In The Roaring Girl, Middleton and Dekker intricately weave a tapestry of early modern society, exposing the gendered expectations that dictate individuals' lives. Through the contrasting landscapes of bustling London streets and serene countryside vistas, the play provides characters with spaces to challenge societal norms and redefine gender stereotypes. This exploration challenges traditional gender roles, showcasing how characters like Moll Cutpurse and Sir Alexander Wengrave navigate and subvert societal expectations in their respective environments. The lively cityscape of early modern London emerges as a melting pot of diversity and complexity, where characters like Moll Cutpurse confront and adapt to a myriad of challenges. Within the …show more content…
Despite the tranquility it offers, the rural landscape serves as a bastion of entrenched gender norms, circumscribing characters' freedom and autonomy. Sir Alexander's retreat to his rural estate not only provides solace from the cacophony of urban life but also reaffirms his patriarchal authority within the confines of the countryside. However, his interactions with characters like Moll and Mary serve as poignant reminders that traditional power dynamics are not immutable, and individuals possess the agency to challenge and subvert societal expectations, even within the serene tranquility of rural life. Moreover, both urban and rural settings serve as crucibles for the intersectionality of gender with other social categories such as class and occupation. Characters like Tim, the tapster, and his wife find themselves enmeshed in the vibrant tapestry of urban life, where diverse characters from disparate walks of life converge in the communal space of the …show more content…
Mary Fitzallard's experiences underscore the interplay between gender, class, and individual agency within the rural landscape, as she grapples with societal expectations while seeking moments of empowerment. The urban and rural settings in The Roaring Girl offer distinct gendered landscapes, each with its own challenges and opportunities. In the city, characters like Moll Cutpurse find avenues for defiance and self-expression amidst the hustle and bustle of urban life. The diverse tapestry of identities in London allows for greater fluidity in gender expression, challenging traditional norms and stereotypes. However, the competitive nature of urban society and the scrutiny of patriarchal expectations pose significant obstacles to characters seeking liberation from gendered constraints. On the other hand, the countryside offers characters like Sir Alexander Wengrave a retreat from the chaos of urban life, providing a semblance of stability and tranquility. Yet, the rural landscape reinforces traditional gender roles, constraining characters like Mary Fitzallard within the confines of patriarchal
In addition, Britain’s societal transformation augmented women’s role in society, and according to Braybon in “Women Workers in The First World War,” “A completely different pattern of life was established … for women” and that society had “prevailing attitudes towards women as workers” (Braybon 16). The newfangled life given to women gave most women an enormous surge in recognition throughout society, as people valued women a lot more after they became the backbone of the production of nearly all British goods. Concurrently, King underscores this point in her novel, as throughout the novel, Mary is never discriminated against simply for being a woman. In preceding years and throughout history, society typically perceived women as naturally inferior to men, and women’s occupations were limited to taking care of the family and domestic occupations. Nevertheless, the overarching effect of the augmentation of the number of women employed in the British workforce was the society’s realization that women could perform at a level equal to men, and this helped facilitate the women’s rights movement in Britain, a leading factor in Britain’s evolution to a gender equal society. In the novel, throughout Mary Russell’s journeys across Britain, there is not a single time when
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...
Physical surroundings (such as a home in the countryside) in works of literary merit such as “Good Country People”, “Everyday Use”, and “Young Goodman Brown” shape psychological and moral traits of the characters, similarly and differently throughout the stories.
