Edna Ferber's childhood and career influences many of her works. She was born in 1885 and died in 1968. Growing up, she was taunted for being Jewish. Her family moved a great deal, so she was able to see a lot of the country. She eventually landed a job as a reporter, but faced a lot of criticism at the workplace for being a woman. When asked about her role model, Edna Ferber said, "My mother is of the iron age when things were not handed to people on velvet pads of ease-She had a zest for life and the ability to impart it on others. Her belief in the eternity of life has a nourishing effect on her and all those who come in contact with her. She is a wonderful woman" (Shapiro 15). Because of this, she bases most of her heroines on her mother. In fact, Edna Ferber based nearly all her novels, plays, and short stories on her own life as a Jewish woman reporter in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Edna Ferber's themes for her books are unusual for her time. Her most encompassing theme is the feminist one. In one of her most famous novels, Cimarron, Ferber writes the following about her main character, Sabra: ?But she did a man?s job with the paper, often against frightening odds, for Yancey was frequently absent now, and she had no one but the wavering Jesse Rickey to consult? (Ferber 164). All of her central characters are women. Women usually possess greater endurance, ingenuity, perception, and initiative than men. As her stories progress, women became more intuitive, more practical, less romantic, less sentimental, and less gullible than men. In Cimarron, Ferber very clearly depicts her feminist theme. The protagonist, Sabra, slowly evolves throughout the novel, from a doting, dependent wife to a strong, independent l...
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...ron includes, ?Ferber has distilled from the heady, strong mash of those days a draught that gives the reader such an intoxication as those days were themselves. It certainly is the most thrilling thing that ever has come from the pen of Miss Ferber (Shapiro 6).
Edna Ferber?s style and theme is certainly different, but that is what makes it so provocative. She is a Pulitzer award winning author for portraying the struggle of those whose lives were hardest in the way of exhilarating fiction. She believed that Jews and women had to be better than others because their lives were tougher and she bases many novels, short stories, and plays on these beliefs. Her themes are often misunderstood in her lifetime, but they are becoming clearer. The America in her stories is what she idealized America to be, where women and people of any race and religion are treated equally.
When her husband and children are gone, she moves out of the house and purses her own ambitions. She starts painting and feeling happier. “There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day” (Chopin 69). Her sacrifice greatly contributed to her disobedient actions. Since she wanted to be free from a societal rule of a mother-woman that she never wanted to be in, she emphasizes her need for expression of her own passions. Her needs reflect the meaning of the work and other women too. The character of Edna conveys that women are also people who have dreams and desires they want to accomplish and not be pinned down by a stereotype.
Fisher, Jerilyn, and Ellen S. Silber. Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2003. Print.
Ambition, striving, overcoming odds, the focusing of energy on a goal are habits of mind associated with masculine mastery. A woman who wants to develop these skills has to defy a centuries-old tradition of passive femininity[.] . . . But Edna Pontellier does not have the emotional resources to transcend the conventions that regulate female behavior, conventions that she has, in fact, internalized. (22)
The most prevalent and obvious gender issue present in the novella was that Edna challenged cultural norms and broke societal expectations in an attempt to define herself. Editors agree, “Edna Pontellier flouts social convention on almost every page…Edna consistently disregards her ‘duties’ to her husband, her children, and her ‘station’ in life” (Culley 120). Due to this, she did not uphold what was expected of her because she was trying to be superior, and women were expected to be subordinate to men. During that time, the women were viewed as possessions that men controlled. It was the woman’s job to clean the house, cook the meals, and take care of the children, yet Edna did none of these things. Her lifestyle was much different. She refused to listen to her husband as time progressed and continually pushed the boundaries of her role. For example, during that time period “the wife was bound to live with her husban...
In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the principal character, Edna decides to kill herself rather than to live a lie. It seemed to Kate that the time of her own death was the only thing remaining under her control since society had already decided the rest of her life for her. Edna was a woman of the wrong times; she wanted her independence and she wanted to be with her lover, Robert. This type of behavior would never be accepted by the society of her time. Edna's relationship with Robert, and her rejection of the role dictated to her by society, resulted in her perceiving suicide to be the only solution to her problems.
The point of this novel is to provide a personal understanding into the lives of women in the twentieth trying to break free from the restraints of society. This novel takes place in two different areas. Grand Isle, where the novel starts the journey Edna encompasses,
For readers who observe literature through a feminist lens, they will notice the depiction of female characters, and this makes a large statement on the author’s perception of feminism. Through portraying these women as specific female archetypes, the author creates sense of what roles women play in both their families and in society. In books such as The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the roles that the main female characters play are, in different instances, both comparable and dissimilar.
Although the two critics share the above ideas, their theories, although quite similar, embrace the homosocial relationships of Edna and the other women of the novel to varying degrees. They both agree, however, that having lost her mother at an early age and being under the care of her conservative, overbearing sister and strict Presbyterian father, Edna had little experience in having relationships with other women. We know that when she first encounters the culture of the Creole people, she is quite taken back and not generally pleased with the openness of the women ...
... Jerilyn, and Ellen Silber. Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of a Gender.
Fisher, Jerilyn, and Ellen S. Silber. Women In Literature : Reading Through The Lens Of Gender..
Eudora Welty writes with feeling and her “Emphasis is on varying combinations of theme, character, and style.” (Kinc...
From all this chaos, Edna is consistently trying to find and express herself. She has a strong feeling towards being set free and the importance of herself to her. “I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself. I can’t make it more clear; it’s only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me.” (47). What Edna is stating, is much deeper than a simple feeling on how she would not give herself away for her children. She’s expressing her emotions on the creativity of feministic thoughts and feels who you are as your own person is essential. Another example is, "You have been a very, very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both." (108). This shows Edna again exploring feminist thoughts and the feeling that she is not an object. Kate Chopin shows many of the same feelings and readers see this through characters like Edna and other literary sources. As an article states, “Chopin herself stood naked in her exploration of female creativity
Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different nature than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may represent his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays hers as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s.
At the beginning of the novel, Edna follows her husband’s instructions like a reflex but as the story moves forward, she beings to defy him and put herself first for a change. These actions were frown upon and would be regarded as characteristics that make a woman unfit to marriage since being submissive was considered a requirement. This ongoing theme about gender based duties speaks to my life in great magnitude due to the fact that I grew up in a Hispanic family where the gender roles are stablished strictly and we hold great responsibility about upholding them. Even though the novel was written in a different context, I can still see this same outdated thought in the environment back in El Salvador. A common example of this is how women are still expected to remain virgins until marriage and if they are unable to do so then it means they lost their “purity” but on the other hand, men don’t have to comply with the same rule. This scenario is just of many situations that happen but, what is the most surprising is how this type of thought becomes adherent to girls from a young age. I have to include myself when saying that I have become involved in this type of close minded thinking and have even judged women that choose a non-conventional lifestyle for a Hispanic country. It is difficult to move
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).