Francine Prose: Other Women

When Francine Prose was twenty-five years old, she was unhappily married and living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Because of her problems with her marriage, she decided to join a feminist group to help her see the value in being a woman. Unfortunately, Prose's husband ended up sleeping with every single woman in the group, or that's how she likes to tell the story forty years later in Granta magazine. In reality he was only with two of the women in the group, but Prose uses exaggeration as a rhetorical device to achieve her purpose. That purpose is to inform women of all ages that they are equal to men and also that feminist groups do not always work in the way they are supposed to. The use of exaggeration works because she does tell the truth later and explains that the exaggeration is a way of expressing how "betrayed [she] felt by [her] husband and feminist sisters" (Brooks and Atwan 241). The women were supposed to support each other in the group, but instead Prose felt betrayal. Because this was exaggerated, it made me realize that the group really did not fulfill its purpose. Prose also talks about the subject of the war of men against women.  Her strategy in accomplishing this purpose is the use of repetition. Towards the end of the essay, she asks herself six questions starting with the words "do I think" and answering all of them with "yes". One of the questions was "do I think women are as smart and capable as men?" (Brooks and Atwan 242). With the use of repetition, it drills the message into the readers head, and it also shows that Prose is very passionate about her purpose. It is because of this passion that I believe Prose accomplished her purpose.

 
Feminism
from asap-asia.org
 

Works Cited

Brooks, David, and Robert Atwan, eds. The Best American Essays 2012. Boston: 
       Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print.