Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Gender roles in the Victorian era: men and women
Gender issues during the Victorian era
Gender roles in the Victorian era
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Gender roles in the Victorian era: men and women
Popular literature is studied for the reason of its close relationship with society. The popular writer is in more immediate contact with his readers – he has the pulse of the people and develops certain kinds of specialized skills to accomplish the task of entertaining/instructing which his audience expects from him. And this is what P.G.Wodehouse, a prolific writer of over ninety books and world wide acclaim, hailed by The Times as ‘A comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce’, has been doing for nearly 70 years. All comedy is born out of a sense of incongruity. Incongruity is the recognition of the wide discrepancy between what is and what ought to be. Incongruity can arise out of reversal of roles. But this is definitely based on construction of roles at a give time. For example, gender roles being reversed leads to comedy. In most of the Shakespearean Romantic Comedies, for example the Twelfth Night, where we find a woman courting the man, in fact, the very disguise is incongruous and results in humour. During the Victorian Period gender roles were strictly demarcated. The woman’s role was strictly domestic: she was the angel in the house, angelic in patience and self-effacement. But in most of Wodehouse’s work this is comically reversed. It is the women who are the dominant sex. All the strong men and heroes are house-tamed sooner or later, willingly or unwillingly, by wives or sisters. This research article then attempts to establish that Wodehouse through his delineation of women characters subverts existing social structure and gender stereotyping and portrays women as progressive and equal in every level of existence. Representation Of Women in the works of P.G.Wode... ... middle of paper ... ...r’s guide. London: Orbis Publishing, 1979. Donaldson, Lady Francis. P.G.Wodehouse; The Authorised Biography. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982. Edwards, Owen Dudley. P.G.Wodehouse: A Critical and Historical Essay. London: Martian Brian and O’Keefe, 1977. French, R.B.D. P.G.Wodehouse. Edinburgh and London: Oliver & Boyd, 1966. Halsay, A.H. Trends in British Society since 1900. London, 1972. Hayward, John. “P.G.Wodehouse and the Edwardians.@ Spectator 155, no. 5602, 8th Nov. 1935: 771. Jasen, David. P.G. Wodehouse : A Portrait of a Master. New York: Mason & Lipscomb, 1974. Prasad, H. Rajendra. Laughing with the Master: Humour of P.G. Wodehouse. Delhi: Delta Publishing House, 1997. Usborne, Richard. Wodehouse at Work to the End. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1976. Usborne, Richard. P.G.Wodehouse. New York: Twaine Publishers, 1996.
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...
Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. B. Compact ed. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000. p. 2256
The History of Feminine Fiction:Exploring Laura Runge’s Article, Gendered Strategies in the Criticism of Early Fiction
Throughout most of literature and history, the notion of ‘the woman’ has been little more than a caricature of the actual female identity. Most works of literature rely on only a handful of tropes for their female characters and often use women to prop up the male characters: female characters are sacrificed for plot development. It may be that the author actually sacrifices a female character by killing her off, like Mary Shelly did in Frankenstein in order to get Victor Frankenstein to confront the monster he had created, or by reducing a character to just a childish girl who only fulfills a trope, as Oscar Wilde did with Cecily and Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. Using female characters in order to further the male characters’
These women authors have served as an eye-opener for the readers, both men and women alike, in the past, and hopefully still in the present. (There are still cultures in the world today, where women are treated as unfairly as women were treated in the prior centuries). These women authors have impacted a male dominated society into reflecting on of the unfairness imposed upon women. Through their writings, each of these women authors who existed during that masochistic Victorian era, risked criticism and retribution. Each author ignored convention a...
M.H. Abrams, et al; ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume I. W.W. Norton & Company, New York/London, 1993.
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton anthology of English literature. 9th ed., A, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. Pp
Throughout time women have been written as the lesser sex, weaker, secondary characters. They are portrayed as dumb, stupid, and nothing more than their fading beauty. They are written as if they need to be saved or helped because they cannot help themselves. Women, such as Daisy Buchanan who believes all a woman can be is a “beautiful little fool”, Mrs Mallard who quite died when she lost her freedom from her husband, Eliza Perkins who rights the main character a woman who is a mental health patient who happens to be a woman being locked up by her husband, and then Carlos Andres Gomez who recognizes the sexism problem and wants to change it. Women in The Great Gatsby, “The Story of an Hour,” “The Yellow Wall Paper” and the poem “When” are oppressed because the fundamental concept of equality that America is based on undermines gender equality.
Moulton, Charles Wells. Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors through the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: Volume 1. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966. Print.
Throughout literature’s history, female authors have been hardly recognized for their groundbreaking and eye-opening accounts of what it means to be a woman of society. In most cases of early literature, women are portrayed as weak and unintelligent characters who rely solely on their male counterparts. Also during this time period, it would be shocking to have women character in some stories, especially since their purpose is only secondary to that of the male protagonist. But, in the late 17th to early 18th century, a crop of courageous women began publishing their works, beginning the literary feminist movement. Together, Aphra Behn, Charlotte Smith, Fanny Burney, and Mary Wollstonecraft challenge the status quo of what it means to be a
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.
...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).
Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993.
Abrams, M. H., et al., The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1986.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.