Women have over the years remained the most marginalized gender in societies across the globe. From religious text to other established ideologies in societies, women have often been perceived as a weaker sex and as such, they have almost always been assigned a position under a man. In their analysis, researchers and scholars agree that the entire socialization process both in the ancient and modern societies is skewed towards promoting men as superior to women through citation of different established gender stereotypes (Prentice and Carranza 269). Speaking from this point of view, I review how gender is represented in the text, Moveable Beast, by Maria Dahvana Headley. To achieve this, I review this above text, with an inclination toward how women are represented in this society that forms the context of the story.
多年来，妇女仍然是全球社会中最边缘化的性别。从宗教文本到社会中的其他既定意识形态，妇女往往被视为弱势性别，因此，她们几乎总是被分配到男性之下的职位。在他们的分析中，研究人员和学者一致认为，古代和现代社会的整个社会化过程都倾向于通过引用不同的既定性别刻板印象来宣传男性优于女性（Prentice和Carranza 269）。从这个角度讲，我回顾了玛丽亚·达瓦纳·赫德利（Maria Dahvana Headley）的《可移动的野兽》（Moveable Beast）一书中的性别表现。为了实现这一点，我回顾了上述文本，并倾向于女性在这个构成故事背景的社会中的代表性。
To begin with, in the Moveable Beast, Headley narrates the story of a small town of Bastardville, which borders a nearby mini forest. There is a beast that lives in that forest and everyone in the town knows about it, and particularly Angela, a girl who works in an ice cream shop, and whose father left their home to hunt for the beast. From the onset of this narrative, it is clear that the town had degenerated from a utopian society and it was slowly but steadily sinking in depravity. This is particularly the case considering the fact that apart from environmental degradation, which happened because of the slowly declining forest cover, how the town is named as well as how people behave in this society indicates some level of moral depravity (Headley 97).
首先，在《可移动的野兽》中，赫德利讲述了巴斯塔德维尔小镇的故事，该小镇与附近的一片迷你森林接壤。有一只野兽住在那片森林里，镇上的每个人都知道它，尤其是安吉拉，一个在冰淇淋店工作的女孩，她的父亲离开家去寻找野兽。从这个故事开始，很明显，这个小镇已经从一个乌托邦社会蜕变，并且正在缓慢但稳步地堕落。考虑到除因森林覆盖率缓慢下降而发生的环境退化外，该镇的命名以及人们在这个社会中的行为表明了某种程度的道德堕落，情况尤其如此（Headley 97）。
To begin with, one of the critical aspects that emerge in the narrative is the fact that women are represented as strong willed. In this regard, Headley represents women as people who were able to make decisions that were expected to be respected by men. For example, when Billy Beecham shows up at the ice cream shop in which Angela worked and in the ensuing conversation tries to kill her, she wrestles and subdues him. To account for her actions, Angela notes, “Every girl in Bastardville takes a semester of self-defense in second grade” (Headley 96). In this regard, as a society whose initial foundations were utopian principles, women were given certain self-defense lessons in a bid to empower them to defend themselves. Importantly, I it is not probable that such self-defense lessons were supposed to help the girls defend themselves against fellow girls. On the contrary, I think women were empowered through such lessons in order to help them stand against men in society such as in this particular case where Angela in which a stranger tries to kiss Angela without her consent. One of the critical aspects to note from this incidence is the fact that the stranger, that is Bill Beecham, expected Angela to remain shy and not react to his sexual advances. Arguably, researchers and scholars observe that in most societies across the globe, sexual harassment has been institutionalized and as such, whenever an incidence of sexual harassment occurs, a woman is not expected to take any form of action against it (Dellinger and Williams 242). In other words, most societies have created an ideology that women are sexual objectives that can be used to satisfy them as they please. However, in the case of Angela, she could not stand being harassed by a man.
首先，叙事中出现的一个关键方面是，女性被描绘成意志坚强的人。在这方面，赫德利将妇女视为能够做出预期得到男子尊重的决定的人。例如，当Billy Beecham出现在Angela工作的冰激凌店，在随后的对话中试图杀死她时，她摔跤并制服了他。为了解释她的行为，安吉拉指出，“巴斯德维尔的每个女孩在二年级时都要进行一学期的自卫”（赫德利96）。在这方面，作为一个最初以乌托邦原则为基础的社会，妇女获得了某些自卫课程，以使她们有能力自卫。重要的是，我认为这种自卫课程不太可能有助于女孩们保护自己不受其他女孩的伤害。相反，我认为女性通过这些课程获得了权力，以帮助她们在社会上与男性抗衡，比如在这个特殊的案例中，安吉拉在一个陌生人未经同意试图亲吻安吉拉的情况下。从这次事件中值得注意的一个重要方面是，陌生人比尔·比查姆希望安吉拉保持害羞，对他的性行为不做出反应。可以说，研究人员和学者观察到，在全球大多数社会中，性骚扰已经制度化，因此，无论何时发生性骚扰，妇女都不会对其采取任何形式的行动（Dellinger和Williams 242）。换句话说，大多数社会已经形成了一种意识形态，认为女性是性目标，可以随心所欲地满足她们。然而，就安吉拉而言，她无法忍受男人的骚扰。