The human body is like a flower; it is created and born, it grows with the absorption of essential resources, and slowly begins to bloom. The human body is a complex, intricate system that many take for granted or fail to ever understand. The importance of the body, especially the female body, is extremely prevalent in the novel Zulus, where we see the emphasis placed on Alice’s body. In Zulus, being fertile is a rarity, and Alice is looked upon highly and treated differently with care due to the fact that she was pregnant. We can see how the much the body, or bodily image is valued; for example, Alice wasn’t even given a second thought or glance when she was overweight, but was rather praised for being pregnant. We can see this same idea in Interdisciplinary, which discusses the ways in which feminism examines the representation of women, and their history with oppression and emancipation (pg. 92). It is through the dissection of feminism and its views that we see how valued a woman’s body should be for the right reasons, unlike the reasons represented in Zulus regarding Alice’s body.
English Majors Practising Criticism