Women In Bear Country

and resistance are presented. These contrasting ideas lead to a deeper analysis of the stories true meanings as well as a greater appreciation for both plots. In “Bear Country”, the idea of oppression is delivered through the main character, Wilma, analysis of words and their apparent gender, as, in French, nouns are separated by masculine and feminine, Wilma depicts that the grand majority of masculine words, such as “le sang”, are much more violent than feminine words like “la blessure”, for example. This is direct discrimination towards women as we are the ones who have gendered these words which shows that even in our own language and vocabulary, there are subtle signs of sexism. The message being transmitted is that women are the weaker

During “Bear Country”, this resistance can be seen from the very beginning as well as the very end. From the get-go, we are told “Wilma took French at the YMCA” (Thomas 87), which stands for Young Men’s Christians Association. Why would women study in a place built to satisfy and be used only by men? The skits she attends can also be considered a type of resistance against sexism and patriarchy, the third one especially. When it is said “the women say, more or less in unison ‘We are in Bear Country’. ‘This country is ours’ say the men” (Thomas 89), we can interpret the word “bear” as bare, as it is a bare and boring country when ruled by men. An important scene, the one mentioning Marc Lépine’s deadly attack on Polytechnique many years before, is adding in place as a way to bring awareness to this attack on feminism, as his final words were “maudites féministes”. A type of resistance that can be seen in Brand’s “At the Lisbon Plate” is the title itself, referencing a city in Portugal, a colonizer, when the city takes place in England, a colonized country. This can be viewed as a direct hit towards the countries that wanted to strip others of their own culture and identity. There is also the fact that they still speak their own language (English) rather than speaking the one of their colonizer as a form of resistance and a way to show how they still desire to keep and learn about their roots even