4.18.24 Movement Legacies, Reflection, and Review.pptx
Feminism in Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code'
1.
2. Feminism is a collection of movements and
ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and
defending equal political, economic, and social
rights for women. This includes seeking to
establish equal opportunities for women in
education and employment. A feminist
advocates or supports the rights and equality
of women.
3. Feminist theory, which emerged from feminist movements,
aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by
examining women's social roles and lived experience; it has
developed theories in a variety of disciplines in order to
respond to issues such as the social construction of sex and
gender. Some of the earlier forms of feminism have been
criticized for taking into account only white, middle-class,
educated perspectives. This led to the creation of ethnically
specific or multiculturalist forms of feminism.
4. The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery
detective novel written by Dan Brown. It
follows symbologist Robert Langdon and
cryptologist Sophie Neveu as they investigate
a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and
discover a battle between the Priory of Sion
and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus
having been married to Mary Magdalene.
5. The novel has deconstructed the whole idea of Christianity.
Christianity has not any record about Jesus Christ of having been
married to anyone or any physical relation with any women. He
was the son of god. But Dan Brown challenges this idea through his
novel. According to the novel, Jesus Christ had married to Mary
Magdalene and Mary had also a child from Jesus. To prove his
arguments, Dan Brown makes the use the paintings of very famous
painter Leonardo Da Vinci. Brown reinterprets the paintings to prove
his points. Even Brown changes the whole idea of ‘Holy Grail’ that it’s
not a cup but it’s the tomb of Mary Magdalene. To prove his idea he
has used Da Vinci’s painting, “The Last Supper”.
6. Some of the followers of Christianity believe
that Mary was a prostitute, but recently this was
proved wrong. Dan tries to prove all these a conspiracy
of the people of Christianity to make the society male
dominated. The ability to produce a child was once
very sacred. Female deities were also worshipped by
the people during Pagan rituals. Almost after 100 years
of Jesus Christ’s death there was held the first council
of Nicaea in which people decided and finalized the
things that to be told to the people about the history
of Christianity and Jesus.
7. Here in the novel, Sophie is the
protagonist and the very strong character.
At the end of the novel we come to know
that not any other person but Sophie is the
one who belongs to the blood line of Jesus
Christ. So here Dan we can clearly see that
Dan Brown challenges the idea of male
domination that only a male can carry the
bloodline. This way the novel speaks about
the equality between male and female and.
Both should be equally respected in the
society.
8. But one question still remains
there; does the novel strictly speak of
feminism? Cause in the beginning of the
novel Sophie’s character seems to be very
strong, but as the novel moves on the
whole control of plot goes into the hand of
Robert Langdon. Sophie is not able to solve
any problem without taking Robert’s help.
The role of Sophie becomes secondary to
the male characters.
9. One of my friends (Mr. Pratipalsinh)
has written in his blog that in the movies we
can clearly see the director used female
character not for the objectification of her
body but her whole identity of being woman
because as the story moves on Sophie loses
the grip and her role becomes secondary. So,
Sophie becomes kind of a puppet who is
guided by Robert throughout the movie.
Being a cryptologist how can she rely on
someone else that much? So w can see that
the director could not make himself free of
being a male.