Victoria Era Women

Women have struggled to obtain the equality they deserved from the society due to male dominance, isolation, hysteria, and gender roles. Female suppression is mostly due to male dominance and isolation from the society because the men felt like they are better and stronger than the women. The major female characters in the Wide Saragossa Sea, Jane Eyre, and The Yellow Wallpaper all shared similar strive to attain equality even though they were from a different society and era, they also had to go to isolation and suppression. Even some women often suppress other women due to wealth and social class. In the Victorian Era, women faced a lot of challenges in the society compared to the 21st century. Although, women have received more equality

Women are known to be lighthearted which is a reason they could be prone to a diagnosis like hysteria, most women in the Victoria era had it, which was treated with the recommended rest cure created by a man who felt women should be isolated from the society if they are depressed. In Jane Eyre and Wide Saragossa Sea, A female character named Bertha Mason or Antoinette is a good example of a suppressed woman in the Victoria era. Antoinette was born on a Colonial Island in Jamaica. She lived with her mother in a Community where she had almost no one to talk to and the people there dislike them. Before she married Edward Rochester, an apathetic English businessman, she became isolated and emotionally fragile. Rochester was forced to marry her, despite her problem because of his family arrangement. She got deranged after the marriage forcing Rochester to lock her up in his attic in London. Lack of care and isolation are just some examples of how women are suppressed in the society. Women need a lot of care when they do not receive the care they deserved they could feel isolated and suppressed. Antoinette's marriage made her situation worse but Rochester’s unsympathetic behavior towards her pushed her to be violent. Rochester felt he had all the power to control Antoinette which was the marriage downfall. “ The irony is, of course, that the very means by which Rochester would establish himself as a mature subject results in his inability to do so. By attempting to imagine Antoinette into the role of a proper English wife, he is forced to recognize her ultimate inability to conform to the discourses which constitute the normal within the frame of English upper-class subjectivity.” (Kendricks