Blog Post #6: Working Thesis

     After reviewing my past posts about Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, I realized that I learned most about the book from the Feminist Literary Theory. I personally have an appreciation for this particular theory and so I learn best when reading from that point of view, and I found that Niska was the one who was easiest for me to read from.
     When reading Three Day Road there are a lot of obvious issues, but one I think really stands out is that Aboriginal's especially aboriginal women are most often portrayed as bold women who don't follow any social construct, and have magical powers. I have yet to hear a story or read anything about an aboriginal woman who was just that: an aboriginal woman.
     Another thing that is always thought up about aboriginal women is that they are very sexual creatures. Several times throughout the novel, Boyden tells stories from Niska's narrative about her and the Frenchman having sex, and her emotional attachment to him. He's suggesting that she had sex with him and now she believes that he is going to be faithful to her, which is a fair suggestion, however when she goes to find him and finds out that he has lots of "half-French, half-Indian children running around." (169) she gets mad, and when she finds him he gets her drunk and convinces her that he's done nothing wrong. He then takes her to a church, has intercourse with her inside and then says: "You are nothing special, just another squaw whore. I took your power away in this place and sent it to burn in hell where it belongs." (174). That brings the common portrayal of women in general and her aboriginal origination into play as well.
     I feel like women don't really get a fair shot in stories such as this one. Boyden used the same general plot for Niska's love story as a lot of fictional stories go: a woman trusts a man enough to have sex with him, they have a relationship based off of sex with little trust, although she thinks there is and that she can have faith in him, he goes off and does his own thing (most often cheating), she finds out and gets mad, then trashes his things. In Boyden's case he made Niska send animal spirits after the man, which brings me back to how he brought the aboriginal origin into an unoriginal idea.
    When examining Three Day Road from a Feminist Literary Criticism point of  view, it becomes clear that Joseph Boyden is depicting the mixing of feminine stereotypes and suggesting that women will fall for the same trap every time.

(this is a working thesis, don't judge too hard.)