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victorian era moral values
short note on victorianism
short note on victorianism
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A Room With a View is a novel written by E.M. Forster in 1908. In the novel, the protagonist, Lucy, must choose between her limited but safe Victorian lifestyle and the opportunity of an exciting but scary Edwardian future. This choice is reflected in the attitudes of the two men she considers marrying, Victorian Cecil Vyse or the Edwardian George Emerson. The characters in A Room With a View have extremely contrasting attitudes and behaviors because some are Victorian and others are Edwardian. E.M. Forster wrote many novels with themes about social justice. A central theme in the novel is the lower status of females in Victorian society compared to the women of Edwardian society. The author's interest in equality was fueled by the difficult situations he faced in his life. Edward Morgan Forster was born on January 1, 1879 in London, England (Gardner 398). When Forster was still a baby, his father died, leaving Edward to be raised exclusively by women (Gardner 398). Forster was also a homosexual, which commentators believe, "fueled his anger at social and political injustice" (Summers 5). The problems Lucy faces in A Room With a View mirror those of E.M. Forster. Forster, being raised by the women in his life, saw the difficult choices they had to make. Lucy's biggest decision is whether to live a fulfilling, happy life or follow along with her families values. Forster watched the Victorian women in his life give up their freedom for societal acceptance. For example, Forster's maternal grandmother on whom he based the character of Mrs. Honey church (Gardner 398) Forster also recognized the parallels between the societal treatment of women and its treatment of homosexuals. Forster also enjoyed adding "muddle" ... ... middle of paper ... ... Victorian values. She is supposed to be submissive and delicate, and she does attempt to do what her cousin asks and remain ladylike. Towards the middle of the story Lucy has obviously been thinking a lot about her future and she begins to speak her mind but is usually shut down by Cecil or other Victorian characters. By the end of the novel, Lucy has realized Cecil will never treat her as an equal and she leaves him. A Room With a View shows the dramatic difference between a traditional Victorian character and a modern Edwardian. The overall message of the book is that some people have conventional attitudes and behaviors and others have contemporary attitudes and behaviors but each individual must choose for themselves what will make them happy. Pretending to be a person who you're not to obtain family or societal acceptance will not make you happy.
The bedroom is an overvalued fetish object that nevertheless threatens to reveal what it covers over. John's time is spent formulating the bedroom in a way that conceals his associations of anxiety and desire with the female body, but also re-introduces them. The bedroom's exterior, its surface, and its outer system of locks, mask a hidden interior that presumably contains a mystery--and a dangerous one. The bedroom in "The Yellow Wallpaper" generates this tension between the desire to know and the fear of knowing: on one hand, the enigma of the bedroom invites curiosity and beckons us towards discovery; on the other hand, its over- determined organization is seated within a firm resolution to build up the bedroom, so that what it hides remains unrealized. Mulvey writes, "Out of this series of turning away, of covering over, not the eyes but understanding, of looking fixidly at any object that holds the gaze, female sexuality is bound to remain a mystery" ("Pandora" 70).
The room describes the narrator. The room was once a nursery so it reminds her that she has a baby which she is not able to see or hold. The room was also a playroom so it reminds her once again that she cannot play with or watch her baby play. The room has two windows which she looks out of and sees all the beautiful places she cannot go because of her husband. The bars on the windows represent a prison which her husband has put her in to heal from her illness.
As the story progresses in, The Yellow Wallpaper, it is as if the space of the bedroom turns in on itself, folding in on the body as the walls take hold of it, epitomizing the narrator's growing intimacy with control. Because the narrator experiences the bedroom in terms of John's draconian organization, she relies on her prior experiences of home in an attempt to allay the alienation and isolation the bedroom creates. Recalling her childhood bedroom, she writes, "I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend . . . I could always hop into that chair and feel safe" (Gilman 17). Ironically, Gilman's narrator cannot retire to the otherwise "personal haven" of the bedroom because she is always already there, enclosed within the attic room of John's desires, bereft of her own voice and personal history. The narrator's imagination is altogether problematic for John, who would prohibit his wife from further fancifulness: "[John] says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try" (Gilman 15-16). For Gaston Bachelard, who devotes himself to a phenomenological exploration of the home in The Poetics of Space, "imaginative power" is the nucleus of the home, if not the home itself. Memories of prior dwellings are for Bachelard a fundamental aspect of creating new homes based on a continuity with the past and past spaces. "[B]y approaching the house images with care not to break up the solidarity of memory and imagination," writes Bachelard, "we may hope to make others feel all the psychological elasticity of an image that moves us at an unimaginable depth" (6). Bachelard's "elasticity" infers that spatial depth and expansion are contingent upon a psychological flexibility of imagination. Gilman's narrator is notably denied this elasticity when her physician/husband attempts to prevent her from writing. "I did write for a while in spite of them," the narrator explains, "but it does exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition" (Gilman 10).
