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The role of women in English literature
The role of women in English literature
Gender roles of women in literature
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Radig, Misty M
Michael Critchfield
FA 17-900C
26, November 2017
The House of Mirth and The Yellow Wallpaper: Gender Politics in the 19th Century The life of a lady in the 19th century is painted in a romantic light. Pictured in her parlor, the lady sips tea from delicate china while writing letters with a white feathered quill. Her maid stands silently off in the background, waiting for orders to serve her mistress. What is not typically pictured, is the sadness or boredom echoed on the lady’s face. Perhaps the letter is to a dear friend, not seen in ages, pleading with the friend to visit, in hopes that the friend will fill the void in the lady’s life made from years spent in a loveless marriage. Possibly the lady isn’t writing a
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In her biographical and analytical book about Edith Warton and The House of Mirth, titled House of Mirth: A Novel of Admonition, Linda Wagner-Martin claims that, “Male physicians became specialists in women’s mental health, as well as obstetrics and gynecology. The message was clear: everything that touched a woman’s life was in the control of the patriarchy” (Wagner-Martin 3). In The House of Mirth, Lily Bart must marry a wealthy man, and ultimately it is up to the men to decide if they want to marry her or not. Lily attempts to procure her own wealth by asking her friend, Gus Trenor, to help her get into trading, only to discover that Gus uses his own money to invest, and asserts that Lily must repay him with her attentions and affection. Had Lily been a man, she would have been free to openly discuss trading, and had been able to conduct her own deals. Selden, who believes that he loves Lily, still views her as an object and a fool. Even after her death, he judges her character when he sees that she had addressed an envelope to Gus Trenor. He came to her apartment to tell her that he loved her, but just by seeing that she had addressed a letter to Trenor before she died, he casts away his feelings and continues sorting through Lily’s things, thinking that, “after all, that task would be easier to perform, now that his personal stake in it was annulled” (Wharton …show more content…
In the first chapter of The House of Mirth, while drinking tea with Selden in his apartment, Lily says to him, “you can’t possibly think I want to marry you” (Wharton 10). This comment is stated and accepted without further explanation, because both Lily and Selden know that Selden is not wealthy enough to meet Lily’s expectations, even though it is apparent throughout The House of Mirth that Lily has feelings for Selden, and he for her. Linda Wagner Martin’s remark, “The poignant but all-too-real narrative of the beautiful Lily Bart, fast aging beyond marriageability” points to the fact that Lily Bart was in her late 20’s and was expected to have found a husband by that age (Wagner-Martin 6). Wagner Martin also claims that, “Wharton creates in The House of Mirth the impressionable character of Lily Bart, flowerlike in fragility as well as name, who has accepted the social decree that she become a beautiful marriageable object” (Wagner-Martin 4). The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper points out that her husband is a respected doctor, and that he provides for her. Despite his controlling and dismissive treatment of her, she consoles herself with the thought that, “He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well” (Perkins Gillman). In exchange for perceived comfort, she is his
The setting of these two stories emphasize, on visually showing us how the main characters are based around trying to find freedom despite the physical, mental and emotional effects of living in confinement. While on the other hand, dealing with Psychology’s ugly present day behavior showing dystopia of societies views of women during the time period they lived.
The stories “Shouldn't I Feel Pretty?” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” feature a dynamic protagonist who undergoes a character development which reveals the consequences of oppression caused by societal standards. Gilman crafted the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” with the purpose of exposing the tyrannical role of gender roles to women. In the story, the narrator suffers a slight postpartum depression in the beginning, but her condition gets progressively worse because her husband John believes “that there is nothing the matter with [her] but temporary nervous depression-- a slight hysterical tendency” (331). He concludes that the best treatment for his wife is for her to be “absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until [she is] well again” (332).
In Aunt Hetty on Matrimony and The Working Girls of New York Fanny Fern depicted a story of sadness and morose conditions that women had to deal with in order to have a parallel recognition to that o...
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, is a first-person narrative written in the style of a journal. It takes place during the nineteenth century and depicts the narrator’s time in a temporary home her husband has taken her to in hopes of providing a place to rest and recover from her “nervous depression”. Throughout the story, the narrator’s “nervous condition” worsens. She begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper in her room to the point of insanity. She imagines a woman trapped within the patterns of the paper and spends her time watching and trying to free her. Gilman uses various literary elements throughout this piece, such as irony and symbolism, to portray it’s central themes of restrictive social norms
Near the beginning of The House of Mirth, Wharton establishes that Lily would not indeed have cared to marry a man who was merely rich: "she was secretly ashamed of her mothers crude passion for money" (38). Lily, like the affluent world she loves, has a strange relationship with money. She needs money to buy the type of life she has been raised to live, and her relative poverty makes her situation precarious. Unfortunately, Lily has not been trained to obtain money through a wide variety of methods. Wharton's wealthy socialites do not all procure money in the same way: money can be inherited, earned working in a hat shop, won at cards, traded scandalously between married men and unmarried women, or speculated for in the stock market. For Lily, the world of monetary transactions presents formidable difficulties; she was born, in a sense, to marry into money, and she cannot seem to come to it any other way. She is incapable of mastering the world of economic transactions, to the point that a direct exchange is repulsive to her highly specialized nature. Finally, these exchanges and the obstacles they present prove to be the end of her, and Wharton's text joins naturalism's Darwinian rules to an economic world. Whether Lily's death is accidental or a suicide does not really matter in Wharton's vision, because the choice facing Lily at the end of the novel--to make a transaction or to make a transaction--necessitates her death. Near the end of the novel, Wharton's protagonist must make a choice--but both options are part of the environment in which Lily has not evolved to survive. In Lily's attempt at wage-earning and her moral dilemma regarding Rosedale's marria...
