To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “Educating a beautiful woman is like pouring honey into a fine Swiss watch. Everything stops.” The quote clearly states his views on the role of women and he shows his sexist opinions in his writing. In his short stories, “EPICAC”, “The Euphio Question”, and “All The King’s Horses”, Vonnegut is guilty of objectifying female characters by writing them as uninteresting characters with no effect on the plot, pigeonholing them into oppressive gender roles and dehumanizing what little females he writes into his stories.
In “All The King’s Horses”, the only women are the Colonel's wife and the unnamed Oriental girl; both are powerless and accessories for the male protagonist and antagonist. Margaret, the wife, has no role in the story whatsoever and she does not affect the story in any way. When …show more content…
The main character describes his wife, Susan as a “loveable woman who prides herself on feeding her family well” (Euphio, 192), depicting her as someone without her own traits. Her only role is to be loveable for her husband and family. The main character realises the strange happenings after he goes home and finds that his wife has not cooked supper and is lying down on the couch. The way the women act after they are subjected to the euphio is to only be lax about their usually uptight maternal habits, Susan rejecting to perform any household tasks and Marion failing to care for her furniture. When the effects of the euphio wear off, the main character sees his wife as a “dreadful, dirty old hag” (201), and describes her as being a witch after she fails to make herself look like the protagonist’s attractive wife that she is supposed to be. The way women are still restricted in stereotypical roles show how developed as characters they are in Vonnegut’s
In “All The King’s Horses”, the only women are the Colonel's wife and the unnamed Oriental girl; both are powerless and accessories for the male protagonist and antagonist. Margaret, the wife, has no role in the story whatsoever and she does not affect the story in any way. When …show more content…
The main character describes his wife, Susan as a “loveable woman who prides herself on feeding her family well” (Euphio, 192), depicting her as someone without her own traits. Her only role is to be loveable for her husband and family. The main character realises the strange happenings after he goes home and finds that his wife has not cooked supper and is lying down on the couch. The way the women act after they are subjected to the euphio is to only be lax about their usually uptight maternal habits, Susan rejecting to perform any household tasks and Marion failing to care for her furniture. When the effects of the euphio wear off, the main character sees his wife as a “dreadful, dirty old hag” (201), and describes her as being a witch after she fails to make herself look like the protagonist’s attractive wife that she is supposed to be. The way women are still restricted in stereotypical roles show how developed as characters they are in Vonnegut’s