Marilynne Robinson gives voice to a realm of consciousness beyond the bounds of reason in her novel Housekeeping. Possibly concealed by the melancholy but gently methodical tone, boundaries and limits of perception are constantly redefined, rediscovered, and reevaluated. Ruth, as the narrator, leads the reader through the sorrowful events and the mundane details of her childhood and adolescence. She attempts to reconcile her experiences, fragmented and unified, past, present, and future, in order to better understand or substantiate the transient life she leads with her aunt Sylvie. Rather than the wooden structure built by Edmund Foster, the house Ruth eventually comes to inhabit with Sylvie and learn to "keep" is metaphoric. "...it seemed something I had lost might be found in Sylvie's house" (124). The very act of housekeeping invites a radical revision of fundamental concepts like time, memory, and meaning.
Each John, the narrator's husband in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Brently Mallard, Mrs. Mallard’s husband in “The Story of an Hour” and Henry Allen, Elisa Allen’s husband in “The Chrysanthemums” unknowingly lead their wives to a state of mental confinement through their actions taken that are meant to help them. John tells his wife to rest and not to think of her condition for the sake of him and the children which drove her mad because
The scene neatly encapsulates Edna’s rage at being confined in the domestic sphere and foreshadows her increasingly bold attempts, in subsequent chapters of the novel, to break through its boundaries. At first glance, the room appears to be the model of domestic harmony; “large,” “beautiful,” “rich” and “picturesque,” it would appear to be a welcoming, soothing haven for Edna. However, she is drawn past its obvious comforts to the open window, a familiar image in THE AWAKENING. From her vantage point in the second story of the house, Edna (who at this point in the narrative is still contained by the domestic/maternal sphere – she is “in” and “of” the house) gazes out at the wider world beyond.
The central characters in both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and A Doll’s House are fully aware of their niche in society. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator’s husband believes her illness to be a slight depression, and although she states "personally, I disagree with their ideas,” she knows she must acquiesce their requests anyway (Gilman 1). She says, “What is one to do?” (Gilman 1) The narrator continues to follow her husband’s ideals, although she knows them to be incorrect. She feels trapped in her relationship with her husband, as she has no free will and must stay in the nursery all day. She projects these feelings of entrapment onto the yellow wallpaper. She sees a complex and frustrating pattern, and hidden in the pattern are herself and othe...
The narrator and her physician husband, John, rented out a majestic, colonial mansion for the summer. The narrator is in love with the house and cannot wait to spend her summer here. Her husband John has high hopes that a change of scenery will help her recover from a recent phase of depression. He results in a treatment called the “Rest Cure,” a treatment discovered by S. Weir Mitchell. The narrator finds the house queer, but gives it a chance. She becomes upset with John due to his choice of a bedroom for her. Once she had a look around the house she desired the downstairs room with a window overlooking the gardens. However, John argues that the room is too small and places her in the nursery room. It is a large room with barred windows that allow plenty of sunshine through. The narrator finds the room appalling due to the chaotic, yellow wallpaper on the walls. The narrator is imprisoned, unable to have control over her own mind. "...t...
The Room itself represents the author’s unconscious protective cell that has encased her mind, represented by the woman, for a very long time. This cell is slowly deteriorating and losing control of her thoughts. I believe that this room is set up as a self-defense mechanism when the author herself is put into the asylum. She sets this false wall up to protect her from actually becoming insane and the longer she is in there the more the wall paper begins to deteriorate. This finally leads to her defense weakening until she is left with just madness and insanity. All of the characters throughout the story represent real life people with altered roles in her mind. While she is in the mental institute she blends reality with her subconscious, forming this story from events that are happening all around here in the real world.
