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Male dominance over women in the 19th century
Male dominance over women in the 19th century
Male dominance over women in the 19th century
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Hannah Foster’s The Coquette represents two main genres. The seduction novel, a genre that centers in on a pathetic and naive female character who is ultimately seduced away from friends and family set out to protect her, made pregnant, and then is left by an unfaithful partner to suffer and die. The Coquette is also a novel of republican motherhood, the idea that women must be schooled in virtue in order to keep the republic running smoothly and educate their children. The ideal eighteenth century woman could be split into four virtues and these virtues would be domesticity, submissiveness, purity and piety. In the eighteenth century, domesticity functioned as the practice of housework. There were little to no opportunities for women outside …show more content…
Gender roles were important in the eighteenth century because firmly established roles for each gender helped build and maintain a strong family unit. A family with a strong structure was vital because the family was the basis for all other institutions. Everything from government to church worked through the strong family unit. Women in the eighteenth century were designated to maintain household order and be subservient to the man. Eliza Wharton does not lose her innocence throughout the novel, Foster starts the novel with Eliza already enticed by the idea of freedom. Eliza refuses to cooperate with the domestic and republican ideology that is enforced by the women around her. Eliza challenges those who are happily the voice of domesticity. Eliza has no intention of participating in typical republican motherhood and matrimonial bonds. Eliza’s refusal to accept the normal gender roles of the eighteenth century is a menace to the patriarchy. One of Eliza’s suitors Boyer, ends up getting his heart …show more content…
The epistolary novel challenges gender roles because in a society where the most accepted form of female writing was letters, the epistolary novel gives a new voice to women. The letters written by the characters especially the women go hand in hand with new republican virtues of society. Women were becoming more educated and their letters became more frequent. The epistolary form gives a sense of realism. It allows the reader to dive head first into the lives and problems of the characters, it is set up in a way where the reader ultimately knows more than the character does. This style of writing allows us to get the story from each character as an individual, which is important because if told from another character, events and emotions might get lost in translation or become skewed. Through reading Eliza’s letters, the audience can get a grasp of her personality, her morals, her humor, and her intentions. Eliza’s voice is strong and as she begins to decline her voice starts to dwindle and become muffled and eventually lost. Through being able to see how her voice gets lost, the reader can get a real sense of her decline as a character. Eliza begins to fade and other characters start to step into the light. Eliza’s letters are what makes her relatable and without these snippets from Eliza, the audience might not want to side with her. William Brown Hill’s preface to The Power of
In her article, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," Barbara Welter discusses the nineteenth-century ideal of the perfect woman. She asserts that "the attributes of True Womanhood . . . could be divided into four cardinal virtues-piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity." Furthermore, she adds that "if anyone, male or female, dared to tamper with the complex virtues which made up True Womanhood, he was damned immediately as an enemy of God, of civilization and of the Republic" (Welter 152). In Hannah W. Foster's The Coquette, the characters Major Sanford and Eliza Wharton violate True Womanhood condemning them both to wretched fates.
You could see the helpless and powerless state of women even as far back as the 18th century. The story also exposes the fundamental injustices meted out to women by confining them to a limited domestic sphere. The society dictates the identity and role of the woman; “every young woman is expected to marry a suitable spouse” (Foster 818), take care of her husband and children, while having no voice or rights of her own. Any relationships outside the spheres of marriage is being frowned at. But the man can do as he pleases, even if he is married. While Eliza had to move away from her family and friends because she was pregnant and could not stand the shame and had “become a reproach and disgrace to friends” (Foster 906), Sanford is allowed to continue living his life probably with another vulnerable young woman in the society. While Sanford gets away with his womanizing acts, Eliza is the one who is branded as loose, and termed a coquette; she was the one who lost her life, trying to conceal a pregnancy that was conceived by two people. An unidentified source has this to write about her: “But let no one reproach her memory. Her life has paid the forfeit of her folly. Let that suffice” (Foster
Eliza Wharton has sinned. She has also seduced, deceived, loved, and been had. With The Coquette Hannah Webster Foster uses Eliza as an allegory, the archetype of a woman gone wrong. To a twentieth century reader Eliza's fate seems over-dramatized, pathetic, perhaps even silly. She loved a man but circumstance dissuaded their marriage and forced them to establish a guilt-laden, whirlwind of a tryst that destroyed both of their lives. A twentieth century reader may have championed Sanford's divorce, she may have championed the affair, she may have championed Eliza's acceptance of Boyer's proposal. She may have thrown the book angrily at the floor, disgraced by the picture of ineffectual, trapped, female characters.
It is a cliché to say that a picture is worth a thousand words. But I will state it anyway: a picture can truly be worth a thousand words. Therefore, any frame that contains the picture and alters the interpretation or viewing of the picture also affects these thousand words. This analogy pertains to the wide world of literature, in which certain frames can affect our perceptions of women and gender-related roles within families, marriages, and cultures. Edith Wharton had the unique ability to see her New York culture in a different light than her contemporaries. As she reminisces about “Old” New York, Wharton can put her picture (in this case an analogy for her novel, The Age of Innocence) in the frame of family allegiances in order to show how this frame affected women’s relationships including marriage and families, and how these relationships were perceived by the culture of “Old” New York through the characters in her novel.
