Ursula K. Le Guin's short story "On" lends itself easily to feminist literary criticism. As an alternate history fantasy about polar exploration, the story chronicles the arrival of nine women at the South Pole more than a year before Roald Amundsen's all-male team won the pole on December 14 1911 (Encarta, article by Amundsen). However, the women are Spanish-speaking (presumably of European rather than Native American descent, although this is implicit rather than explicit in Le Guin's text), Argentinian, Peruvian, and Chilean, which also opens the possibility of commentary postcolonial. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay The critical feminist angle is interesting not only because the women felt obliged to hide their expedition from the rest of the world, for fear of audience. criticism or perhaps even active prevention of the pursuit of their objective, but also because of the concealment of women in their own private and family sphere, whose powers would also have censored the journey. Public and private oppression were different, but equal, in force, and imposed on the female explorers a level of subterfuge that required secrecy not only before and during their expedition, but also for subsequent generations. The postcolonial critical approach is not quite the same. direct. Because there are few references to First Peoples populations in this short story, the overt oppression of Spanish conquering culture on the subjugated peoples of South America is not analyzed in depth. But the fact that the women come from Argentina, Peru, and Chile, traditionally considered "technologically developing nations [of]...South America" ​​(Tyson 420), makes this an example of self-consciously pro-literature. colonialist but ideologically conflicting. , in that there are references to the First World and an obvious deference to the dominance of those countries; but this state of affairs seems to attract little criticism. The very fact that the women are from the Third World, whatever their feelings about First World domination, makes this a conflicting play.1 There is a minor degree of double consciousness ("a consciousness or way to perceive the world which is shared between two antagonistic cultures: that of the colonizer and that of the indigenous community" Tyson 421) between the wisdom of the indigenous culture, to which women apparently do not belong but have appropriated certain skills, and a greater degree of double-consciousness between their own South American Spanish culture and the culture of the dominant Europeans in their area of ​​exploration. What will be explored in this article is how South American women were oppressed. they privately subverted their oppressors through their secret and completely anti-patriarchal expedition. The principles of feminist and postcolonial criticism contain overlapping concepts: ...[There are] a number of similarities in the theoretical issues that exist. concern feminist and postcolonial critiques. For example, the patriarchal subjugation of women is analogous to the colonial subjugation of indigenous peoples. And the resulting devaluation of women and colonized peoples poses very similar problems for both groups in terms of achieving an independent personal and collective identity....And finding ways to think, speak and create which are not dominated by the ideology of the oppressor. (Tyson 423) This article will attempt to show how the oppression of the explorers manifested itselfwas also linked to colonial ideology almost as much as to sexist ideology. The story begins with an example of the kind of coincidence or luck, rather than accepted social and economic methods, that allowed the group of women to plan and carry out their expedition. The unnamed narrator, who we know is married, then has children, and has a cousin named Juana, manages to obtain funds through a "benefactor", who is also never named, thanks to the network of one of Juana's friends in Chile. This benefactor, who we suspect is a woman but it is never known, gives the women the money to buy expensive equipment and supplies and offers the services of a ship from the Chilean government, the Yelcho. This powerful and rich man demands nothing from women, except their willingness to travel, and is complicit in their mission of absolute secrecy on both sides. This expedition is therefore completely private and, even if the benefactor is a man, an entirely female network success. This kind of “sisterhood” binds women together to protect them from family disgrace (“embarrassment or unpleasant notoriety thus brought to unsuspecting husbands and sons” italics in mine, Le Guin 377), and specifically disgrace of members men of the community. their family, but also total protection against the outside world. The fact that the mission had to be carried out in complete secrecy is directly linked to the type of sexist oppression that would never have allowed a group of women in the 1900s to head to the South Pole. Otherwise, women would not have been able to undertake this journey. There would be no public fundraising, as there would have been for a National Geographic expedition or an expedition for the Royal Society, at the time. A women's expedition, had it not been actively discouraged, would have met with nothing but derision and, perhaps, even disinterest. Once decided to go on an expedition, the women are saddled with family obligations that would not have plagued Mr. Amundsen or Captain Scott's male crew. They worry about “a sick parent, an anxious husband overwhelmed by business worries, a child at home with only ignorant or incompetent servants to look after him: these are not responsibilities to be put aside lightly” (Le Guin 379). The fact that women are forced to prioritize family concerns, rather than their own desire for fulfillment or self-aggrandizement, is a direct form of sexist oppression. Even when they have selected their crew willing to “work hard, take risks, and deprive themselves” (379), one of them, Maria, must stay home and care for a sick husband. One might wonder if Maria's husband, if the situations were reversed, would have given up on a trip to the Pole if his wife was ill.2 The private nature of the expedition (for which the women either pretended to go to a country Bolivian), either convent, or Paris for the required six months - two acceptable feminine activities: praying and shopping!) was also preserved by the explorers, as a strange sort of ego protection for the male European explorers who 'they had never met. They protect "Mr. Amundsen" by not leaving footprints at the pole and leaving nothing behind. They know that "he would be terribly embarrassed and disappointed" (392) not only to know, implied, that someone had reached the pole before him, but also a group of women who had gone sledding there without l help of dogs or charters of any Royale. Companies. The male scientific and explorer ego, held by these intrepid female polar travelers, is something so fragile and so