Anger and Alterity: A Critical Analysis of Patterns in Women's Emotional Expression

Patriarchal forces manifest in a variety of wide-reaching ways, but few are more potent then the methods by which patriarchy becomes embodied and integrated into patterns of emotional expression. This is particularly true to the boundaries of anger expression for women which are placed upon and reinforced through patriarchal socialization. This thesis explores the relationship between gender socialization, the construction of happiness, and resistance through anger expression. Drawing from Sarah Ahmed's The Promise of Happiness and Judith Butler's Gender Troubles, this project first identifies the construction of subjecthood for women, focusing particularly on the ways in which performance of gendered categories becomes necessary to intelligibility as a subject. Through an exploration of current social science research, this project then seeks to answer the ways in which the theoretical notion of gendered subjecthood comes to function within tangible expressions, or lack of expression, of anger. Finally, this thesis explores what it may mean for women to create a healing relationship with anger, forcibly creating space for expansive subjecthood.