Breaking Gender Stereotypes in A Tale of Two Cities & nbsp; The men and the women of A Tale of Two Cites are violent, loving, cowardly, brave, and ruthless. Some people are weak and spoiled, while others are badly treated and vindictive. Many contrasts between men and women can be found within this story. & nbsp; A Tale of Two Cities clearly portrays very distinct divisions in the behavior of men. The aristocrats, or upperclassmen, rule and control all of France. The members of the aristocracy never have to undergo hardships; they always have everything presented to them on a silver platter. They do whatever they want with total disregard for the peasants. & created these horrible living conditions. This drives the peasants to revolution, and the decapitation of the aristocrats via the guillotine. They have a mob mentality and kill everyone who they believe is the enemy. Neither the aristocrats nor the peasants show any compassion toward the other social class. & nbsp; Some men in A Tale of Two Cities contrast greatly. Sydney Carton is a drunk who works for an unappreciative lawyer. He has no family; he is "a disappointed drudge who cares for no man on earth, and no man cares for him" (75). He is referred to as "the Jackal" who is necessary in society, but not welcomed or keep a life you love beside you" (138). She calls Sydney, "poor Mr. Carton" and feels sympathy for him (189). Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay, is loved by his wife Lucie and his daughter; he is "the object of sympathy and compassion" (74). Carton and Darnay both adore Lucie Manette, but they are two very different men.  & nbsp; The women in A Tale of Two Cites behave in extremely opposing ways. Lucie Manette is a frail young woman. She constantly becomes overwhelmed and faints at even the thought of danger. She has never been exposed to poverty nor suffered through severe hardships. Lucie is genteel; she is constantly pampered and described by Ms. Pross as "the wife of Lucifer" (336). She readily cuts off a man's head and "she never missed [an execution]" (342). Madame Defarge's sadistic nature is seen best during the execution of Foulon, an aristocrat. She tortures him, "as a cat might have done to a mouse" and his head is impaled "upon a pike & nbsp; Madame Defarge and Dr. Manette both despise the Evrémondes. Dr. Manette is imprisoned by the Evrémonde brothers in the Bastille for 18 years. "I, Alexandre Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this night of the year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce I denounce [The Evrémondes] to Heaven and to earth" (304). Madame Defarge's family was brutally slaughtered by the Evrémonde brothers. She tells her husband, "those dead are my dead, and that summons to answer for those things descends to me!" (312). She is adamant about avenging her family's deaths and refuses to quit until the last of the Evrémondes are eliminated. "Then tell wind and fire where to stop, but don't tell me" (312). She is even planning on murdering a small child due to her psychotic need for revenge. The Evrémondes destroy & nbsp; Madame Defarge's behavior is more typical of men. The oppressed male peasants join together to form a group of Jacques, or soldiers, to overthrow the aristocracy. The Jacques use The Defarge's wine-shop as a meeting place.  & nbsp; In A Tale of Two Cities, all gender stereotypes are broken. Women can be ruthless murderers and men can be passive cowards. La Guillotine is the sole authority in Paris, fueled by a mob mentality that recognizes class distinctions, not gender.
Gender roles and inequality are still evolving and continue to change. It has only been not that long ago that women started to break out their outlined roles and looked at about the same or- almost the same level- as men on a wide scale basis. Indeed, some women in certain parts of the world are still represented in the same way as in both plays that will be compared in this essay. The characters in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll's House highlight the challenges of gender roles. The attention focused on points of comparison and contrast of men vs women's reactions in the course of both plays, which, allow the audience to think about gender identity and role conflicts. The other common shared view in both plays is that they are both showcased from a female perspective.
In Arcadia, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Look Back in Anger, the women characters play distinct roles in the dramas. However, the type of roles, the type of characters portrayed, and the purpose the women’s roles have in developing the plot and themes vary in each play. As demonstrated by The Importance of Being Earnest and Look Back in Anger, the majority of women’s roles ultimately reflect that women in British society were viewed to be unequal to men in love and in relationships and generally the weaker sex, emotionally, physically and intellectually. However, I have found an exception to this standard in the play Arcadia, in which Thomasina Coverly plays the role of a young genius.
Women and men are not equal. Never have been, and it is hard to believe that they ever will be. Sexism permeates the lives of women from the day they are born. Women are either trying to fit into the “Act Like a Lady” box, they are actively resisting the same box, or sometimes both. The experience of fitting in the box and resisting the box can be observed in two plays: Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” and Henrick Ibsen’s “A Doll House”. In Hansberry’s play, initially, Beneatha seems uncontrolled and independent, but by the end she is controlled and dependent; whereas, in Ibsen’s play Nora seems controlled and dependent at the beginning of the play, but by the end she is independent and free.
Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing is, on the surface, a typical romantic comedy with a love-plot that ends in reconciliation and marriage. This surface level conformity to the conventions of the genre, however, conceals a deeper difference that sets Much Ado apart. Unlike Shakespeare’s other romantic comedies, Much Ado about Nothing does not mask class divisions by incorporating them into an idealized community. Instead of concealing or obscuring the problem of social status, the play brings it up explicitly through a minor but important character, Margaret, Hero’s “waiting gentlewoman.” Shakespeare suggests that Margaret is an embodiment of the realistic nature of social class. Despite her ambition, she is unable to move up in hierarchy due to her identity as a maid. Her status, foiling Hero’s rich, protected upbringing, reveals that characters in the play, as well as global citizens, are ultimately oppressed by social relations and social norms despite any ambition to get out.
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” she tells a story about a young girl’s resistance to womanhood in a society infested with gender roles and stereotypes. The story takes place in the 1940s on a fox farm outside of Jubilee, Ontario, Canada. During this time, women were viewed as second class citizens, but the narrator was not going to accept this position without a fight.
The narrator, a young girl, feels more inclined to spend her time outside alongside her father, “I worked willingly under his eyes, and with a feeling of pride.” She finds her place in a man’s world, outdoors in her father’s domain. While she is a female, she does not relate herself to the things of feminine nature. When her mother goes to speak with her father in the barn, the narrator “felt my mother had no business down here,” admitting that it was a man’s world, and also her place, but not her mother’s. Her mother could not stand the idea of her daughter doing a man’s work, reminding her husband, “Wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you’ll have real help and then I can use her more in the house.
Hilda Samuels and Hally’s mother can be compared and contrasted in Athol Fugard’s ‘Master Harold’… and the boys. They can be compared based on their relationship with the overbearing men in their lives as well as their absence in the play as a whole. They are both females; however, they are from different cultural backgrounds. There is a distinct difference between the race as well as the class of both females. The relationship between Hally’s father and mother as well as Willie and Hilda emphasises how dynamic the relationship between a domineering male and a subservient female can be. The two relationships reveal how similar the situations are even though the females are from completely different cultures.
This twentieth-century tradition of dystopian novels is a possible influence, with classics like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 standing prominent. The pessimism associated with novels of this genre—where society is presented as frightening and restrictive—exposes the gender inequality between men and women to be deleterious. An aspect of the way male/female relationships are presented in both texts is the repression of female sexuality by men, possibly stemming from a subliminal fear of women attaining power in a male-dominated society. Brocklehurst—a possible reflection of Bront’s Evangelical minister at Cowan Bridge, her own poorly run school—is a male authoritative figure whose relationship with the girls at Lowood is one of imposed tyranny. He means to “tame and humble” them through deprivations and restrictions, but such removal of liberties like cutting off the girls’ hair, consequentially robbing them of female attributes, can be interpreted as the male repression of feminine sexuality.... ...
In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, the idea of patriarchy ruled the many societies all over the world. Particularly in Britain, its “overarching patriarchal model” (Marsh) had “reserved power and privilege for men” (Marsh). Also during this time period feminist literature began to arise and was invaded by, “the complex social, ethical, and economic roots of sexual politics… as testimony to gender bias and the double standard” (“Sexual Politics and Feminist Literature”). In Jane Austen’s writing, readers have been aware of her constant themes of female independence and gender equality. However, many have criticized the author for the fact that many of her “individualistic” female characters have ended up
“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.
During the early modern period when many of the following texts were written, the position of a woman in society was dictated by the patriarchal nature of familial relationships. Women were seen as subordinate in favour of their husbands and fathers. The definition of ‘empower’ is “to give power or authority” (Dictionary.com, 2015). There will be 3 sections of this essay, each part looking at empowerment, the historical context of its respective play and its portrayal of women. It will examine the identities of women in society from a feminist perspective with the focus being mainly on three early modern texts in particular; The Duchess of Malfi, The Roaring Girl and The Witch of Edmonton.