Autobiography of a Face

After reading Autobiography of a Face, I have a new perspective on what it would be like to have a life-threatening and life-altering illness.

Basically, the book is a detailed description of Lucy Grealy's life as she was growing up. When she was a preteen she was diagnosed with cancer. The cancer was in her jaw, and she had to have part of her jaw removed in an attempt to get rid of the cancer. Obviously the jaw is a pretty distinctive part of the face, and from then on she never looked normal.

I found it very sad that Grealy had to go through middle school and high school always feeling like an outsider. I remember one time in particular when I felt like an outsider, and that was my first day of middle school. We were sitting in the lunchroom before school started, and I thought it was weird that everyone was sitting in the lunchroom instead of outside on the playground like we had done in elementary school. I felt like I didn't belong in the middle school with these older, seemingly cooler people. However, I soon learned that while these people may have been older, they were nothing too exciting. When I think about it I feel stupid because compared to Lucy Grealy's situation, mine was a piece of cake.

I can't imagine feeling uncomfortable and insecure every minute of every day. Grealy described how sometimes she didn't even feel like she belonged in her own home. The only time she felt like she did belong was when she was at the hospital. I think this proves how judgemental people are. Most of the people who judged Grealy and made her feel minuscule were mere strangers who gave her an awkward glance, or stared at her from afar. It isn't fair that someone who has gone through something so difficult such as cancer should be so openly judged by persons who were so unknowing.

As far as the actual writing went in the book, I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly and painlessly I was able to finish Autobiography of a Face. I have always been a fiction reader, and wasn't exactly looking forward to reading a non-fiction book. Nonetheless, Grealy did a fantastic job (in my opinion) at making her life story interesting.

Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed

When I glanced at the title of this last article, I immediately thought feminism. As it turns out, that was exactly what the article talked about.

Mary Wollstonecraft, despite the fact that she wrote this many years ago, touched on some points that are still viable in today's society. The main point of her article was how women are treated as the lesser important sex almost all the time. She said, "...should they (women) be beautiful, everything else is needless...". I found this point particularly interesting because that fact is absolutely true, especially in today's society.

Wollstonecraft probably didn't realize it when she wrote this, but that remark was almost like a foreshadowing of a very eminent issue with the world. Beautiful women are almost always adored no matter what their personality is like. A woman can be dumb as rocks, but because some men are so incredibly shallow, if she is pretty, chances are good that she'll end up married and with children.

On the other end of the spectrum, there could be an amazingly kind, intelligent woman who might not look like a Barbie, and she might spend her entire life alone because no man was willing to look past the exterior and get to know what she was really like.

Another topic I found controversial was Wollstonecraft's remark regarding how men have to "teach" their wives how to behave and act, and that "teaching" is made easier if the woman had attended school as a child. It is simply pathetic, and on many occasions a woman will start acting differently once she gets married; she'll act in the way that she knows her husband wants her to act.

"It may be impossible to convince them that the illegitimate power which they obtain, by degrading themselves, is a curse...", Wollstonecraft also said this about how women will often bring themselves down in order to seem more attractive to the male species. Why anyone would do this is beyond me; however, I do see where that happens with prostitution, etc.

The last thing I saw as one of Wollstonecraft's main points of her writing was her mentioning of a woman's need to please other. She said that women are raised to please others; therefore, when a wife feels she is no longer pleasing to her husband, she will go elsewhere in order to feel as though she is worthwhile. I think this is definitely something that occurs a lot today, and it is probably the reason that the divorce rate is skyrocketing. There may not be any easy way to change this pattern, it has been occurring as far back as any source of literature can go, and it still hasn't changed today.