Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being under a feminist perspective: a literary analysis and criticism
Milan Kundera opens The Unbearable Lightness of Being by explaining the concept of eternal return as well as introducing his two most important characters in the novel- Tomas and Tereza. Since the novel is narrated unchronologically, the way he describes his characters is very nondescript also unlike the way other literary works set out their characters. It is also noticeable how different his style of description to Tomas and Tereza is:
“She fell asleep. He knelt down next to her. Her feverous breath quickened and she gave out a weak moan. He pressed his face to hers and whispered calming words into her sleep. After a while he felt her breath return to normal and her face rise unconsciously to meet his. He smelled the delicate aroma of her fever and breathed it in, as if trying to glut him self with the intimacy of her body.” (7).
It is very evident how Kundera uses reflexive language to described Tereza’s actions while using direct language to Tomas’s actions. If one will look closely into the text, the sentences she fell asleep and he knelt down next to her show how huge the difference is between the two main woman and man characters in the story. Tereza’s she fell asleep shows that mostly her actions happen in her mind alone, while Tomas’s he knelt down to her somehow shows independence in his actions.
Another, Kundera incorporates gender-neutral words in some of the passages in the novel:
“A long time ago, man would listen in amazement to the sound of regular beats in his chest, never suspecting what they were. He was unable to identify himself with so alien and unfamiliar an object as the body. The body was a cage, and inside that cage was something which looked, listened, feared, thought, and marveled; that something, that remainder left over after the body had been accounted for, was the soul. Ever since man has learned to give each part of the body a name, the body has given him less trouble. He has also learned that the soul is nothing more than the gray matter of the brain in action.” (40).
The way the words man, he, his, him, and himself are used is indeed an example of a patriarchal or woman-marginalizing language that somehow universalized and directs the ideas. In lieu of using both the pronouns he and she, him and her, himself and herself, and man and woman, he chose to use only one or more so the masculine pronouns. It may be conscious or unconscious of Milan Kundera to have gender influences in his writing that both his characters and his readers of the text are concerned with, but the point where some parts of the passages completely are dominated by male assumptions and views give some sort of imbalance effect of how patriarchal attitudes present in the society can greatly influence the mood of the text.
Meanwhile, the portrayal of the relationship of men and women characters in the story explicitly determines how oppressed women can be under a society that patriarchy reigns (either economically, politically, socially, and psychologically) supreme: “His unconscious was so cowardly that the best partner it could choose for its little comedy was this miserable provincial waitress with practically no chance at all to enter his life!” (7). The passage explicitly undermines Tereza’s social class, work, and self. The factor where her social class and work intersects to oppress her in the very eyes of the man she is currently on with exposing that gender will always be hard to equalize.
Also, the scene where Franz and Sabina are in a hotel room and suddenly Sabina praises Franz’s physique: “Franz took pleasure in her praise. He climbed out of bed, got down on his haunches, grabbed a heavy oak chair by one leg, and lifted it slowly into the air. ‘You never have to be afraid,’ he said. ‘I can protect you no matter what. I used to be a judo champion.’” (111). Although this passage, later on, explains that Franz is not that courageous in every life aspect, this part somehow mirrors how the patriarchal world sees men in general- that they are always stronger than women. Societies with strong patriarchal views believe that women will always be dependent on men’s abilities because they are said to be more physically and mentally stronger than women, and are more capable of deciding and doing things better. This in fact is not true in any sense, for ‘being’ strong physically and mentally will never be measurable based only on the gender of an individual.
Kundera’s distribution of gender roles in his characters in the novel actually conforms to the universal concept the system sets in towards males and females in the society. Take for example, when he narrated the early life of Tereza’s mother, he shows how both the society and the patriarchal force within it will always have the ability to dictate what the stage a woman should be in her life:
“Then came the time for her to marry. She had nine suitors. They all knelt round her in a circle. Standing in the middle like a princess, she did not know which one to choose: one was the handsomest, another the wittiest, the third was the richest, the fourth the most athletic, the fifth from the best family, the sixth recited verse, the seventh traveled widely, the eighth played the violin, and the ninth was the most manly. But they all knelt in the same way, they all had the same calluses on their knees.” (42).
