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“Ano'ng gagawin sa itlog? | ‘Bata, Bata…Paano Ka Ginawa?’ | Special Video.” YouTube, uploaded by ABS-CBN Star Cinema, 27 April. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKkMg79AVvQ.

Angel, Marina. "Susan Glaspell's Trifles and A Jury of Her Peers: Woman abuse in a literary and legal context." Buff. L. Rev. 45 (1997): 779.

Ashley, Wendy. “The angry black woman: the impact of pejorative stereotypes on psychotherapy with black women.” Social work in public health vol. 29,1 (2014): 27-34. doi:10.1080/19371918.2011.619449

Auvray, Héloïse. "Judith Slaying Holofernes: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Feminist Expression f Revenge Violence?.”

Barnes, Charlotte Sophie. Never Forget Your First’(novel) and violent women: representations of female violence in Muriel Spark’s ‘The Driver’s Seat’, Virginie Despentes’s ‘Baise-Moi’, Gillian Flynn’s ‘Gone Girl’, and CS Barnes’s ‘Never Forget Your First. Diss. University of Birmingham, 2018.

Bryan, Patricia L. "Stories in Fiction and in Fact: Susan Glaspell's" A Jury of Her Peers" and the 1901 Murder Trial of Margaret Hossack." Stanford Law Review (1997): 1293-1363.

Chemaly, Soraya. Rage becomes her. Simon and Schuster, 2018.

Flynn, Gillian. “I Was Not a Nice Little Girl…” Medium, 15 July, 2015, https://medium.com/@Powells/i-was-not-a-nice-little-girl-c2df01e0ae1.

“Gone Girl (2014) HD - Cool Girl.” YouTube, uploaded by Kristi Rushiti, 22 Feb. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o4heKCLeTs.

Gentileschi, Artemisia. Judith slaying Holofernes, ca. 1620.

Glaspell, Susan. "A jury of her peers." Images of Women in Literature (1917): 370-85.

Kay, Jilly Boyce. "Introduction: Anger, media, and feminism: The gender politics of mediated rage." Feminist Media Studies 19.4 (2019): 591-615.

Mohammad, Ghada Abdullah. "Violence In Sylvia Plath’s Poems Lady Lazarus And Daddy." International Journal of Language Academy 7.28 (2019): 497-510.

Perloff, Marjorie. "Sylvia Plath's" Collected Poems": A Review-Essay." (1981): 304-313.

Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2. Accessed 11 June, 2023.

Porhsa Olayiwola. “IWPS Finals 2014 - Porsha O. "Angry Black Woman".” YouTube, uploaded by Poetry Slam Inc, 19 Feb. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSoITsaSs0M.

Sawayama, Rina. "STFU!" Sawayama. Dirty Hit, 22 Nov 2019. Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/artist/2KEqzdPS7M5YwGmiuPTdr5?go=1&nd=1.

Shields, Stephanie A. "Women, men, and the dilemma of emotion." Meeting of the Association for Women in Psychology, Mar, 1983, Seattle, WA, US. Sage Publications, Inc, 1987.

Smith, K. C., et al. "Gender-related effects in the perception of anger expression." Sex Roles 20 (1989): 487-499.

Strangeways, A.l., and Plath, S.. "" The boot in the face": the problem of the Holocaust in the poetry of Sylvia Plath." Contemporary Literature 37.3 (1996): 370-390

Yao, Diamond. “The Revolutionary Anger of Asian Women.” Autostraddle, 10 June, 2021, https://www.autostraddle.com/the-revolutionary-anger-of-asian-women/.

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The Cool Girl monologue is one of the most popular scenes from the movie ‘Gone Girl’ because it is a turning point in the film wherein Amy Dunne, the main character, reveals herself to have staged her disappearance to frame Nick for his infidelity. At this moment, she is no longer the victim of the story, but the culprit at the scene of the crime. Representations of female violence, such as in this monologue, resonate with the female audience as it allows women to negotiate their rage in the current political climate. Amy Dunne’s character, deviant and very much considered unwomanly, is a raging response to the patriarchy (Barnes 307).

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Excerpt: "You think I’d let him destroy me and end up happier than ever? No fucking way. He doesn’t get to win!"

