GENDER INEQUALITY IN BURNS’ MILKMAN: A MARXIST FEMINIST STUDY

Abstract

This research investigates gender inequality in Anna Burns' novel Milkman. Burns' novel is depiction of the ways in which women are exploited through capitalism. It highlights the role of powerful institutions and absence of women in those power structures that ultimately makes women the slaves of patriarchs. The novel also explores the ways in which women are exploited, controlled and crushed by political and institutional power. This study discusses the debates surrounding Marxist feminism and the ways in which Marxist feminism can be mobilized as an analytical tool to engage women centric novels such as Anna Burns's Milkman along the thematic lines of objectification, commodification, capitalism, institutionalized patriarchy, the panopticon, and gender inequality. This study develops a hermeneutical Marxist feminism to evaluate the thematic concerns in Anna Burns' Milkman. In doing so, this research reveals how this novel based on gendered oppression and violence dramatizes and expands the core aspects of objectification and dehumanization developed by both Marxism and feminism. This study is indebted to Engle's conceptualization of economic independence in Marxism as it interprets gender inequality in the context of capitalism. This study situates Marxist feminism as a critical reading approach to understand gender-based oppression and inequality and proposes an anti-capitalist future for women's empowerment.

Keywords: Gender inequality, Marxist Feminism, Patriarchy, Power Structures, Gender based violence, Capitalism