As part of the Sherlock Holmes series, the short story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” written by Arthur Conan Doyle, introduces the Victorian concept , “The New Woman.” The term “New Woman” describes noncomformist females as smart, educated, independent, and self-reliant. These women decided that they did not want to get entrapped into the stereotypical “Angel of the House.” The New Woman concept did not only apply to middle class women, but factory and office workers. These women put off marriage to make themselves an individual. The New Woman concept made a major impact in social changes that redefined gender roles, consolidating women’s rights, and overcoming masculine supremacy. This new woman also appeared in literature that involved crime …show more content…
The Bohemian King describes her having “the face of the most beautiful woman, and the mind of the resolute man”(Doyle, 1742). The King acknowledges that Irene has not only beauty, but also brains. By the king coming from a Bohemian land, he believes that women are not as smart as men. Irene proves him wrong when she keeps a photograph of them that could cause scandal. He thinks she will “…send it on the day, the bethoral was publicly proclaimed” (Doyle, 17420. Irene holds the power of the king’s fate in her hands to prove not even male royality can stop …show more content…
When Sherlock looks Irene in his index, it reveals where she comes from; her job; her residency; and her birth year. The index does not reveal any marriage before Godfrey, so she lived her life as a spinster. A spinster does not fit the Victorian ideal of a women. Instead of getting married to someone immediately, Irene decides to live her life. She travels to England and through the king’s confession, “a lengthy visit to Warsaw” Germany also (Doyle, 6). “… she to her own house,” suggests that Irene has her own house. In Victorian society, a woman would have to give up her property or it still belong to her father. The women were not allowed to have property. The letter Irene had left Sherlock mentioned earlier, revealed that she trained as an actress herself (Doyle, 12). In Victorian society, women who had the job of an actress had bad reputations. If a woman had the occupation of an actress, Victorian society considered her non-marriage material. An actress’s husband cannot tell the difference whether she really loves him or not. She could have faked her love the whole time. To contradict this stereotype, actresses had to live their life just as ordinary as other people. Deborah Pye, of University of Texas, states that Victorian actresses saw themselves as regular, respectable women, who had just as much concern with their profession having skills just as other professions (Pye, 73).
Despite being within the dark aspect, Irene still benefits from her first encounter with her grandmother and thus undergoes a small change. Due to meeting her grandmother, Irene realizes that sometimes it is wise to keep her own counsel.
Mina clearly demonstrates her awareness and knowledge of the New Woman movement; whereby she exhibits her familiarity of the debate by referring to the term “New Woman” twice in her journal entries. Grant Allen’s “purity school” New Woman consisted of female characters that expressed particular interest in social problems while still maintaining their propriety. This sense of knowledge is exhibited when Mina attempts to reassure the oversensitive Lucy as they stopped for a “severe tea” (Stoker 141): “I believe we should have shocked the ‘New Woman’ with our appetites. Men are more tolerant, bless them!” (Stoker 141). The New Woman was a common subject of controversy in journalism and fiction (Senf 34). Mina’s preliminary reference merely characterized her as a well-informed young woman of the 1890s. Mina remains neutral and simply suggests her familiarization with the New Woman’s assertion on greater freedom and physical activity. Bicycle riding, badminton playing and bloomer wearing women may have shocked certain conservative people of the 1890s, but they were not enough to worry Stoker’s heroine (Senf 34). Nor was it a shock to her that the New Woman was often characterized as a professional woman who was capable of financially supporting herself. After all, Mina easily fell under this category of the New Woman; her career was not an archetypal Victorian housewife. She was often “overwhelmed with work […] [because] the life of an assistant schoolmistress [was] sometimes trying” (Stoker 83). Mina is able to support herself and by using her note-taking talents she is also able to support her husband too, outside of her domestic role. This notion was revolutionary at the time. Gail Cunningham notes that while independence and in...
Female characters in literature became more prominent at the turn of the last century as women's role in society changed. At the beginning of the 20th century, men were at the front lines fighting prolonged wars, while women were left to fulfill traditionally masculine roles back home. Women were performing the essential duties at the home front, without which everyday life would not have been sustainable. In Fifth Business, Davies employs an unorthodox approach creating anomalous female characters attemptin...
...When Clare talks to the maid and cook, Irene feels this is “an exasperating childlike lack of perception” because you are not supposed to be friends or associate with servants. She wants to feel superior to the help she has hired, even though they claim the same racial identity. Irene, being only half white lives in a community where everyone identifies as black, however she desperately wants the white half of her to hold some sort of weight in her life. Although she identifies as black, Irene’s actions display nothing but her wanting to assimilate into white culture. She tries to fuse both races together in an attempt to attain some sort of racial identity, but fails to do so. Ironically, throughout the whole book, Irene tries her best to stay loyal to one race, but the actions she takes constantly clashes with the identity she claims in her black community.
Feminism is the conviction that members of both the male and female gender should be treated equally in all situations in political, economic and socio-cultural settings. It involves activities put in place in support of the interests and just treatment of females. One major way through which feminism manifests itself in the society today is through books and movies. Authors and movie directors depict feminist in their works by using events and characters to bring out how women are looked at and treated in the society. Over the years, Feminism has gradually changed in terms of its nature and the characteristics of the people who took up the belief of feminism (Lyman, 264). Feminists have gradually changed from being about equal rights for men and women to a whole range of complex issues, with the emergence of issues such as radical feminism and the improvements in the amount of knowledge and power that feminists hold (Harnois, 122). This paper takes a look at aspects of feminism present in America and in Britain by analyzing selected situations from two books, The Maltese Falcon and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
When the play was set in 1912, women had lacked empowerment and rights, while men had a higher status in society, despite women had no important role in society. By using Priestley’s Inspector Calls we can identify how women were portrayed in the early 20th century. Priestley has explored this in a variety of ways, by customizing the different types of female character to show an insight on how they have viewed upon the world and importantly on how they were treated differently based on several factors like class, money, and age. For an instance, Priestley uses traditional women and transitional women to contrast their lifestyle when it was set in the Edwardian Era.
