Distorted Representations Of Women, Misogyny And The Double Standard In Joseph Heller’s Something Happened

Scholars in the west and China have done extensive studies on Something Happened:Some critics have claimed that this novel mirrors the reality of society and the existence of people in the post-World War Ⅱ era; some reviewers focus on Bob Slocum; some commentators approach the novel from the perspective of psychoanalysis; and some scholars study the language features and literary techniques in the novel. However, very few scholars have paid much attention to female characters in the novel, and the distorted representations of women, misogyny and the double standard in the novel, the three aspects which have been overlooked and never been studied up till now, will be explored in this paper. Reading Something Happened from the feminist perspective helps readers to claim the following three aspects: Firstly, there are abundant but distorted representations of women in the novel. Most female characters are distortedly represented as the sex objects that are watched by, or fantasized about or used by men, or as the stereotyped female roles of patriarchy. These distorted representations tell readers that there is a big gap between the women images represented in the novel and women in reality. Secondly, Bob Slocum fears, hates, degrades and demonizes most female characters, and other male characters also fire their over-loaded misogyny at most female characters, which has made most female characters the victims of male characters’loaded misogyny. Thirdly, Bob Slocum also takes the double standard to judge female characters and himself, and so do other male characters. This not only reveals the narcissism of male characters but also shows that even when male and female characters do the identical thing, male characters frequently nitpick and rebuke female characters and put all blame on female characters, but exculpate themselves from any blame. With a focus on the three aspects listed above, the author of this paper points out that the three aspects show that phallocentric ideologies and practices abound in the novel and female characters are reduced to the victims of patriarchy, in the hope that this paper may direct readers to pay some critical attention to female characters and give them the justice that they deserve but has been overlooked.