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Excerpt: "You think I’d let him destroy me and end up happier than ever? No fucking way. He doesn’t get to win!"

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This section was made for you to explore and expand on the concept of female rage in a more intersectional manner by providing resources from voices of color. After all, female anger is not limited to the Anglo-American sphere, and looking at how rage is described and personified in materials outside of said sphere gives us an opportunity to see how factors such as race, class, and other complex systems of oppression affect how rage is expressed.

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Watch here!

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Movie Scene: "Ano'ng gagawin sa itlog?" from ‘Bata, Bata…Paano Ka Ginawa?’

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Movie Scene: "Ano'ng gagawin sa itlog?" from ‘Bata, Bata…Paano Ka Ginawa?’

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This movie scene is a stand-in for Lualhati Bautista’s books in general, but it perfectly encapsulates the angry resistance in her books–especially in her female characters. In Lualhati Bautista’s novels Dekada ‘70 and Bata, Bata... Pa'no Ka Ginawa?, both written in Tagalog, she depicts female characters that are confined to the traditional values of domesticity. By contextualizing the texts with larger-than-life events, particularly martial law, her female characters go through the process of liberating themselves from the mold of Philippine patriarchal society and culture; oftentimes, this process involves a scene or two that depicts the female character enraged and fighting. I highly recommend not just watching this scene, but reading the books too as they are a sensational perspective on how anger is situated for Filipino women as one method to resist.

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Ano'ng gagawin sa itlog? | ‘Bata, Bata…Paano Ka Ginawa?’ | Special Video

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"How come you don't expect me / To get mad when I'm angry? / You've never seen it though I know I'm not the only one / How come you don't respect me? / Expecting fantasies / Leave our reality, why don't you just sit down and / Shut the fuck up"

Across the various cultures of Asia, women are expected to restrain their anger. This conditioned silence is praised as a virtue, even though it actively puts women in danger as silence allows them to be susceptible to cycles of gendered, racist, and even domestic violence (“The Revolutionary Anger of Asian Women”). Rina Sawayama, a British-Japanese singer, uses her rage to resist these sexist expectations. She even references the fetishization or “fantasies” that Asian women are subdued to.

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Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” is a blunt, powerful poem wherein violence emerges from a place of rage and oppression. Considered one of Plath's anger poems, this piece uses rage to investigate womanhood (Perloff 2). In this case, we can observe how anger becomes an essential part of being a woman.

To contextualize the poem, violence in Sylvia Plath’s poetry is said to be a reaction against the lowest points of her life, including the loss of her father when she was only eight years old, her divorce, her obsession with suicide, her fears of cold war politics, the effects of the Second World War and the German cruelty against Jewish people (Mohammad 498). Plath uses “Daddy” to explore the dynamics of reckoning with her father’s image as an authoritarian and persecutor but also to reject the paternal authority of society. The archetypal feminine figure in “Daddy” deploys her anger to not only free herself from the authoritarian father figure but to also experience freedom from the psychological difficulties that are linked to her father and other repressive male authorities (Strangeways & Plath 373).

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Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers” is constantly referred to as a “feminist classic” for being an early depiction of women’s perspectives and female bonding in the realm of law in fiction (Bryan 1293). It tells the tale of two women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, who accompany their husbands as they investigate a murder that is believed to have been done by Minnie Wright, the accused. Glaspell creates a comparative lens on gender by showcasing the female characters being able to piece together the crime better, despite not being professionals like their husbands, because they understand the accused’s perspective better on account of being fellow women.

The comparative approach that Glaspell employs emphasizes how the traditional legal system is patriarchal as it exists as a space that men have created and is still a space wherein men dominate (Angel 781). The two women in the story are able to act as a “jury of her peers” for a woman who was potentially driven to violence through her own rage.

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"Mr. Henderson said, coming out, that what was needed for the case was a motive. Something to show anger—or sudden feeling."

"Well, I don't see any signs of anger around here," said Mrs. Hale. "I don't—"

She stopped. It was as if her mind tripped on something. Her eye was caught by a dish-towel in the middle of the kitchen table. Slowly she moved toward the table. One half of it was wiped clean, the other half messy. Her eyes made a slow, almost unwilling turn to the bucket of sugar and the half empty bag beside it. Things begun—and not finished.