The industrialization of the nineteenth century was a tremendous social change in which Britain initially took the lead on. This meant for the middle class a new opening for change which has been continuing on for generations. Sex and gender roles have become one of the main focuses for many people in this Victorian period. Sarah Stickney Ellis was a writer who argued that it was the religious duty of women to improve society. Ellis felt domestic duties were not the only duties women should be focusing on and thus wrote a book entitled “The Women of England.” The primary document of Sarah Stickney Ellis’s “The Women of England” examines how a change in attitude is greatly needed for the way women were perceived during the nineteenth century. Today women have the freedom to have an education, and make their own career choice. She discusses a range of topics to help her female readers to cultivate their “highest attributes” as pillars of family life#. While looking at Sarah Stickney Ellis as a writer and by also looking at women of the nineteenth century, we will be able to understand the duties of women throughout this century. Throughout this paper I will discuss the duties which Ellis refers to and why she wanted a great change.
Margaret Atwood’s novel, Alias Grace, nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel, depicts a young 16 year old girl who is found guilty of murdering her employer and his lover in conspiracy with James McDerrmott. James McDermott is put to death by hanging, but Grace is brought to prison because she is of the “weaker sex.” This is a reflection of the construction of femininity and masculinity of the mid and late nineteenth century. A social issue of the Victorian age was women being treated as subordinate to men. Queen Victoria says, “Victorian ideology of gender rested on the belief that women were both physically and intellectually the inferior sex”(YILDIRIM). Women were seen as highly susceptible to becoming mentally ill because of this belief. Women were subject to only be “housewives.” The novel, Alias Grace, accurately shows the construction of this gender identity through society, sexuality, and emotion while challenging it through Grace’s mother and Mrs. Humphrey.
But in reality, a male narrator gives a certain sense of understanding to the male audience and society’s understand of the male and females roles and responsibilities in a marriage. Just as men were expected to cut the grass, take out the trash, pay the bills and maintain the household as a whole, women were expected to cook, clean, nurture the children, and be a loving and submissive wife to their husband. The only stipulation required for this exchange of power was to establish a mutual love. In the Victorian age love was all it took for a man to take or alter a woman’s livelihood and
In the Victorian era, in New York City, men and women roles within the society were as different as night and day. A man regardless of his extra curricular activities could still maintain a very prevalent place in society. A woman’s worth was not only based family name which distinguished her class and worth, but also her profession if that was applicable.
When studying gender roles in history, one will find that females are often depicted in similar ways no matter the era or region of study. Even when comparing the industrialized, early, twentieth century to today’s progressive era, there are striking similarities between female roles. We can see that over the course of the twentieth century, the qualities of loyalty and honesty have decreased in marriages due to the treatment of the two main female roles as depicted literature. The first was the role of the wife. The wife was often portrayed as a housekeeper and a nanny. Dull in appearance, there was no aesthetic beauty to this typical female. The other main role was the “other woman.” The more mysterious and promiscuous character, this woman portrayed the other part of the female population. Both of these types of characters are composites that portrayed the average, disposable female while how they were treated conveyed the general handling of females in the early, twentieth century.
All throughout the early part of history women were portrayed as the inferior sex, because at that point in time, women were seen as beings only born to have children. Men didn’t think that women were capable of being anything other than a typical housewife. It was unthinkable that women would actually need an education, let alone earn a living, or become a leader. These ideas are revealed all throughout classical literature. Rarely was a woman seen as doing anything but being dominated by males in some form, whether she was a man’s submissive devoted wife, a sexual object, or a woman being punished for wanting her freedom. We finally begin to see women trying to break free from these traditional expectations and barriers through the lives of Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, John’s wife in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Louise Mallard in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, and Songlian in Raise the Red Lantern by Su Tong.
The Victorian period in American history spawned a certain view of women that in many ways has become a central part of gender myths still alive today, although in a diluted way.
In the Victorian Era of mid nineteen to early twentieth century, a woman’s role in society remained to be in the household, away from the business and cares of men. The feminine side is portrayed as negative, powerless, and lacking (Kileen 49). Society discouraged women from having power in society and neglecting women represented normal in the eyes of most men and women. However, Victorian novels such as The Picture of Dorian Gray illustrate the consequences of disregarding women. In Oscar Wilde’s only novel, the lack of importance surrounding the female characters and their careless treatment from men results in the selfishness of the male characters exemplified through Dorian Gray’s acts of evil.
In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, the idea of patriarchy ruled the many societies all over the world. Particularly in Britain, its “overarching patriarchal model” (Marsh) had “reserved power and privilege for men” (Marsh). Also during this time period feminist literature began to arise and was invaded by, “the complex social, ethical, and economic roots of sexual politics… as testimony to gender bias and the double standard” (“Sexual Politics and Feminist Literature”). In Jane Austen’s writing, readers have been aware of her constant themes of female independence and gender equality. However, many have criticized the author for the fact that many of her “individualistic” female characters have ended up