By the way, they set the fact that there should be a designated time for a woman to marry as a kind of restriction to the independence and the right of the woman to decide on her own. It really sounds like a woman’s life can only be considered successful or accepted by society if she has been able to follow the standard of a woman’s life in her culture. Also, the portrayal of the character given to Tereza’s mother embodies how the patriarchal society can dominate the mind of other women into what women should be like in the society:
“Tereza’s mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was guilt, with no possibility of redress.” (44).
Tereza’s mother is very influential to Tereza’s character in most parts of the text. Tereza’s younger self looks up to her mother as her basis for life. In the passage above, Tereza’s mother gives off the notion that women can only reach the highest point of womanhood when they become mothers, setting any other factors aside. Although Tereza’s mother does not directly imply to her daughter the idea that being a mother is the highest value in life, the fact that she kept on reminding her daughter of all her sacrifices as a mother to her actually has the same effect as the former. Tereza’s mother, even though is not a man or in any way shows a side of her that wanted to be a man, has hugely impacted her daughter. She lets herself be subjected under the force of the patriarchal society hence making her believe as well to the view that the greatest essence of being a woman in this world is just by being a mother alone.
Meanwhile, the representation given to men in the text is very different and more vulgar than how women are represented in the story. It is very evident how men’s actions are tolerated in society whereas women’s lives are dictated (if a certain woman fails to comply with this, she might be seen as an outcast in the society).:
“Was he genuinely incapable of abandoning his erotic friendships? He was. It would have torn him apart. He lacked the strength to control his taste for other women. Besides, he failed to see the need. No one knew better than he how little his exploits threatened Tereza. Why then give them up? He saw no more reason for that to deny himself soccer matches.” (21).
The passage clearly allows the unfaithfulness of Tomas’s character without any question from society. The only thing that somehow hinders Tomas’s disloyalty to Tereza is the fact that he is having doubts about himself and his actions. It is alarming because society does not see such action made by men as some kind of problem in a certain society instead views it as something more personal and should be within the concern of the involved parties alone. The huge difference in how society regards the genders implies that men will always have the edge over women because society is on their side. It seems like even after long years of women fighting over inequality for genders, society will never become aware of it and will still continue to favor the patriarchy.
One more, in addition, Franz’s infidelity as depicted in the text is almost the same as Tomas’s infidelity. Both the men’s society take it as something normal act among men and should never be seen as a problem at all since it is not strange in their nature:
“If he made love to her in her Geneva studio, he would be going from one woman to the other, from wife to mistress and back in a single day, and because in Geneva husband and wife sleep together in the French style in the same bed, he would be going from the bed of one woman to the bed of another. In the space of several hours. And that, he felt, would humiliate both mistress and wife and, in the end, himself as well.” (81).
Franz and Tomas’s only difference from each other is their feelings. Tomas is really attached to Tereza but cannot help himself from still committing infidelity while Franz does love Sabina more than he loves his wife during the period he and Sabina started their relationship. Although both of them are at war with their minds as they contemplate their actions, it is just unaccepted to used women for just their sole benefit. In Tomas’s case, it is unaccepted because he plainly uses women as his object to glorify and verify yet again his manliness. He cannot settle and be contented because there is no force at all which restricts him from committing such a thing. Even Tereza is not enough reason for him since she herself is being oppressed emotionally by his infidelity and society’s tolerance of it. In the meantime, Franz can be perceived as both an oppressor and oppressed. He is oppressed in a way that he cannot go out of his unhappy marriage, maybe because he knows that society will talk, and he has to protect the name he established carefully for years (which later on did not matter to him once he made up his mind to choose love over anything). It shows that the standard given by society will always be a hindrance to change and untraditional ideas of the people. Even though Franz does love Sabina, he cannot possibly justify that at some point in their relationship he used her to uplift his being and lets him forget his life with his wife, Marie-Claude. The distinction from wherein Tomas and Franz subjected women under their control, either physically or mentally emphasizes yet again how general men can be. They have the universality of traits in terms of dominating women using their strength in order to arrive at their sole satisfaction. There is no concrete representation in the text wherein men characters see the women characters as equal.
Masculinity and femininity refer to all the things that can constitute man and woman. In the text, the representation of femininity conforms once more to the general idea the society and most people set in. The text concludes that women are less regarded in society and have less opportunity in education and work. As per the story’s setting, it dates back to the late 60s up to the 70s, which somehow gives the effect that people are striving off that time from war and destruction, as well as from discrimination. Furthermore, men and women are set aside based on what their sex is capable of doing. “a young woman forced to keep drunks supplied with beer and siblings with clean underwear- instead of being allowed to pursue “something higher”- stores up great reserves of vitality, a vitality never dreamed of by university students yawning over their books. Tereza had read a good deal more than they and learned a good deal more about life, but she would never realize it.” (55).