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Spoken Word: Porsha O.'s "Angry Black Woman"

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Spoken Word: Porsha O.'s "Angry Black Woman"

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“I’m pissed the fuck off, I’m mad because above everything, at any given time and in any given space, I, as a Black woman, can suffer from racism, sexism, homophobia, classism.”

According to Ashley (27), the “Angry Black Woman” stereotype characterizes Black women as “aggressive, ill-tempered, illogical, overbearing, hostile, and ignorant without provocation.” These negative attributes actually derive from the external stressors and historical factors that Black women have endured for centuries. In her spoken word, Porsha O. reckons with the multiple factors that make her angry. Here, she is a woman not despite her anger; rather being angry is part of her womanhood.

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IWPS Finals 2014 - Porsha O. "Angry Black Woman"

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There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

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You do not do, you do not do

In which I have lived like a foot

For thirty years, poor and white,

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time--

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,

Ghastly statue with one gray toe

And a head in the freakish Atlantic

Where it pours bean green over blue

In the waters off beautiful Nauset.

I used to pray to recover you.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town

Scraped flat by the roller

Of wars, wars, wars.

But the name of the town is common.

Says there are a dozen or two.

So I never could tell where you

Put your foot, your root,

I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you.

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.

I began to talk like a Jew.

I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna

Are not very pure or true.

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.

And your Aryan eye, bright blue.

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

So black no sky could squeak through.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,

In the picture I have of you,

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot

But no less a devil for that, no not

Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,

And they stuck me together with glue.

And then I knew what to do.

A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.

And I said I do, I do.

So daddy, I'm finally through.

The black telephone's off at the root,

The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--

The vampire who said he was you

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

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Daddy by Sylvia Plath | Poetry Foundation

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In the long and winding history of Western civilization, women’s anger is perceived as deviant, monstrous, or even taboo (Kay 591). There is no place for a woman to be angry, and this is largely due to widespread gender stereotypes, which have affected the way people perceive emotionality between men and women. In general, women are believed to be more susceptible to their own emotions than men–but anger is situated differently (Smith 488) because according to Shields (235), “anger or aggressiveness, in contrast to nearly all other specific emotions, is considered a typical male response.” Diving into this further, anger is a form of agency. Anger is directed outwards and imposed on others, which is in line with the stereotypical idea of men being more agentic than women (Shields 236; Smith 488).

It follows then that women being angry is a direct violation of gender prescriptions because, in the act of expressing anger, women have to impose their own feelings onto others. What then becomes of angry women, such as me, who feel the need to subscribe to societal boundaries imposed on them? We swallow our anger down. We internalize it and silence ourselves for the comfort of others. Let’s face the reality: men are allowed to feel and express rage, yet women, are punished for doing the exact same thing. According to Chemaly (32), the punishment of women’s anger is a regulation that is maintained with the concept of upholding prejudiced and gendered power structures. Women’s anger cannot be legitimized because to condone it would necessitate a reckoning with centuries of discrimination and oppression.

In connection, to undermine and reexamine the sexist notions we were raised upon, we must seek representations where women can freely rage against what constricts them. According to Kay (594), the first step in using anger for social and/or political justice ends to speak of it. This theme presents three texts that do exactly that. “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell (1917), “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath (1981), and a film excerpt, “The Cool Girl Monologue” from Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012), along with a set of extension pieces, center women’s emotions, specifically rage, and how they operate within their societal contexts. There is something very intentional about how these texts subvert the previously discussed concept of female anger discomfiting society. You will find that for many of these texts, the women are so enraged that they are driven to the point of violence–some sort of literary rebuff against their own inequality. As I wrote in my proposal for this digital archive, the chosen texts depict rage as an empowered approach in which women forwardly violate imposed societal boundaries. So join me, and let us enter an era where women’s rage can mean something different. Rage is no longer a pathologized character flaw of women. It is no longer a symptom of overreaction or a boundary women can never cross. Rage can now be used as a valid tool to liberate women from archaic societal expectations or confines. Women now own rage and can do whatever they please with it.