As man developed more complex social systems, society placed more emphasis of childbearing. Over time, motherhood was raised to the status of “saintly”. This was certainly true in western cultures during the late 19th/early 20th century. Charlotte Perkins Gilman did not agree with the image of motherhood that society proposed to its members at the time. “Arguably ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ reveals women’s frustration in a culture that seemingly glorifies motherhood while it actually relegates women to nursery-prisons” (Bauer 65). Among the many other social commentaries contained within this story, is the symbolic use of the nursery as a prison for the main character.
Lily Bart and her mother have been socially "ruined" in a sense because of the economic failures of their father and husband respectfully. However, Lily's mother teaches her that she can still maintain a high social status if she marries well, i.e. a rich man. In fact, Lily's mother is known for making the most out of the least as she is "famous for the unlimited effect she produced on limited means" (Wharton 48). In a society where women are considered valuable only for the appearance they present, it is impossible f...
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature 's Ancestral House: Another Look At 'The Yellow Wallpaper '." Women 's Studies 12.2 (1986): 113. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
The "Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman is a great story about the repression of women in the late 1800's but is still representative of issues faced by women today. She writes from her own personal experiences and conveys a message that sometimes in a male dominated society women suffer from the relentless power that some men implement over women.
In the House of Mirth, there are many symbols, a larger one being money. Money is represented and symbolized as the “leader of society”, the one responsible that governs all women., and also the evil force driving people into certain beliefs or thoughts. Many examples of this are shown throughout the book, especially when various rumors are spread around by Bertha. Bertha is the prime instigator of these rumors, as she is incredibly wealthy. This gives her the power and ability to be believed over a middle-class woman trying to integrate into the upper-class with no funds for support. The only way to live life happily in the upper-class was top get everything that they wanted; money being the main “everything.” Because of this greed and envy develops amongst the characters.
Edith Wharton once stated that she “ . . . [doesn’t] know if [she] should care for a man who made life easy; [she] should want someone who made it interesting,” showing how Edith reflects Lily Bart, an unwed woman living in the midst of the elite society of New York, who struggles to find a suitable husband and live in the elite society that leads to her inevitable demise, in Edith's novel The House of Mirth (CITATION). Although many of the characters in the novel were in an elite and prominent society, they were possibly the most morally corrupt people since women married men for their wealth, and men expected women to constantly act proper and sophisticated. Edith Wharton’s modern novel The House of Mirth demonstrates why people in the
In the beginning of the novel, Wharton reveals the thoughts of Seldon toward Lily Bart. “He was aware that the qualities distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external: as though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been applied to vulgar clay” (Wharton 7).Wharton builds this physical attraction between Seldon and Lily Bart by letting readers into the mind of Seldon and the delicate actions of Lily Bart. Seldon “enjoyed Lily Bart; and his course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to be drawn for a moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal implied” ( Wharton 6). The delicate approach of Lily coupled with her suggestive words toward Seldon reveals Lily’s true feeling toward Seldon. “I’m dying for tea---but isn’t there a quieter place?” (Wharton 6). Lily manages to secure privacy with Seldon avoiding as much attention as possible. Even the insinuation of Seldon and Lily being in a relationship would be especially detrimental to her social standing. When surprised with the appearance of Mr. Rosedale, she innately lied only later realizing the true effect of “yielding to a passing impulse” (Wharton 15). Her mistake would “cost her rather more than she could afford” (Wharton 15). Lily Bart lived in a society where even slightest blunder could result in severe social...
In literature, women are often depicted as weak, compliant, and inferior to men. The nineteenth century was a time period where women were repressed and controlled by their husband and other male figures. Charlotte Gilman, wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," showing her disagreement with the limitations that society placed on women during the nineteenth century. According to Edsitement, the story is based on an event in Gilman’s life. Gilman suffered from depression, and she went to see a physician name, Silas Weir Mitchell. He prescribed the rest cure, which then drove her into insanity. She then rebelled against his advice, and moved to California to continue writing. She then wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which is inflated version of her experience. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the main character is going through depression and she is being oppressed by her husband and she represents the oppression that many women in society face. Gilman illustrates this effect through the use of symbols such as the yellow wallpaper, the nursery room, and the barred windows.
Past events could potentially affect the actions, attitudes and values of a character, positively or negatively. This is true because as seen in many novels the background stories of the characters often shape the character's future and their present actions and values. If, for example, a character grows up poor their values would differ from those of a character that grew up wealthy. The theme of respect and reputation is exemplified by Edith Wharton in her novel "The House of Mirth" by discussing Lily Bart's actions, attitudes and values.
The story begins with the protagonist Gabriel and his wife attending his aunt’s holiday party. At a certain point, Gabriel goes downstairs and talks to Lily, the maid. When he asks if she will be married soon, he gets an “bitter” (Joyce 1245) and rather impolite response: “the men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you” (Joyce 1245). Gabriel then senses he may have said something wrong. His time with Lily can be seen as an instance of Gabriel’s alienation and disconnect from the younger generation.