easy tobreak, that they dare not trumpet their astonishing success to what they probably fear would be a disappointed and perhaps even incredulous person. world. "But the other side of heroism is often rather sad; women and servants know this. They also know that heroism is perhaps no less real. But the success is smaller than what the men think. What is great is the sky, the earth, the sea, the soul. (Le Guin 383). Here, the narrator explains her feelings about the “success” of her group of women who first set foot on Antarctic soil. The group did not start, like Amundsen's and Scott's groups, with the goal of reaching the South Pole. In fact, when the women reached it (and not all of them did), Zoe turned back because her friends were sick, even though she was well enough to continue - another example of how women are other-centered rather than self-centered, as Beauvoir said "the inessential [being] which never becomes essential" Tyson 97), they were unimpressed rather than jubilant at their achievement. Women were more interested in travel, the beauty and strangeness of the country, and their friendship in adversity, than in vain geographical achievement. Whether this orientation towards the other is in fact an innate strength in women and a virtue to which all human beings should aspire, or a negative inessentiality produced by generations of patriarchal ideology which deprives women of their right to self-esteem. put forward, is a question left to the reader. But in this story, the women's cooperative nature, their lack of vanity, and their desire for notoriety are what first propels them to the pole and brings them all home alive. There is, however, a less obvious colonial oppression in “Sur.” The indigenous peoples of South America, on whose continent these women (again, probably, as this is implied by their social status and names, but it is never actually stated), European women and not First Peoples or mixed race) live so close to the South. The poles are mentioned in passing several times. But the difference between the "Indians", indigenous people of South America, who pilot Zoé's little canoe (Le Guin 379) and the British, whom the narrator describes by attributing to Florence Nightingale as a source of inspiration "this lady very courageous and very peculiar” “who seemed to represent so much of what is best and strangest in the island race” is very large, with the South American female colonizers as a distinct group among them. This is an example of “othering” (Tyson 427) both upward and between women and the two different groups. The women used British-made instruments because these were the best available and demonstrated that country's dominance in this field. They admire Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen—all European explorers who mapped and named parts of Antarctica that the sledders eventually conquered with far fewer resources and without killing—and these same women are pointedly dismissive of their "ignorant servants." or incompetent” (Le Guin 379) among them, who we assume to be indigenous or mixed race. But there is a kind of sneaking admiration for the indigenous people here – as well as an unease about European domination. When the women decide who will be in charge of the expedition, they nickname the leader "Supreme Inca" in honor of the great indigenous nation of the narrator's homeland, Peru. To name a Spanish lady who, in that time and place, must have been either a joke or a mark, among women in private, of aspecial distinction. The second-in-command was comically named a chicken from South America, La Araucana. That this may have been a reference to the usefulness of this native fowl, with an odd nuance due to the amount of wine the women had drunk that evening, testifies to the complicated attitude women had towards ideas and the indigenous people of South America. One of the ways in which women have an advantage over Europeans is that "the quantity and quality of our food has made a very considerable difference." I am sure that the fifteen percent of dried fruit in our pemmican helped prevent scurvy; and the potatoes, frozen and dried in an ancient Andean Indian method, were very nutritious but very light and compact - perfect sledding rations." Not only did the traditionally gender-specific female art of meal preparation save women (a feminist victory), but a South American method of food preservation gave them a considerable advantage over the food brought by Europeans would mean the narrator was giving credit to the First Peoples who did so. invented - and contrasted him with the supposedly methods of more knowledgeable British explorers. The terms in which the narrator speaks of the "brave" Mr. Amundsen (Le Guin 392) and the "dashing" Captain Scott have an element of irony. Who could be more courageous than the narrator, Juana, Zoé and even the young Teresa, who gave birth on the Antarctic continent Who more dashing than the nine women, without motorized vehicles or dogs, and in the greatest secrecy? reached the pole and came back, all alive? The narrator, who "reread a thousand times" the account of Captain Scott's expedition of 1902 to 1904, and assumed that she could not enrich "the body of scientific knowledge" (Le Guin 377) because of her lack of training, has been so indoctrinated into the ideology of Eurocentrism, that she would not consider her achievements worthy or appropriate to be supported by the achievements of European men. His simple words and emotionally restrained, yet beautiful account of the journey treat it as an entirely personal journey, not one to be considered the property of science and the world, as the expeditions of Amundsen and by Scott. While Ms. Le Guin, an American, writing in the guise of a South American woman a hundred years ago, could not have directly experienced the kind of sexist and colonial oppression that the narrator of "On" would have lived, she writes carefully about a woman who balanced her boundaries. gender and national origin were imposed on him along with his desire for adventure. This kind of story, sexist and Eurocentric ideologies insist, could only take place in a fantasy – which is certainly the case with “Sur.” But Ms. Le Guin writes in such a matter-of-fact way, with the very plausible excuse of the narrator's modest desire for secrecy to protect herself and her companions from the censure of their families. The author makes it seem very likely that, even if they are entirely capable of completing a truly epic polar journey and reaching the South Pole before anyone else, a group of southern women -Americans would hardly be accepted by the world as having discovered the southernmost point of the ocean. Earth. In this configuration of the story, the author accepts and attempts to overturn the very ideologies of the oppression of women and the third world. The fact that this story could not have been written as a fantasy in which women are encouraged by their men and praised by the male polar explorers they.