Laura  

From a feminist outlook, Saturday’s main character, Henry Perowne, plays the role of a typical “knight in shining armor” throughout the whole novel. Since he has a career as a neurosurgeon his job on a daily basis consists of performing surgeries in order to save the lives of others. However, Perowne’s only patients mentioned in the novel are mostly women. The whole novel is also based on Perowne’s daily life, which leads up to a conflict that only he can solve in order to save his loved ones (his daughter and wife).

 

One of the main characters is his wife, Rosalind, who has already been saved by her husband’s skills. Ironically, she was a patient of his when he first became a doctor. Rosalind was a college student on her own in England and dying from a brain tumor, which had to be removed by the young intern Perowne and his resident boss. This whole notion suggests that women are too weak to save themselves and that they need a man to save them; hence, the “damsel in distress” concept shines through brilliantly. This concept is also evident towards the end of the novel when Perowne’s daughter, Daisy (who has just returned from being abroad in Paris), is nearly raped. During the whole ordeal it is revealed that she is pregnant. This incident further indicates that women are weak and fragile individuals when left alone. The only other major female character in this novel is Henry’s mother who is suffering from vascular dementia. However, her disease is incurable; thus, she cannot be saved. Her fate is left up to men like Perowne who are doctors and scientists because only they can come up with a cure or way to treat his mother’s neurological disease. Oddly, she is also left on her own in a nursing home where Perowne visits her.

 

The antagonist, Baxter, ultimately holds Rosalind’s and Daisy’s fate in his hands because he has Rosalind held at knife point and he could have raped Daisy. However, he becomes “emotionally disarmed” by a poem that Daisy recites and he is overpowered by Perowne and Theo (Perowne’s son). This event suggests that a woman’s fate is up to men and that she has little power over her fate. The best she can do is disarm a man emotionally, but she cannot overpower him physically. Yet, only men can save her from a disastrous fate. Therefore, women are portrayed as weak and fragile characters that are always cared for or need to be cared for by men; otherwise they are subjected to suffer cruel and dark fates.