Speeches

Intro Margrett Atwood

This understanding is undboubdedly supported by Margaret Atwood’s 1994 Spotty Handed Villainess – a direct protest against the sexist polarization of morality along gender lines within fiction

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Intro Noel Pearson

. Similar to Indigenous legal activist and politician Noel Pearson’s 1996 An Australian History for us all elucidates the need for reconciliation in order to progress, criticizing contemporary politicians of not understanding the effect of ignoring a

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Atwood purpose

Margaret Atwood’s light-hearted Spotty Handed Villainess tackles the issue of sexism that has existed from the earliest days of literature.

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Atwood audience

Speaking to an women’s lobby, Atwood opens by referencing her eponymous title “my subtitle is Problems of Female Bad Behaviour in the Creation of Literature. I should probably have said in the creation of novels, plays and epic poems”.

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Secondary issue with audience

she delves deeper into a secondary issue – the polarization of female characters through an anecdotal recount of a nursery rhyme. She recalls being told of a “little girl” who was either “very very good” or “horrid”, attributing this to

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Quote attributed to

remnants of the Angel/Whore split so popular amongst the Victorians…Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde”. This literary allusion to a well known novel allows Atwood to tacitly appeal to our understanding

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Paragraph 2 atwood

Through litotes, Atwood reiterates her thesis “Create a flawless character and you create an insufferable one, which may be why I am interested in spots”.

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Metaphor anaylsis

She introduces the extended metaphor of “spots” as ‘evil’ – a desirable trait not just in vouching for equality in the sense that women, just like men have a full moral spectrum, but for the interest of a story’s plot.

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Paragraph 2 tec 2

Through dichotomous literary allusions to further canons of literature “Lady Macbeth was spotted, Ophelia unspotted: both came to sticky ends, but there’s a world of difference”, Atwood corroborates her argument that the rare female villains are ofte

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Paragraph 3 intro

In contrast to Atwood’s light hearted response, Noel Pearson’s equally passionate, historiography laced An Australian history for us all tackles a distinctly Australian national issue of race and culture

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Para 3 quote 1 and 2

Pearson opens with a strong critique of Prime Minister Howard’s “black armband” view of history that “urges guilt and shame upon Australians

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Para 3 quote 1 and 2 analysis

Directly quoting former Prime Minister Keating and thus appealing to the audience’s contextual understanding, Pearson stresses that the solution is predicated upon accepting a “collective consciousness of the past that encompasses a responsibility"

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Parar 3 theiss

His thesis that feeling “guilty” and not accepting “responsibility” is a difference not understood or accepted by Australian society.

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Para 4 tec 1

Pearson reminds us that “up until the 1960s there was in the writing and teaching of Australian history, the equivalence of Terra Nullius”, cleverly linking one crime with another, such as the fallacy of a “peaceful settlement'

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para 4 link to atwood

In fact, his citation of early contextual instances that formed the basis of the issue is much like Atwood’s profound utilization of the ‘canons of literature’ as key evidence for her argument

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para 4 tec 2

Through a rhetorical question, Pearson patriotically appeals to our pathos “How can we…feel responsibility and express pride in aspects of our past…heroic deeds at Gallipoli and Kokoda…and not feel responsibility for and express shame in the past'

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