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The portrayal of women in literature
The portrayal of women in literature
The portrayal of women in literature
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No Happy Woman Ever Writes The domestic sphere was an area of great importance to literature of the 19th century—especially for women writers. As such, aspects of domesticity continued to appear throughout this period in a wide arrange of literature. In Ruth Hall, for instance, the mother struggles with her profession compromising her ability to maintain an atmosphere of domesticity. Similarly, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl covers a slave’s desire for a home and for safety, covering roughly the same sentiment from a wildly different perspective. While their circumstances are dissimilar, both Ruth from Ruth Hall and Linda from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl desire a return to the realms of domesticity that they left behind.
Ruth
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Flint. Not in the sense that he says it directly, but rather that he always tries to tempt Linda to stay and to submit to him through the promise of a home and a home life (Jacobs 47, 71). This is depicted quite clearly when he asks Linda not to speak to the father of her children. “If you agree to what I am about to propose, you and they shall be free. There must be no communication of any kind between you and their father. I will procure a cottage, where you and the children can live together. Your labor shall be light, such as sewing for my family. Think what is offered you, Linda—a home and freedom” (71). In this piece of dialogue, we see Flint emphasize the connection for Linda between the domestic life and freedom. Linda, herself, seems to combine the two ideas at the end of the novel. “The dream of my life is not yet realized. I do not sit with my children in a home of my own. I still long for a hearthstone of my own, however humble” (164). Here, Linda combines her dream for freedom with her dream for a home for both her and her family. Even though she has a semblance of freedom, her dream is not complete without returning to that feeling of domesticity—that childhood sense of oceanic oneness that she felt so many years
The journey of Ruth Hall is having a family that would push her around to be more “ladylike.” She basically does what her family would tell her to do, which is not what Ruth Hall wanted. But to make her family happy, she ended up doing what her family told her to do in the first place. Her life is also tragic in her own way. It may not be like Linda Brent’s story of suffering through slavery. Ruth Hall’s story is more like suffering through the criticism of women. Hall’s life seemed to be okay at first since she has gotten married and had her first child. It was then that her life started to spiral with the death of her first daughter, then the death of her husband. Due to her husband passing away, her family and her in-law’s family believes she is no longer a capable woman to take care of her two children without a man in the house.
Women have traditionally been known as the less dominant sex. Through history women have fought for equal rights and freedom. They have been stereotyped as being housewives, and bearers and nurturers of the children. Only recently with the push of the Equal Rights Amendment have women had a strong hold on the workplace alongside men. Many interesting characters in literature are conceived from the tension women have faced with men. This tension is derived from men; society, in general; and within a woman herself. Two interesting short stories, “The Yellow Wall-paper and “The Story of an Hour, “ focus on a woman’s plight near the turn of the 19th century. This era is especially interesting because it is a time in modern society when women were still treated as second class citizens. The two main characters in these stories show similarities, but they are also remarkably different in the ways they deal with their problems and life in general. These two characters will be examined to note the commonalities and differences. Although the two characters are similar in some ways, it will be shown that the woman in the “The Story of an Hour” is a stronger character based on the two important criteria of rationality and freedom.
In her story Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs presents what life was like living as a female slave during the 19th century. Born into slavery, she exhibits, to people living in the North who thought slaves were treated fairly and well, how living as a slave, especially as a female slave during that time, was a heinous and horrible experience. Perhaps even harder than it was if one had been a male slave, as female slaves had to deal with issues, such as unwanted sexual attention, sexual victimization and for some the suffering of being separated from their children. Harriet Jacobs shows that despite all of the hardship that she struggled with, having a cause to fight for, that is trying to get your children a better life
...devoted herself to the practical and compensating notion of supporting a household during the early 1900s. The farm girl’s exclusion from society allowed her to possess freedom, unattainable to the Gibson Girl. Victorian society bound the Gibson Girl to unrealistic expectations and oppressive restrictions. Society possessed no dominance over the ideals and appearances of a farm girl thus demonstrating that the Gibson Girl’s life held just as many, if not more, difficulties.
Few years later, the mistress died and Linda was sent to Dr. Flint. Dr. Flint abuses his power as a slave owner to get what he wants, such as trying to get Linda to sleep with him. Another example of him abusing his power is when Linda stated, “I was made for his use, made to obey his command in everything; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his…” However, Linda had no intention of submitting to Dr. Flint’s control. Although Dr. Flint owns her body, she can still remain spiritually free. She lives in a time of slavery, but she still hold the hopeful thought of someday of being really free. Linda was different among all the slaves. She has the power to control her life in a way. She had an affair with a white neighbor and has two kids. However, because she was afraid Dr. Flint would do something to her kids after he finds out, she decides to hide in the attic for seven years. During those seven years, Dr. Flint spent countless of days and money to track her. This shows Dr. Flint has a deeper feeling towards Linda rather than just a slave. Linda have lived her life in confinement, yet she does not give up hoping one day she will provide a home for her
In society, there has always been a gap between men and women. Women are generally expected to be homebodies, and seen as inferior to their husbands. The man is always correct, as he is more educated, and a woman must respect the man as they provide for the woman’s life. During the Victorian Era, women were very accommodating to fit the “house wife” stereotype. Women were to be a representation of love, purity and family; abandoning this stereotype would be seen as churlish living and a depredation of family status. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Henry Isben’s play A Doll's House depict women in the Victorian Era who were very much menial to their husbands. Nora Helmer, the protagonist in A Doll’s House and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” both prove that living in complete inferiority to others is unhealthy as one must live for them self. However, attempts to obtain such desired freedom during the Victorian Era only end in complications.