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1. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters decide to hide the evidence that proves Mrs. Wright’s motive for murder, described as “something to show anger–or sudden feeling.” What can this tell us about women's solidarity, especially in the context of dealing with each other's emotions?

2. Would you say Mrs. Wright’s rage is silenced in the story by having her actions implicitly referenced? Or do Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, through their decision to be a “jury of her peers,” give Mrs. Wright a voice?

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Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes, c. 1620. 

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Similar to the themes of the short story, this painting looks at how fantasies of murder are cathartic expressions of desires for women's empowerment.

Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting depicts a biblical scene from the Book of Judith wherein a young widow Judith seduces warlord Holofernes when he lays siege to the city of Bethulie. Seduced by Judith’s beauty, Holofernes puts aside his vigilance and passes out. Judith then beheads him, and in the act of murder, liberates her nation. This painting is often seen as a beacon of women’s anger toward their oppressors (Auvray 3) as Gentileschi’s representation of the biblical feminine figure has made feel women across history feel seen through painting women as unwilling to submit and more significantly, untethering themselves to the oppressive masculine figures in their life (Auvray 5). Interestingly, enough Judith is not alone in this painting and is accompanied by another woman, a maid presumably, in the act. Echoing one of the processing questions, what can this tell us about women's solidarity, especially in the context of dealing with each other's emotions?

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1. Rage, especially when coming from a woman, is always thought of as an overreaction–an emotion that can never be justified. Do you think Amy Dunne’s enraged response to her husband, as explained in this monologue, is justified? (If you would like to think about this further, do her actions even need justification for their purpose in the story?)

2. Gillian Flynn, the writer of “Gone Girl,” was quoted to say “Libraries are filled with stories on generations of brutal men, trapped in a cycle of aggression. I wanted to write about the violence of women.” What is the importance of representing incensed women in popular media?

3. Do you think narratives that attempt to aestheticize female rage, such as in Gone Girl, end up fetishizing female anger? Why or why not?

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Extension Piece: I Was Not a Nice Little Girl by Gillian Flynn

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Extension Piece: I Was Not a Nice Little Girl by Gillian Flynn

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The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important.

This article is a short five-minute read on Gillian Flynn's motivation behind writing aggressive and enraged books from the female perspective.

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I was not a nice little girl. My favorite summertime hobby was stunning ants and feeding them to spiders. My preferred indoor diversion was a game called Mean Aunt Rosie, in which I pretended to be a witchy caregiver and my cousins tried to escape me. Our most basic prop was one of those pink, plastic toy phones most little girls owned in the '80s. ( Pretty girls love to talk on the phone!) Alas, it was always snatched from their fingers before they could call for help. ( Mwahaha) In down time, I also enjoyed watching soft-core porn on scrambled cable channels. ( Boob, bottom, static, static, boob!) And if one of my dolls started getting an attitude, I'd cut off her hair.

My point is not that I was an odd kid (although looking at this on paper now, I worry). Or that I was a bad kid (here's where I tell you - for the sake of my loving parents - that I had enjoyed happy wonder years back in good old Kansas City). But these childhood rites of passage - the rough-housing, the precocious sexuality, the first bloom of power plays - really don't make it into the oral history of most women. Men speak fondly of those strange bursts of childhood aggression, their disastrous immature sexuality. They have a vocabulary for sex and violence that women just don't. Even as adults. I don't recall any women talking with real pleasure about masturbating or orgasms until Sex and the City offered its clever, cutie-pie spin, presenting the phrases to us in a pre-approved package with a polka-dot bow. And we still don't discuss our own violence. We devour the news about Susan Smith or Andrea Yates - women who drowned their children - but we demand these stories be rendered palatable. We want somber asides on postpartum depression or a story about the Man Who Made Her Do It. But there's an ignored resonance. I think women like to read about murderous mothers and lost little girls because it's our only mainstream outlet to even begin discussing female violence on a personal level. Female violence is a specific brand of ferocity. It's invasive. A girlfight is all teeth and hair, spit and nails - a much more fearsome thing to watch than two dudes clobbering each other. And the mental violence is positively gory. Women entwine. Some of the most disturbing, sick relationships I've witnessed are between long-time friends, and especially mothers and daughters. Innuendo, backspin, false encouragement, punishing withdrawal, sexual jealousy, garden-variety jealousy - watching women go to work on each other is a horrific bit of pageantry that can stretch on for years.

