A lot of criticism has been produced regarding the absence of women in The Lord of the Flies. Women are not part of the social strata of the novel and there are different reasons for this. William Golding stated that he had been a little boy, a brother and a father, not a little girl a sister and a mother. This is why he used only boys as the basis for his story. Golding is not afraid of the possible criticism he could receive because of his declarations. In fact he also said that “Women are foolish to pretend they’re equal to men. They’re [men] far superior and always have been”. He says all this has nothing to do with equality. We, in a nowadays context, could think that Golding was a sexist, at least, in part of what he said. His first reason is very coherent. He is a man so it would be easier for him to depict boys than girls in his story. We can have our doubts about what he says about equality, he is too extreme in his declaration. Some of the criticism originated since the publication of this novel questions the absence not only of women, but other cultural minorities. Golding also gave reasons to not having boys and girls mixed at the same time. According to him, this would have changed the topic or the focus of attention. Golding is trying to depict how humans, having the opportunity to start again, are going to commit the same mistakes. If he had put girls in the island, this topic would have been lost and everything would have been charged with sexuality. Golding wanted to avoid sexuality as he saw it as too trivial.

In our opinion, some of Golding’s reasons are logical. For example, this last one; it is true that if he had placed boys and girls in the island, some sexual topic would have arisen. It wouldn’t be very natural to avoid sexuality  when mixing boys and girls in a desert island. So, Golding chooses the easy way. A way which endows him with the capacity of being centred in the topic he wanted to develop.

Of course, for some critics his reasons mean nothing. For example, if we pay attention to this:

In his effort to explore the roots of human behavior, Golding asks the women to “wait outside”, while bringing the men of the world into a fantasy where their worst selves unfold. And it may be Golding himself who has turned to his male companions to acknowledge, “maybe it’s only us.”

We can see how angry the writer is with Golding and how she is saying that he is a complete sexist making women “wait outside”. Furthermore, the writer also is implying that Golding saw men as superior beings “maybe it’s only us”.

For us, this analysis is very interesting. After reading/hearing Golding’s opinions and analysing criticism about this, the conclusion we can arrive to is that both women and Golding are right. On the one hand, Golding had his reasons, some of them more admirable and others more incendiary about the fact of avoiding females in the story. On the other hand, women have the right to complain about this as other social strata of our current lives (gays, coloured people, etc.) could do.

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