Memorable Ideas

The memorable ideas that resonate throughout texts, play a significant part in sustaining the enduring value of a variety of texts and   it is mainly through the use of rhetoric that these memorable ideas are maintained through time. This can be seen in the speeches Spotty-handed Villainesses (1994) by Margaret Atwood, Funeral Service for an Unknown Soldier (1993) by Paul Keating and Noel Pearson’s An Australian History for us all (1996) as all three texts persuade through language, ensuring that the concerns remain memorable not only in their respective contexts, but also to contemporary audiences.  

Atwood’s speech Spotty-handed villainesses   is a free flowing deliberative dialogue on the altering role of female characters in literature and the impact of her shifting milieu on this change. Her speech   was constructed in a post feminist context allowing her to question the negative ramifications of feminism.   She challenges the notion that it is “unfeminist” to portray an evil woman, as she believed bad behaviour was the “monopoly of men”.   Her conversational style of speaking, while due to the casual setting also added to her ethos as it gave a sense of authenticity to the ideas that she was presenting, highlighted through her frequent use of personal anecdotes, “...when my daughter was five” which allows the audience to empathise with Atwood. She emphasises on the “spottiness of a spotty woman”, providing a memorable visual image while allowing the audience to sustain interest in her topic of discussion. She emphasises this point through her use of tricolon “spot as in guilt, spot as in blood, spot as in out damned”   with the intertextual   reference to Macbeth, “out damned”   which again adds to her ethos by showcasing her knowledge of classical texts. It is also through her reference to such villainesses, that she criticises the perceived feminist requirement that women be presented as admirable with “evil woman...a somewhat closed of road” ignoring the “evil...