Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying by Adrienne Rich

Rich explores how the occasional white lie is acceptable, but the incessant use of lies in our culture leads to a lying epidemic.  Photo Credit 

In Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying, Adrienne Rich writes about the contrasting ideas of lying and truth, especially in regards to women living in a male-dominated world.  Rich discusses how women traditionally have been taught by their culture to lie: for example, makeup, which is ever so present in our American society.  Rich explores how, historically, men are taught to be honest and honorable whereas women are rewarded for lying.  Rich was one of the most influential poets, essayists, and feminists in the second half of the 20^th century.  In this essay, Rich argues that people lie for selfish reasons.  She claims, “She may say, I didn’t want to cause pain.  What she really did not want is to have to deal with the other’s pain” (Rich 8).  Rich argues this point in order for the reader to reconsider the lies that he or she tells.  Rich wants to bring awareness to the prevalence of lying in our culture, and specifically how women are often forced to lie about their affections towards other women by the institution of heterosexuality.  Rich achieves her purpose through a variety of rhetorical methods.  One method that was established throughout the essay was parallelism.  Rich repeats her sentence structure for emphasis.  She writes,

            The liar leads an existence of unutterable loneliness.

            The liar is afraid (Rich 6).

Rich repeats the grammatical structure of these sentences in order to add emphasis and organize the essay in a way that attracts the reader’s attention.  If she would have wrote instead “The liar leads an existence of unutterable loneliness and is afraid”, the effect would not be nearly as profound on the reader.  The use of the rhetorical device parallelism, coupled with metaphors sprinkled throughout the text (“There is no ‘the truth,’ ‘a truth’ – truth is not one thing, or even a system.  It is an increasing complexity.  The pattern of the carpet is a surface.  When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern…” (Rich 3).) allow Rich to argue her point effectively.