Comparing Women In Body And Soul By Judith Thompson And Clara Callan

Canada prides itself as being one of the fairest countries with equal opportunities for everyone. If that is the case, why are women still deemed less than men? Both Body & Soul by Judith Thompson and Clara Callan by Richard Wright show what it is it truly like to be a woman in Canada. Thompson’s Body & Soul is a play that takes the reader through the lives of fifteen different and unique women from around Canada, while Wright’s Clara Callan is a novel about two sisters, Clara Callan and Nora Callan, who come from the same small town in Ontario but end up leading very different lives. Although today 's society is slowly progressing, many women still have to deal with a myriad of harmful and negative stereotypes, especially when women do not …show more content…
A woman should be married, a woman should have children, a woman should cook, a woman should clean, a woman should be loving to her husband. Being a woman is associated with being a mother and a housekeeper. In Body & Soul, the fifteen women were asked about when they started feeling like a woman. Many of them said after they got married or after they had their first child. However, Judy and Jeannine had other ideas. Jeannine chose not to have children and in fact never did. Other women would question her considering women are traditionally supposed to want to have kids and become a mother since motherhood and womanhood are seen as almost identical. Judy, on the topic of entering womanhood, says, “I thought I needed to be married to be happy. That was a lie” (Thompson 25). Judy’s womanhood experience was quite different that the other women in the play, she entered womanhood not by following the traditional roles, but by realizing that they are not life dictating and breaking free. She realized that these roles are not what she needs to be content, and that she can be happy on her own. By breaking free from traditional roles and expectations, she is able to decide her own life and achieve her potential without feeling the need to abide by society’s standards to feel accepted. On the other hand, in Clara Callan, Nora longs to be married and have children, which is what she believes every …show more content…
Women are overshadowed at home by their husbands, and at work by their boss and male co-workers. In Body & Soul, many of the women realized how unequally they were treated and how they were often overlooked, and overshadowed in their teen years. Ruth starts telling a story from her teens years, “I spent my adolescence in a socialist youth group. Girls and boys were all equal. Except we weren’t and I didn’t figure it out until I was eighteen, a head counsellor at the summer camp … The night before camp started I ran a meeting to run through rules for my staff. I kept getting interrupted by a counsellor and I responded with, ‘Wait your turn.’ When I was done I turned to him and said, ‘What was it you badly needed to say?’ And he said, ‘Hey everybody, if you get a chance-f*** Ruth’” (Thompson 13). Ruth is in a position of power, head counsellor, running a meeting, and managing a group of staff. As a woman, however, she is not taken seriously and her male coworkers overshadow her, and interrupt her when she is trying to work. In fact, many times Ruth has to remind him that he must wait his turn. However, he still feels that he is more entitled to speak than Ruth is, because she is a woman. Her male co-workers do not take her seriously as a result of the many harmful stereotypes surrounding women, for example, women cannot work as