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Culture and clothing
Critical Analysis of the Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 1868
Little women by louisa may alcott analysis
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The Mask of Manners on the Middle Class
The theme of unmasking a character in relation to appearances problematic because it assumes that appearances reflect a person’s sprit and those who are tricked by this guise make moral assumptions based off that appearance. Louisa May Alcott brings attention to the flawed perception of morally upright woman by creating a storyline where her protagonist, who is also the antagonist, uses cultural ideals against the rest of the characters. John Kasson tackles several theories regarding deception in his essay, “Reading the City: The Semiotics of Everyday Life”, heavily circling ideas of gender as well as class. The presented notion of a female con artist is that they, “dress well, put on a quiet, unassuming demeanor, and slip modestly into a crowd at a shop window or in a store and feel around until they have discovered the hiding
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While male “confidence men” were known for their bold approach, women were viewed as subtler thieves who had, “yielded to the myriad temptations of sensual desire and greed that metropoltarian life laid before them” (Kasson 109). While Jean Muir certainly constructs an unassuming demeanor, Alcott disrupts this idea of concealment by clearly showing the reader that Muir had not simply been seduced by the glamour of upper class life, but that she would be the one doing the seducing. Muir takes advantage of the ideas of middle class manners and refinement through, “the moral meanings of the conventions of etiquette and the basis upon which the signs of ritual discourse could be read and readily applied” (Kasson 93). By using the societal ideal of a quiet, meek, delicate woman, the characters regard her as someone trustworthy. She uses her skills in art, language and flower
Furthermore, within the play these "facades" belonging to the confident upper classes of the period are like wise displayed amongst the lower classes. For example, during the interaction between Christine and Katharina Binder (pp. 133-135 ), Katharina almost lectures Christine on the appropriate and expected behaviour of young working class girls within the Viennese `Vorstadt' - it
He enforces his possessions and his role as a Victorian Age husband. He defies and remains blind to feminist action. He even expresses dissatisfaction to his own wife. “He thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced so little interest in things which concerned him, and valued so little his conversation.” (5) Leonce is a man who values the worth of a “perfect husband.” He provides money for Edna, departs on long trips, and on cares for his children. He favors the image of marriage far more the reality of it. He doesn’t deny what others ordain, instead he is just a player of the game. He follows along with the norms of society. In result, he finds absolutely nothing wrong with Edna’s position in society. He could not detect Edna’s urge to escape the society he encourages. For example, he refers to Edna more as an object than an individual. (5) He is blind and oblivious regarding Edna’s actions. He is a figure sought just to manipulate Edna along with the rest of society. Astonishingly, he isn’t obliviousness to the nature of society. “Why my dear, I should think you’d understand by this time that people don’t do such things; we’ve got to observe the conventions if we ever expect to get on and keep up with the procession.” (51) In one word, Leonce is a simpleton who follows under the rules established by society. He is heavily focused on
The heroine, Mrs. P, has some carries some characteristics parallel to Louise Mallard in “Hour.” The women of her time are limited by cultural convention. Yet, Mrs. P, (like Louise) begins to experience a new freedom of imagination, a zest for life , in the immediate absence of her husband. She realizes, through interior monologues, that she has been held back, that her station in life cannot and will not afford her the kind of freedom to explore freely and openly the emotions that are as much a part of her as they are not a part of Leonce. Here is a primary irony.
Stewart, Randall. “Hawthorne’s Female Characters.” In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1996.
Representative of the Victorian society by abiding the ideals of its age intensely, the ladies in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford deem “appearance” and “propriety” in every conceivable way of utmost importance. In Cranford, we are presented a population formed of elderly ladies who either got divorced, got widowed, or had never been married. Their only income – bearing in mind that they are not involved in trade or labour-work as they consider such occupations as “vulgar” – is most probably family fortune. However, the rise of a laborious, industrial middle-class that forms the nouveau-riche capsizes the previously established class system, leaving aristocracy, hence the ladies of Cranford, without the economic power they hitherto had. The ladies of Cranford thus exert their “aristocratic power” by holding on to their noble titles and elegant past through their behaviour and outwear – elements that form their idea of “appearance”. Headwear especially has had great significance in terms of displaying power and status in Europe through centuries yet blooms in the Victorian era, having an immense effect. Ergo, in such a society, the obsession Cranford ladies have with fashionable headgear to carry on a certain aristocratic image is justified. However, none other than the turban stands for paradoxical concepts on its own. I will therefore analyse how a turban symbolizes binary opposites in Cranford: Occident versus Orient; “civilized” versus “savage”; aristocracy versus lower-class and female versus male by doing close-readings of relevant passages from the novel.
Stewart, Randall. “Hawthorne’s Female Characters.” In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1996.
