Atwood Rape Fantasies -- Women Term Paper

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Estelle pokes fun at the magazine's obsession, noting that the carefulness urged by the magazine on the part of women makes it seem like avoiding sexual assault is a step-by-step process "like it was ten new hairdos or something," not a serious criminal and personal issue. The story evolves from Estelle's point-of-view. Estelle initially finds the conversation of her female colleagues uncomfortable, as is evidenced by her focus on the beginning pursuit of the women, a bridge game and by concentrating on her bidding. However, even the reserved Estelle becomes involved in the debate when she ironically describes a rape fantasy where the attacker is held back by a squirt of juice from a plastic lemon filled with Easy Off Cleaner.

Estelle's fantasy is funny and empowering all at once. (104) But Estelle always reminds the other women, including the disgusted Darlene that what they're describing are sexual fantasies: "Listen... those aren't rape fantasies. I mean, you aren't getting raped, it's just some guy you haven't met formally who happens to be more attractive than Derek Cummins... And you have a good time. Rape is when they've got a knife.

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" (104)

At the story's end Estelle seems to be speaking her monologue not just to the reader but also to a man at a bar. She has just met him, and the reader is tantalized by the possibility that she may be worrying about being raped by the man, or like the other women, unconsciously channeling her desires into the more culturally accepted idea that any consequence-free sex enjoyed by a woman cannot be due to the woman's will, but the result of a rape. The ambivalence of Estelle towards sexuality, her fellow female dreamers and the man highlight the cultural ambivalence of society towards women and their sexuality. But the difficult of expressing this sexuality in the story also underlines that an untapped reserve of unacceptable but natural and necessary still exists within women, even if it may be feared and ostracized by both the women themselves and the men whom they desire to enjoy, not unwillingly in a true 'rape' but in a carefree manner society has yet to accept.

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