and Mrs. Flint. Though she was still young she was always threatened. Whenever she did something that did not please her master, the master would threaten her of how she would punish her. Linda always tried to be perfect in whatever she did so as to please her master but it would not work. Despite Linda working for hours without rest, she was given little food. For a person to physically perform well he or she must ensure that he or she takes enough food. Without enough food, the body grows weak and it becomes difficult for one to perform well. Brent talks about how she had very few clothes to wear. In chapter four, Brent talks about the character of Mrs. Flint. She describes Mrs. Flint as a master who did not care what her slave went through. Brent explains how Mrs. Flint was vengeful and jealous; her joy was when Linda was suffering (Francis, 2016). She believed that a slave was not supposed to be looked after or treated well. Linda did not only suffer in the hands of Mrs. Flint but also in the hands of Dr. Flint. Dr. Flint exploited Linda sexually and he always reminded Linda that she was his property and he would do whatever he would want with
It was rare for man and woman to be equal in the days of Eliza Washburn. Being ten years of age she would perform all the activities an average housewife would perform. At 6 o’clock every morning Eliza and her mother would wake up and cook a meal for her father Charles and three brothers James who was six, William nine, and John fifteen. Her father would wake up expecting the meal to be hot and ready the minute he woke up. Her brothers would wake up soon after to devour the rest of the meal they prepared. Her mother Mary would stay home all day cleaning clothes in a bin and preparing food. Everyday they would go pick the ripe vegetables out of their garden cut them into thin slices and set them out to dry, this took up most of the women’s day.
Tate, Claudia. Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine's Text at the Turn of the Century. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.
Though significant leaders in their similarly skeptical commentary on the confined conditions of women, Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker offer two disputably distinct—even sometimes contentious—discourses on contemporary feminism. Walker openly criticizes Woolf’s narrow audience that pertains to presumably only white upper-class women, whereas Walker voices her concerns for women in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens by specifically integrating the inclusion of black women who Woolf fails to recognize in A Room of One’s Own. It is important to keep in consideration the historical context in which the two women wrote: Woolf in the 1920’s and Walker in the 1980’s. Woolf’s viewpoint may have been limited due to an inability to resonate with the struggles of colored women (being that Woolf’s an upper-class-born white woman), or Woolf still had to restrict herself in her own free writing with foresight that she could
This paper will discuss the works of Mary Robinson and Rebecca Harding Davis. Mrs. Robinson grew up in London and married Thomas Robinson in 1774 (Gilbert & Gubar, 2007). During his incarceration, Mary discovered herself through writing and became well-known for acting with the help of David Garrick, a renowned actor, and several publications during the late 1700s (Gilbert & Gubar, 2007). Toward the finale of her career, she was a political critic alongside many other outspoken females, including Mary Wollstonecraft (Gilbert & Gubar, 2007). Writer, Rebecca Harding Davis, was born approximately 75 years after Mary Robinson. Rebecca Harding Davis believed that class, race, and the sexes contribute to a person’s misery (Gilbert & Gubar, 2007). She too, like Robinson firmly announced their hatred for the industrialization of the world (Gilbert & Gubar, 2007). Her family was middle-class, and her
Women roles have changed drastically in the last 50 to 80 years, women no longer have to completely conform to society’s gender roles and now enjoy the idea of being individuals. Along with the evolution of women roles in society, women presence and acceptance have drastically grown in modern literature. In early literature it was common to see women roles as simply caretakers, wives or as background; women roles and ideas were nearly non-existent and was rather seen than heard. The belief that women were more involved in the raising of children and taking care of the household was a great theme in many early literatures; women did not get much credit for being apart of the frontier and expansion of many of the nations success until much later.
Katherine Mansfield belongs to a group of female authors that have used their financial resources and social standing to critique the patriarchal status quo. Like Virginia Woolf, Mansfield was socioeconomically privileged enough to write influential texts that have been deemed as ‘proto-feminist’ before the initial feminist movements. The progressive era in which Mansfield writes proves to be especially problematic because, “[w]hile the Modernist tradition typically undermined middle-class values, women … did not have the recognized rights necessary to fully embrace the liberation from the[se] values” (Martin 69). Her short stories emphasized particular facets of female oppression, ranging from gendered social inequality to economic classism, and it is apparent that “[p]oor or rich, single or married, Mansfield’s women characters are all victims of their society” (Aihong 101). Mansfield’s short stories, “The Garden Party” and “Miss Brill”, represent the feminist struggle to identify traditional patriarchy as an inherent caste system in modernity. This notion is exemplified through the social bonds women create, the naïve innocence associated with the upper classes, and the purposeful dehumanization of women through oppressive patriarchal methods. By examining the female characters in “The Garden Party” and “Miss Brill”, it is evident that their relationships with other characters and themselves notify the reader of their encultured classist preconceptions, which is beneficial to analyze before discussing the sources of oppression.
Many women in modern society make life altering decisions on a daily basis. Women today have prestigious and powerful careers unlike in earlier eras. It is more common for women to be full time employees than homemakers. In 1879, when Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, there was great controversy over the out come of the play. Nora’s walking out on her husband and children was appalling to many audiences centuries ago. Divorce was unspoken, and a very uncommon occurrence. As years go by, society’s opinions on family situations change. No longer do women have a “housewife” reputation to live by and there are all types of family situations. After many years of emotional neglect, and overwhelming control, Nora finds herself leaving her family. Today, it could be said that Nora’s decision is very rational and well overdue.
Women rights were extremely limited in may ways. Once they were married, their husband held all of their freedom. This story describes one case, Mrs. Mallard, and her experiences with hearing the news of a tragic accident which resulted in leaving her husband dead. She is overjoyed, because she knows she will be free. She will not have to live under him. Mrs. Mallard will finally get the chance to live her own life along with inheriting his goods. Knowing the rights women had and did not have in late 1800s ties together the reality of this short story.