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Leigh Wilson
04/01/2015
The Inversion of Male Power, Female Powerlessness in the Narrative
of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Judith Fetterly has written at length about the tragic nature of literature
as being almost entirely male-centric in its perspectives. She holds the
position the women are often emasculated through major literary works,
since they are forced to become intellectually male, while simultaneously
being sexually female, and this results in the total exclusion of women as
participants in literary texts (Fetterly, 498). This result is usually due to the
naming of male characters, while female characters embody more general
forces against which the male character fight; women are not granted
agency in literary works, but are instead relegated to objects that men deal
with, and often subjugate for their own pleasure, or in order to become a
man along some sort of journey. However, a recent novel that has been
written stands intriguingly as perhaps the opposite of the literature that
Fetterly dissects, as it not only grants to women the primary agency in the
novel, it gives women identities that are equivalent to the male characters in
the world as well. Yet, this is perhaps not completely ostensible in the novel,
but requires the employment of Fetterlys concept of a resistant reader in
order to come to. The novel in question is Junot Diaz The Brief Wondrous
Life of Oscar Wao, which this essay will analyze as being an inversion of the

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male power, female powerlessness dynamic that ensured male supremacy in
the past literary canon proposed by Fetterly.
The novel may easily be read as precisely the opposite of how this
analysis views it. Upon a brief glance the novel appears as if it is a rather a
stereotypical journey of a male character through various trials and
tribulations, often with women as the source of problems for him, until he
finally attains manhood by conquering a woman. The titular character of the
book is, after all, male, but that is perhaps a good example of the importance
of delving deeper into this particular text to find a new kind of narrative.
Oscar Wao is given his name completely by accident, when he dresses up as
Doctor Who, but his friend thinks he looks like Oscar Wilde, and he then
mispronounces Wilde as Wao, and after awhile, the dude just started
responding to it. (Diaz, 248). There is an interesting parallel between the
titular character than, and the traditional status of women as readers of
literature in the sense that Fetterly points out that women have had the
power of naming taken from them (Fetterly, 496). So Oscar de Leon also has
the power of naming himself stripped from him in being named Oscar Wao.
This is one of the ways that the text subtly inverts the traditional paradigm,
as it places a male character distinctly in a position of powerlessness.
Furthermore, the male character Oscar Wao is not necessarily the
protagonist of the narrative. The text weaves together various narratives in
order to highlight the differences in men and womens experiences, and
realities. This is perhaps the major way in which the novel is a departure

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from the stories that are common in the canon of literature, which Fetterly so
dissects. Perhaps a cynical reading would suggest that the female
characters narratives are only foils to the male characters, but such a blithe
reading of the text is too shallow for this novel. In truth, although there is
some connection between the female characters narratives, and the male
characters, it is mainly due to a familial narrative, but in this narrative the
males and females are equally protagonists, the male is not privileged over
the female, both are given separate narratives in an attempt at producing an
equality of narrative. Oscars narrative is not privileged really in the novel,
since equal amounts of space and detail are given to the female characters
such as Lola, Oscars sister, and Hypata Belicia Cabral (called Beli/Belicia),
Oscars mother.
The advancement of the female narratives, of both Lola and Belicia do
not constitute foil narratives to further a male protagonist narrative, but
rather are standalone narratives that explore the female authentically. When
one first reads the novel, one is actually struck by how little the female
characters own portions of the text seem to relate to Oscars, an
observation that shows just how deeply entrenched the expectation of a
male-centric narrative is in literature. In particular characteristics of the text
that show that the female characters are not fleshed out only to flesh out the
male characters is the use of first person narrative during Lolas portion of
the text. We, as readers, are actually treated to an inside view of the hopes,
dreams, and desires of the female characters, and this is perhaps especially

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evident in the first-person descriptions of the experience of life from Lola.
Especially noteworthy is the fact that Lola creates herself as a punk chick,
and the language used is, thats what I became, while going on to describe
how this act of self-creation was in defiance of her family, and community,
who labeled her a devil bitch (Diaz, 94). The self-awareness of Lola gives
her a clear sense of agency in the work, and, distinctly unlike her brother
Oscar, she creates her own identity, whereas Oscars identity was forced on
him by others, he was not allowed even to name himself. Lola instead stands
as a defiant character against the forces of society. She even talks about her
strong self-identity as being a wildness that was in her, and was something
that let me look boys straight in the face when they stared at me. (Diaz,
101). If this can be taken to mean anything, it seems it means that Lola is as
much of an authentic character as any of the males in the text, marked by
her ability to look them in the face. This is a character that women can
identify with, a real female person that is the equal of any male person. The
fact that it is characterized as wildness seems to show that the author of the
text is aware of the rebellious nature of what the story is doing by
purposefully inverting the male and female roles of the characters; in the
modern family of the de Leons it is the female child that has the agency,
and the male child that lacks it, hence a wild reconstruction of the
entrenched idea of male supremacy and control in literature.
The text also makes it clear that Belicia possesses her own agency,
and expresses the inversion of the paradigm through her story in equal