The room where the narrator stays is decorated with multiple loops, nauseating yellow wallpaper, and huge barred windows. Windows usually symbolizes hopes, but in this story it symbolizes the narrator’s confinement from her thoughts by the norms of the society. In one scene, the narrator opens the barred windows for some fresh air but John immediately said what she "felt was a draught, and shut the window" (Gilman 648). This action symbolizes John’s despotism by shutting out her hopes. Karen Ford states that, “In "The Yellow Wallpaper" the physician is the quintessential man, and his talk, therefore, is the epitome of male discourse” (310). John and the narrator’s brother are both physicians, illuminating that their decisions shall not be questioned. Indeed, when the narrator’s husband and brother diagnosed that she has neurosis, she finds it impossible to refute them and take whatever medicine is prescribed for her. She states, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” (Gilman 648). The narrator’s question of “what is one to do” further suggests the society influenced women that it is normal to go along with men’s decisions. When the narrator requested being active as the form of treatment, John denied it (Gilman 649). John’s behavior demonstrates his dominance
As a result, women were stuck at home, usually alone, until their husbands got home. In the story, Jane is at home staring at the wallpaper in her room. The wallpaper’s color is described by Jane as being “repellent, almost revolting” (3) and the pattern is “torturing” and “like a bad dream” (10). The description of the wallpaper represents Jane’s and all women’s thoughts about the ideologies and rules upheld by men prior to the First World War. It is made evident that this wallpaper represents the screen made up of men’s ideologies at the time caging in women. Jane is subconsciously repelled by this screen and represents her discovering continuously figuring out what she wants. Metaphorically, Jane is trapped in that room by a culture established by men. Furthermore, Jane compares the wallpaper’s pattern to bars putting further emphasis on her feelings of being trapped and helpless. Later in the narrative, she catches Jennie staring at the wallpaper’s pattern and then decides to study the pattern and determine what it means herself. Her study of the pattern is representative of her trying to analyze the situation in which she’s in. By studying the pattern, she progressively discovers herself, especially when she sees the woman behind the
In “The story of an Hour,” Louise Mallard learns from Josephine and Richards that her husband, Brently, has died. She confines herself to the upstairs room. While Josephine and Richards believes that she is upstairs grieving, Louise is actually rather happy that she is finally free from being contained by her husband. Louise looks out the window at a big and beautiful world. She has a completely new view of the world now. The adventitious death of her husband allows her to start thinking about making decisions for herself and seeing things without his opinion. Much like Louise’s situation, the husband constantly contains the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to one room. She is enclosed in a large, yellow room because her husband says she is sick. The narrator is physically in need of human interaction. His keeping her inside this room is leading her to become more ill than she already is. Both of these women have been living with completely despondent spirits. As depicted in these two stories, Dorothy Hartman stat...
There is a similar treatment of space in the two works, with the larger, upstairs rooms at the summer lodging and at Thornfield Hall being associated with insanity and the smaller rooms below being safer and saner. Gilman's narrator expresses an early desire to move downstairs to a smaller, saner room, but her wish is ignored. Large rooms become haunted rooms in both stories as typified by the room with the yellow wallpaper, the Red Room, and the third floor room beyond which Bertha is confined.
“A Doll’s House” gives the reader a firsthand view at how gender roles affected the characters actions and interactions throughout the play. The play helps to portray the different struggles women faced during the 19th century with gender roles, and how the roles affected their relationships with men as well as society. It also helps to show the luxury of being a male during this time and how their higher status socially over women affected their relationships with woman and others during this time period.
During the time that Charles Dickens lived, which was during the Victorian Age (1837-1901), “...1837 ( the year Victoria became Queen) and ends in 1901 in ( the year of her death),” (UNLV 1). It is important to realize that the Victoria’s reign over Britain is the second longest reign in British history, lasting for 63 years, only behind that of the current Queen Elizabeth. Many historians consider 1900 the end of the Victorian Age, “...since Queen Victoria’s death occurred so soon in the beginning of a new century,..” (UNLV 1). Even though Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and died in 1870, the Victorian Age is time period which most, maybe all, of his literature were published/read in. This era is often considered as “prudish, hypocritical, stuffy, and narrow-minded” (UNLV 2), because during this time, there were classes animosities between the “common man” and that of what was considered the “gentleman”, which was like as if they were two different species (Orwell 3.5). The advancement in literature during this period also was important, “...primarily financial, as in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations…marrying above one’s station, as in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre...[it] may also be intellectual or education-based,” (UNLV 4). Without the literature advancements, the Victorian Age wouldn’t have made such an impact on the world as it did literary-wise.