In the first few chapters Gaskell offers various examples of what the traditional woman of England is like. Margaret’s early descriptions in Chapter 7, characterize the beautiful, gentle femininity so idolized. Margaret is beautiful in her own way, she is very conscious of her surroundings. She is privileged in her own way by being in a respectable position in the tranquil village of Helstone. Throughout the beginning of the novel it is eluded that Margaret has the onset of a mature middle class mentality. During the planning of her beloved cousin Edith Shaw’s wedding, Margaret comments on Edith seemingly oblivious demeanor, as the house is chaos in preparations. Edith tries hard to please expectation of her social class. She is privileged and beautiful; angelic and innocent, she is the perfect idyllic, ignorant child bride, designed to please. For Margaret, “...the prospect of soon losing her companion seemed to give force to every sweet quality and charm which Edith possessed”(Gaskell, 7). It is in this passage that the readers familiarize themselves with Margaret’s keen ability to see and perceive the differences between her and her cousin’s manor. Edith poses the calm demure and angelic tranquility a woman is decreed to posses. Unsurprisingly at the brink of commotion Margaret observes that, “the whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy; and Margaret, after a pause of
Sammy, the narrator in “A&P”, a young clerk man in the store, notices three, attractive, teenage, girls who enter the store dressed in their bikinis. As Sammy carefully watches them, he fantasizes a life with one girl in particular, Queenie. By the way she carries herself in the small group, she gives off a confident, appealing vibe about her personality. Throughout their visit to shop for goods, Sammy disregards the other customers, referring to them as “sheep” and “house slaves”. He also developed personas of the different people he met such as, “She’s one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows…” (320). In “A&P”, Sammys role is the healthy, hormonal, teenage boy who finds an attraction to these girls. Willing to do anything to catch Queenies attention, he awaits for the perfect moment to seize, unfortunately being his mistake and realizing her lack of interest.
Jane’s unconditional bond to writing demonstrates the hardship and adversity many women had to face in the realism time period by portraying a character that is limited and restricted by a male figure.
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...
This separates her from women in all previous era’s who often gained their attention solely for their attire. Her suit is instead used to draw attention to what she says, as evidence by the upward and diagonal pinstripes that point toward her face. When all of the journalists question her about Earl, their dark colored suits in contrast to her stripes, as well as her position in the center of the frame, maker her the center of attention.This way, in every conversation she’s having all eyes focused on her quick moving lips. The importance of this contrast points to what aspects of women are noticed and highlighted. In the traditional women, it was their physique, and in the “new woman” it is in their intellect. There is also a large glowing light above her head during her dialect with Earl as he points his gun at her, which, coupled with her attire and fluent speech, could be another symbol of her
Margaret is an intelligent, articulate, and ambitious woman who desires to rise up in social status by marrying a man of higher social rank. She attends to those above her, in hopes of elevating her status as she becomes closer to the upper-class. As a minor character, she plays a small yet crucial role in advancing Don John’s plot to slander Hero and spoil her wedding. As a lower-class character, Margaret serves as a foil to the rich girls, particularly Hero, who embodies every attitude and mindset Margaret does not. But she also offers an alternative perspective on the upper-class characters in the play. Because Margaret is victimized because of her social ambitions, punished for wanting to rise above her ...
...uality keeps her from happiness. Through Angellica, Hellena, and Florinda, Behn reveals that the libertine female has no place in late Stuart society. The playwright’s observation comes as a wistful warning at a time when women seemed to push the limits of tradition. Actresses appearing on stage might feel they had found a career of bodily expression, but from Behn’s experience as a woman with male colleagues, the freedom is a façade. ‘Women on stage faced fetishization and loss of status. Behn’s commentary on women’s position in the late Stuart period serves to point out the double standard of libertinism in court life and the public sphere.’ (Staves, 2004: 73) By exposing and mocking the Puritanical and Cavalier restraints imposed on women, she encourages viewers to reevaluate women’s limited roles in the new age by giving her female characters a louder voice.
With more and more women taking ownership of their lives (and our hearts) onscreen and in pages, we ought to do a throwback to our foremothers, who helped to make it a thing to talk about women in the first place. Long before female characters became trapped as tropes, flattened and insignificant in today’s media, they were written in all their glory by women like Austen and Woolf, as well as many others. Here are three famous ones, who, when compared to three infamous tropes, illustrate the complexity of women as born at the pens of equally excellent women.
Elizabeth Gaskell reflects the dominant philosophical ideology of patriarchy and gender dominance in Victorian society through her Bildungsroman novel North and South (1855). Margaret’s characterisation symbolises the confinement of individuals, especially females, Gaskell describing “a sense of indescribable weariness of all the arrangements…oppressed her [Margaret] just now”. The aural effect created by the use of dilatory works is exigent in itself whilst the use of “indescribable” compounds the extent to which Margaret feels burdened by the social expectations to indulge in the “prettiness” of the wedding. Gaskell acclaims Margaret to seek autonomy through portraying her interests to subvert the social dictums of conversation, “she was glad when the gentlemen came…because she could listen to something larger and grander.” The assonance of “larger and grander” alludes to Margaret’s ebullience of male discussion. Gaskell reveals that Margaret gains self satisfaction through subverting her role the domestic sphere, commente...