of like a bird herself’ according to Mrs. Hale. She was a girl who was sweet and pretty and sung really well. However, after marriage, she lost her song, name, friends and characters at all. With many years passed, she became one who had no people around her, always staying in the home. However, luckily, she got a new friend: A canary. Because Minnie had used to sing really well, she could feel vicarious happiness by seeing canary sing. Nevertheless, her happiness was short-lived since her husband hated both the bird and its singing. In this context, the canary is seen as Minnie Foster rather than just a tiny bird. Her husband put her in a cage, not giving affection, and even killing her songs.
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”, said Beauvoir in her book <The Second Sex>. Minnie was totally re-made into 'Mrs. Wright' by Mr. Wright. In this work, there's a mention that Mr. Wright was like 'a raw wind that gets to the bone.' Because of this character, Minnie continuously changed herself, becoming a woman who supported her husband by solely doing chores. Here is the reason why Minnie was so obsessed with her apron. When Hale first entered Wright's house, she was pleating her apron. And even after going to the jail, she asked Mrs. Peters to bring her apron. An apron is a typical object that everyone can recall when thinking about the word 'housewife.' Because her only role in the society was to be a housewife obediently, she locked herself in the apron and mutely performed her role, accommodating her frame 'Mrs. Wright.'
Unbelievably, from 1500 to 1800, Mrs. was not assigned to a married woman. Instead, it was a word assigned to those who had high social status, or those who were adults. However, in the 1800s, along with the process of Industrial Revolution, there was a need for men to know whether the certain woman was "sexually available" because men had to leave home for a long time to work in factories. And for 250 years, this illogical frame set by men was maintained, with many people thinking that using the term 'Mrs.' by herself was rather 'a title of politeness'. This irrational term also exists in Spanish as señora, French as madame, and Italy as signora. Not to mention oriental ones, which are flooded with Confucian ethics compelling women to protect their dignity, cultures that ignore women have been processed for a long time. And this culture also shows itself in this work, by Hale's words "Women are used to worrying about Trifles."
However, Minnie's response to long-time neglects was not A trifle. She finally killed her husband. Yet, this behavior was what should be blamed. Violence can never be solved by violence. These days, a lot of women have got a stronger voice, expressing gender inequalities and violence they've gone through. However, some women irrationally think that they can get power by attacking men, which is called as misandry. However, mirroring violent cultures which had been processed by men is almost the worst idea women can think of because mirroring is a way to re-conduct activities of gender inequality, which they've hated for so long. Thus, if Minnie really wanted to escape from her life, she should not kill her husband because this was a mere mirroring of what Mr. Wright had shown her.
Like a character "Hans" in the novel <Beneath The Wheel>, women had lived inside the cage, becoming canaries and losing their songs with their neck wrung. Numerous men had been killing 'canaries' and re-making their characters. However, canaries' power should not be focused on making men as canaries. Rather, like Gilligan who strongly argued an importance of coordination between ethics of women and that of men, their power of singing should be focused only to break cages and remove restraints that had been preventing them to be a totally equal human being with men.
Reference
Amy Louise Erickson, 2014, Mistresses and marriage: or, a short history of the Mrs.
Reference
Amy Louise Erickson, 2014, Mistresses and marriage: or, a short history of the Mrs.
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