Libraries are filled with stories on generations of brutal men, trapped in a cycle of aggression. I wanted to write about the violence of women.

So I did. I wrote a dark, dark book. A book with a narrator who drinks too much, screws too much, and has a long history of slicing words into herself. With a mother who's the definition of toxic, and a thirteen-year-old half-sister with a finely honed bartering system for drugs, sex, control. In a small, disturbed town, in which two little girls are murdered. It's not a particularly flattering portrait of women, which is fine by me. Isn't it time to acknowledge the ugly side? I've grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains - good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn't necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn't qualify either). I'm talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don't tell me you don't know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves - to the point of almost parodic encouragement - we've left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids. So Sharp Objects is my creepy little bouquet.

There are no good women in Sharp Objects. Camille, my narrator of whom I'm obsessively fond - she's witty, self-aware, and buoyant - is the closest to good. And she uses booze, sex, and scissors to get through the day. As I wrote about Camille, I was pondering how a girl who's been raised to please - in an unpleasable, poisonous home - would grow up. How she'd react to a mother who was at once both physically insidious - a constantly poking, prodding woman - and utterly unnurturing. What kind of violence that might foster in this girl. A looping one, I realized. Camille has a craving to carve herself up. The cutter is both victimizer and victim - the bully and the sufferer. But the act includes healing: One has to cleanse and bandage the wounds afterward. Hurt, suffer, heal, hurt, suffer, heal. It's a trinity of violence, all bound up in one person. It's the loneliest act in the world. Camille is an inherently lonely human being.

Camille's mother was inspired by my love of Brothers Grimm as a child: Screw the blonde, gentle heroines, it was those wicked queens and evil stepmothers I adored. ("The Juniper Tree" was well-thumbed.) So that's what Camille's mother is: She's a lovely, regal woman filled with needles. She's a consumer of others' pain. If Camille's violence is self-contained, her mother's is the definition of self-centered. As for the murdered little girls, I didn't want these doomed girls to be just flashes of dimples and hair ribbons. That would be too easy. (Poe said, "The death of a beautiful woman is a poetic thing," and the death of a pretty girl is apparently more so - considering the current media madness surrounding JonBenet and other lost girls.) The murdered girls of Sharp Objects aren't doll-like victims; they have vicious streaks themselves; they were fighters. Camille's half-sister, Amma, also has a temper. Unlike Camille, her haunted home didn't turn her aggression inward, but shot it out in the grabbiest, flashiest way.

When I think of the women of Sharp Objects, I think of a 1948 photo by Frederick Sommer, called Livia (the name of the murderous Roman empress). It's a black-and-white shot of a young girl with all the accoutrements of innocence: Blonde braids, lace-edged dress. But her eyes are startlingly intelligent, her lips stubborn, her whole face mischievous - perhaps malevolent. It's one of my favorite photos in the world, a reminder that girls - and women - can be bad.

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I was not a nice little girl. My favorite summertime hobby was stunning ants and feeding them to spiders. My preferred indoor diversion was a game called Mean Aunt Rosie, in which I pretended to be a witchy caregiver and my cousins tried to escape me.

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1. A father, if present, is one of the foremost authority figures in any girl’s life. Have you ever been angry at your own father? If you identify as a woman, how does the father-daughter relationship work, and what about this relationship can lead to rage? If you do not identify as a woman, how do you think father-daughter dynamics embroil the relationship to the point of rage? Try to take into account the gendered differences in parent-child relationships.

2. Why do you think Plath chose the hypocoristic term ‘daddy’ instead of ‘father’, ‘old man’, or ‘male parent’ in this particular anger poem?

3. Focus on the imagery. Plath writes about a black shoe in which she has lived in “like a foot.” What do you think this phrasing implies? How is it to live “like a foot” and why would this inspire anger?

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This digital archive is centered around the question: How does literature portray female rage, and how do these representations emerge as a response to the patriarchal status quo?

To begin engaging with this archive, I suggest ruminating on the concept of rage and how it is situated in your life. In no more than 200 words, answer in the comments:

What makes you very angry?