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measure to Lolas. Although Belicias story is not told in the first-person like
Lolas is, we are still treated to a remarkable journey that greatly humanizes
Belicia, and fleshes her out as an actual woman. She is a social outcast,
rejected by her lover, until her body begins to mature, and suddenly her
fortunes reverse. She rapidly matures, and consciously uses her new body to
her advantage despite her mother, La Inca, fighting her over it. At one point
La Inca bemoans Belicias newfound agency in the world by saying, Will you
listen to this girl! Thinks herself a person when shes not! (Diaz, 134). This is
perhaps the most poignant moment in the entire text in terms of the author
putting words into the mouths of his characters that reflect the old
entrenchments of male privilege that these female characters are designed
to overcome. As Fetterly points out, most literature excludes women by
forcing them to be intellectually male, and sexually female. But in this
passage Belicia, who displays overt feminine sexuality, also has asserted
herself as being a person, not merely an object because she uses feminine
sexuality. The words of her mother echo the old world views, from a position
where women were not considered persons, because they were
immasculated; that is what La Inca represents, and yet the implication from
these words is that Belicia truly is a person, she is a female person, and that
must be taken seriously. This is perhaps made more evident given the
greater context of the overall narrative, since Lola is Belicias daughter.
Belicia may develop into her female agency, and fight against the old malecentric viewpoint that threatens to strangle the life out of the female

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characters, but through her fight for authenticity as a female character, she
ends up with a daughter, who is able to create her own female identity, and
sexuality. These are women with real lives, dreams, hopes, and desires, and
they go through their own trails and tribulations in order to become relatable,
realistic female characters.
While the female characters appear to be in control of themselves, and
actively work towards end goals in their lives, the male characters lack
agency, and are portrayed as stereotypical representations of masculinity.
The titular character is a massive stereotype of a fat sci-fi reading nerd
(Diaz, 41). Meanwhile the main narrator of the story, Yunior, speaks in weird
stereotypical statements about his supposed prowess with women including
that he, couldnt not get ass, even when [he] tried (Diaz, 308). The male
characters seemingly have no agency of their own in the text. Oscar has no
ability to wrench himself out of the fat sci-fi reading nerd caricature that is
thrust upon him, despite constantly appearing to lament his fate. Yunior
meanwhile is unable to settle down with Lola, whom he truly cared for
because of his inability to be anything besides a complete stereotype of a
sex-obsessed male. The text operates so heavily in these dual stereotypes
that with its main two male characters that one might be lead to wonder
whether male readers are actually the ones excluded from this work. The
women around him through their distinctly female sexuality explicitly control
Yuniors life, even though he masquerades as having control, though by the
end of the novel he admits that he never truly had any. Oscar is essentially a

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kind of joke of the author; he has been setup as a giant stereotype without
an authentic name, the way that the Dame Van Winkle was analyzed as
simply representing women as the Other (Fetterly, 506). So Oscar can
similarly be analyzed in this text as representing the Other, and broadly
men, he lacks his own agency, and therefore is perhaps intellectually
female in that old, estranged way that excluded female readers from works
of literature, while also making them distinct participants in it. So this text
accomplishes a complete reversal of the type of male/female supremacy
dynamics one finds in that old literature in a very real sense.
Throughout the novel there is a total inversion of the old dynamic of
male power, and female powerlessness. This is the most exciting aspect of
the whole text, and it is evident throughout it by its various descriptions of
the female characters, and their various abilities. While the male characters
are helpless, driven only by their base urges, or through socially defined
roles, the exact opposite is true of the female characters. The specific
language the author uses tells us this. When Belicia is maturing and defining
herself as a person, we are told her desirability was in its own way, Power (Diaz, 156).
There is no ambiguity here: female sexuality is power, women have the Power in this text. Not
only that, but we are point blankly told, as if to extinguish the potential doubts that this is true
power, and not simply a female being given power only because she is a male object when the
author tells us in no uncertain terms, Hypata Belicia Cabral finally had power and a true sense
of self. (Diaz, 157). The passage has no notes of irony, nor sarcasm, and so we ought to assume
rather that the text indicates that a female character is capable of being intellectually, and

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sexually female, and in so doing having a true sense of self. At other times, the allusion to female
power comes in more playful, but equally self-aware ways such as when Lola notes to herself
that due to her increased athletic activities, and marked improvement in her workout regimen in
training her body that, I cant wear shorts anymore without causing traffic jams (Diaz, 122).
His is not a male comment about her as a sexual object, but a self-aware moment of reflection
about the power she possesses as an authentic female character. In comparison to the utter
powerlessness that the male characters have, it seems clear that the novel successfully inverts the
male power, female powerlessness paradigm.
The final proof of this is perhaps in an analysis of the ending, which is
the death of man for the sake of woman. Fetterly explores two notions that
have helped to keep women subjugated within the canon of literature. The
first is the mythology of romantic love, which is used to maintain male
power, and female powerlessness, and the second is the castration of
women through death, which usually fulfills male power narratives (Fetterly,
500). The text purposefully uses this mythology of romantic love, and death
as castration in the inverted fashion. In the end, Oscar is carried helplessly
by romantic love for an older prostitute that belongs to a Dominican gangster
to his death. Oscar, as the representative of men is effectively castrated
through his death to show the supremacy of the women in the text. The old
romantic tale does not result in a woman being punished in some way, but
rather is specifically used to silence a male by explicitly leading him to his
death. Thus, in the end, the text reveals its grand design has been to
perfectly invert the paradigm of male power, and female powerlessness, for

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it has used the very devices that guaranteed male supremacy to kill off the
general male figure in the text. Hence, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
serves as a precise inversion of the male-centric paradigm outlined by
Fetterly in her analysis of the majority of past literature, and provides a new
narrative of female supremacy for us to contemplate in the modern era of
literature.

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Works Cited
Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead
Books, 2007.
Fetterley, Judith. On the Politics of Literature. The Resisting Reader: A
Feminist Approach
to American Fiction. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1978. xi-xxvi. Print.