Tereza has been one of many unfortunate women in history that are not able to get the same opportunities given by men or to the people living in the upper class. In this case, the patriarchal society, her family, and her self-doubt team up to produce another woman who will be dominated by the world. Tereza did not see the way people stopped her from learning in a formal process as a form of restriction hence think of it as a discipline and preparation for the real-life, which is indeed very wrong because she has all the abilities.
These traits have been embodied by Tereza in the text by following the norms and rules, by doing things without question, and by letting herself be subjected to the power of men around her.
“She was willing to do anything to gain her mother’s love. She ran the household, took care of her siblings, and spent all day Sunday cleaning house and doing the family wash. It was a pity, because she was the brightest in her class. She yearned for something higher, but in the small town there was nothing higher for her.” (44).
Observing the scenario, Tereza and her mother are two individuals with contrasting personalities and ideologies. While Tereza is the epitome of a woman doing everything to be accepted by society, her mother is the kind of woman who does otherwise. Tereza’s mother deconstructs the system. Even though Tereza’s mother once been under the said system as well,
she did not remain under it for long for she tried to fight the patriarchy by resisting its standards of a woman.
“Tereza’s mother blew her nose noisily, talked to people in public about her sex life, and enjoyed demonstrating her false teeth. Her behavior was but a single grand gesture, a casting off of youth and beauty. In the days when she had had nine suitors kneeling round her in a circle, she guarded her nakedness apprehensively, as though trying to express the value of her body in terms of the modesty she accorded it.” (46)
Also, due to Tereza’s mother’s opposition to the system, resulted in her trying to restrict her daughter to learn and try to explore her individuality. “That is why she insisted her daughter remain with her in the world of immodesty, where youth and beauty mean nothing, where the world is nothing but a vast concentration camp of bodies, one like the next, with souls invisible.” (47). It only explains Tereza not being complete as an individual when she first met Tomas. She was forced to grow up in that instant and learn the ways of society. She was pulled out of school without any reason but her mother’s selfishness. She started working and accepted the responsibility of taking over their household. She is too young but she faces life not only because she lives under a patriarchal society but also because she feels like it is the right thing for a woman in society to do. She embraces her femininity, not the way she wanted it to be but by how society dictates the role of a woman in the society to be.
In the meantime, The Unbearable Lightness of Being shows how the operations of the society speak highly of the patriarchy whether it is economically, politically, socially, or psychologically. Take for example, when Tereza recalls the time of the Russian invasion and the war wherein the military men who were celibate for long years forcefully used women for their own pleasure.
“She had taken many pictures of those young women against a backdrop of tanks. How she had admired them! And now these same women were bumping into her, meanly and spitefully. Instead of flags, they held umbrellas, but they held them with the same pride. They were ready to fight as obstinately against a foreign army as against an umbrella that refused to move out their way.” (135).
Economically speaking, women during that time, as they were under the control of a foreign country do not stand a chance of being able to defend themselves. A lot of women cannot defend themselves especially to the soldiers who can easily take their life away if they resist, but there is still some who stood up to destroy the notion about women being always inferior. Tereza recalled the days of the invasion and the girls in miniskirts carrying flags on long staffs. Theirs was a sexual vengeance (135). The rally somehow shows their way of refusal to the economic and political control held by men over them. Although that is not a huge leap to awaken every woman that time, (Tereza included), the fact that she took pride in the said exploit shows that some women just need the assurance that there are other women as well who are ready and not afraid to stand up against the oppressing patriarchy. The women in miniskirts somehow constitute endless possibilities for a budding sisterhood that can resist the patriarch.
Another, since infidelity is an operation of the patriarchal society as well, the act can affect women socially and psychologically. The text proves that due to the uncountable times men committed infidelity, it resulted in women questioning themselves, their abilities, and everything in between it.
“Tereza stood bewitched before the mirror, staring at her body as if it were alien to her, alien and yet assigned to her and no one else. She felt disgusted by it. It lacked the power to become the only body in Tomas’s life. It had disappointed and deceived her. All that night she had had to inhale the aroma of another woman’s groin from his hair! Suddenly she longed to dismiss her body as one dismisses a servant; to stay on with Tomas only as a soul and send her body into the world to behave as other female bodies behave with male bodies.” (139).