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.
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 her final letter to her mother, Eliza admits her wrong doings. She tells her mother she ignored all the things she was told. All their advice fell on her deaf ears. She explains that she had fallen victim to her own indiscretion. She had become the latest conquest of “a designing libertine,” (Foster 894). She knew about Sanford’s reputation, she knew his intentions, and she knew that he was married, yet she still started a relationship with him. And her blatant disregard for facts and common sense caused her unwed pregnancy and premature demise. Eliza Wharton had nobody to blame for her situation but herself. She ignored warnings, advice, common sense, and other options available to her. She chose her ill fated path and had to suffer the consequences.
During the Victorian Era, society had idealized expectations that all members of their culture were supposedly striving to accomplish. These conditions were partially a result of the development of middle class practices during the “industrial revolution… [which moved] men outside the home… [into] the harsh business and industrial world, [while] women were left in the relatively unvarying and sheltered environments of their homes” (Brannon 161). This division of genders created the ‘Doctrine of Two Spheres’ where men were active in the public Sphere of Influence, and women were limited to the domestic private Sphere of Influence. Both genders endured considerable pressure to conform to the idealized status of becoming either a masculine ‘English Gentleman’ or a feminine ‘True Woman’. The characteristics required women to be “passive, dependent, pure, refined, and delicate; [while] men were active, independent, coarse …strong [and intelligent]” (Brannon 162). Many children's novels utilized these gendere...
Oppression of characters is usually fuelled by external causes. In the case of Madame Bovary and Middlemarch, external causes like gender norms result in the oppression of women. In Madame Bovary, society's expectations of a wifely figure restricts Emma's desire to climb the social ladder. In Middlemarch, the dogmas about female intellectual abilities propagated by characters like Lydgate and Casaubon hinder Dorothea's ability to become an intellectual within society. Critic Howard Kushner writes that “ideology... emphasized women as mothers and guardians of the family” (Kushner 1). This quote draws the parameters of what a woman was expected to be in the Victorian era, clearly emphasizing the limitations put in place for womenkind. Exploring the characters in Madame Bovary and Middlemarch offers insight into female oppression in Victorian society.
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.
Gorham, Deborah. A. A. The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Martineau, Harriet.
Over the centuries, women’s duties or roles in the home and in the work force have arguably changed for the better. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen teaches the reader about reputation and loves in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries by showing how Elizabeth shows up in a muddy dress, declines a marriage proposal and how women have changed over time. Anything a woman does is reflected on her future and how other people look at her. When Elizabeth shows up to the Bingley’s in a muddy dress they categorize her as being low class and unfashionable. Charles Bingley, a rich attractive man, and his sister had a reputation to protect by not letting their brother marry a ‘low class girl’. Reputation even today and back in the nineteenth century is still very important aspect in culture. In the twenty-first century, women have attempted to make their lives easier by wanting to be more equal with the men in their society. Women are wanting to be the apart of the ‘bread winnings’ efforts within a family. Since evolving from the culture of the nineteenth century, women have lost a lot of family and home making traditions but women have gained equality with more rights such as voting, working, and overall equal rights. In the twenty-first century world, most women are seen for losing their morals for and manners for others. As for example in the novel when Mr. Darcy is talking badly about Elizabeth she over hears what he and his friend, Mr. Bingley, are saying about her but she does not stand up for herself.
...nancial needs or just in the home men held the advantage. "A Doll's House," by Henrik Ibsen portrays the genders role of nineteenth century women and men in society. Torvald's perception of his wife of how she is a helpless creature shows the overall role which women filled. Women were responsible for the purity of the world through their influence in the home and through the upbringing of her children. They had to beg and ask for permission to do certain activities and essential things. Men were the ones in the family who worked and provided for his family's wellbeing. Because of the family's economic dependence on the husband, he had control over all of all his family members. This showed the amount of progress needing to come in the future to allow woman to start receiving some of the many rights they deserved which men had and so frequently took for granted.
During this time Elizabeth returns home still baffled about the letter Mr. Darcy wrote her.... ... middle of paper ... ... Unmarried women would become governess’ and live as dependents of their family, other relatives, or their employers. The governess position gave them little social status, which opened them up to much prejudice.
Throughout the early 1800s, British women most often were relegated to a subordinate role in society by their institutionalized obligations, laws, and the more powerfully entrenched males. In that time, a young woman’s role was close to a life of servitude and slavery. Women were often controlled by the men in their lives, whether it was a father, brother or the eventual husband. Marriage during this time was often a gamble; one could either be in it for the right reasons, such as love, or for the wrong reasons, such as advancing social status. In 19th century Britain, laws were enacted to further suppress women and reflected the societal belief that women were supposed to do two things: marry and have children. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen portrayed a women’s struggle within a society that stresses the importance of marriage and strict behavioral customs. As evidenced by the Bennett daughters: Elizabeth and Jane, as well as Charlotte Collins, marriage for young women was a pursuit that dominated their lives.