This again reveals that the economic, political, social, and psychological power of the patriarch can be held women oppressed. There may be some form of refusal but it only comes when women are conscious that they are being oppressed, just like during the Russian invasion and some women rally on in their miniskirts. There’s a form of resistance because they are well aware off of the fact that some women are being oppressed and that they felt the need to stand up and fight against it, but with the case of Tereza, she is unconscious that she is being held oppressed by Tomas. Since she is unconscious, instead of fighting against it, she even hated and questioned herself because she feels that she is the one who has done something wrong between them.
Although gender issues play a huge factor in the characters’ experiences (either they are conscious or unconscious of these issues or not) The Unbearable Lightness of Being has at least represented how women in the society are people of substance as well. There are some parts wherein male assumptions are not focused on and women’s individuality is highlighted:
“What she had unexpectedly met there in the village church was not God; it was beauty. She knew perfectly well that neither the church not the litany was beautiful in and of itself, but they were beautiful compared to the construction site, where she spent her days amid the racket of the songs. From that time on she had known beauty is a world betrayed. The only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewhere. Beauty hides behind the scenes of the May Day parade. If we want to find it, we must demolish the scenery.” (110).
All throughout the story, Sabina is known as an artist and Tomas’ another important woman. She is portrayed as someone who is very sure of her life’s decisions and actions yet as she is part of the female community, she is also half-measured as weak at some point of her life in the text.
“And Sabina- what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.”
The female characters are described as half-measured because that is what society is looking for. Women cannot possibly live in a community wherein they are perceived as equal, let it be physical strength or mental strength, to men. The images of women are boxed and are solely based on the standards set by people only.
Another, Tereza’s character and her way of finding her individuality by breaking her promise of a monogamous relationship is narrated way too sensitive. It is justified in the text that her sleeping with another man is not because of her frailty relationship with Tomas but due to her own search for her individuality. It is like looking, learning, and questioning for one’s individuality is not half caused by the surrounding environment.
“Screaming, as I have pointed out, was meant to blind and deafen the senses. With time she screamed less, but her soul was still blinded by love, and saw nothing. Making love with the engineer in the absence of love was what finally restored her soul’s sight.” (161).
This has been a very strong passage because it somehow manifests objectification of Tereza and so as other wherein women characters are being objectified. There is also another passage in the text wherein women are objectified and are depicted as objects of desire that are somehow caused by psychological aspects of the environment:
“I was at a large indoor swimming pool. There were about twenty of us. All women. We were naked and had to march around the pool… The man wore a broad-brimmed hat shading his face, but I could see it was you. You kept giving us orders. Shouting at us. We had to sing as we marched, sing and do kneebends…. You never took your eyes off us, and the minute we did something wrong, you would shoot. The pool was full of corpses floating just below the surface. And I knew I lacked the strength to do the next kneebend and you were going to shoot me.” (18).
The work, in its general feminist perspective, reflects women by how society sees them and not by the way they want to be seen in society. Although there are small parts where women are being described congruently, it seems like it only serves as a prompt to a deeper objectification to them later on. There is also a reinforcement of the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women present in the story which proves how dominant both the force of the society and the author (being male) as a part of it in crafting the façade of women in the text.
The society of the text is inherently patriarchal in nature as it is full of masculine ideals such as female objectification (woman’s submission and male domination) and the favoring of the patriarchy. The text actually screams persuasion to its readers to believe in the superiority of the male kind. It either shows males controlling and dominating the women or women being subjected to objectification. The writing both explicitly and implicitly gives a misogynistic outlook to readers especially those who are reading and analyzing it from a feminist perspective. The presence of several passages such as men's fantasies and infidelities and women pictured out as bare. It kind of implies that women can only prove themselves worthy to society through their bodies and not through their real abilities as a woman and an individual.
In every aspect, the patriarchy really reigns. The female is marginalized and is deprived of having an opinion, unlike men. There is not even a strong construction of female independence unlike how the strength of males is capitalized in the text. Women were presented as objects seen only from a male perspective. Society adds up to this by predominantly valuing males more than females as well as reflecting and shaping stereotypes and other cultural assumptions in the work.
