Despite Russia being unstable during the 1860s due to political conflicts, class conflicts, and various revolutionary ideologies shaking up traditional customs, women were still constantly trapped in their own state of oppression. Women were faced with inequality everywhere - from their community, to even their own family. Compared to men, they were subordinated legally at every social level and weren’t allowed to participate in occupations outside of their domestic work. In What is to Be Done?, Nikolai Chernyshevsky implements much of the intelligentsia’s ideas for transforming the subordination of women. The novel centers on Vera Pavlovna, a woman who escapes a suffocating lifestyle and forced marriage, becomes an entrepreneur, and finds her own true love with the help of her new found independence. Chernyshevsky uses Vera’s journey as an example of how a woman is oppressed and how she is able to be liberated from that oppression.
Immediately, the story sets off with Vera living under the rule of an autocratic mother who wants to have her marry the son of their tenement block owner. Although Vera has aspirations of her own, she is bound to a lifelong servitude to her family and a loveless marriage to which she does not want to commit. This shows how not only men contributed to women’s subordination in Russia, but the women had a social role in this as well. Vera’s mother wants her to marry rich in hopes of gaining money, power, and status. All of these motives show how Vera’s mother thinks in her own best interest before her daughter’s happiness, and even hints at how desperate not only women, but people of lower class were to escape their social stigma. However, arranged marriage and lifelong servitude is not unique in only...
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... and Lopukhov had to receive permission from one another in order to be able to enter each other’s room. They further established a “neutral” room where they were able to talk and drink tea together. Chernyshevsky purposely paints these characters the way they are to exemplify how men and women are able to have a respectful, egalitarian life together. The equal relationship between sexes could also suggest a relationship of equality between social classes.
Vera displayed independence and broke out of her oppression on every level - domestic, economic, and political. She breaks out of her domestic subordination and potential life long servitude to her family through marriage. Using the marriage to her advantage, she cleverly creates a production cooperative and further defies the common notion that women cannot have occupations outside of their home. Furthermore,
A woman’s role in the early twentieth century still revolved around serving the male members of one’s family. Klara was tied to the traditional role of a female. She would have chores as well as having to make supper for her father, grand father and sometimes Eamon. Klara was more independence than the average woman because she was taught two arts by two masters. She could tailor suits, and carve wood. She had two skills that were named to be man’s skills. Her knowledge gave her the power to control what happened in her life. Klara was respected in her town for her skills because they usually came to her to make suits. Eamon acknowledged her skill and asked her to make a red suit. Her knowledge of these skills gave her more independence, freedom and power. She was one of the few female members in her community who had their own income. She had freedom to do what she wanted with her life but she was still restricted by her society because she was still a woman.
Like in A Double Life, our main characters are brought together based on love for one another. This story being with Vadim’s letter to his sister in which he contends that “it is evident...that [she hasn’t] loved’ like he has (Rostopchina 50). Throughout the story, Vadim uses a lot of descriptive language when talking about Vera which helps the reader believe his love for this woman. Unlike A Double Life, however, Vadim is stopped from marrying his love. Because of his lack of wealth or a title Vera’s “mother was completely opposed to the idea of giving Vera in marriage to [Vadim]” (Rostopchina 64). Like Dimitri, Vadim is not a desirable candidate for marriage because of his lower status. This obsession with marrying for money, like we briefly saw in A Double Life, is very important to high society Russian citizens. When Vadim returns after a year to marry Vera, he discovers she was persuaded by her family into marrying an old wealthy general. Instead of waiting for her love, Vera secured her future through a strategic marriage and both she and Vadim will pay the
In the short story, “Girl,” the narrator describes certain tasks a woman should be responsible for based on the narrator’s culture, time period, and social standing. This story also reflects the coming of age of this girl, her transition into a lady, and shows the age gap between the mother and the daughter. The mother has certain beliefs that she is trying to pass to her daughter for her well-being, but the daughter is confused by this regimented life style. The author, Jamaica Kincaid, uses various tones to show a second person point of view and repetition to demonstrate what these responsibilities felt like, how she had to behave based on her social standing, and how to follow traditional customs.
Being one of the greatest Russian writers of 20th century, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn had a unique talent that he used to truthfully depict the realities of life of ordinary people living in Soviet era. Unlike many other writers, instead of writing about “bright future of communism”, he chose to write about everyday hardships that common people had to endure in Soviet realm. In “Matryona’s Home”, the story focuses on life of an old peasant woman living in an impoverished collectivized village after World War 2 . In the light of Soviet’s propaganda of creating a new Soviet Nation, the reader can observe that Matryona’s personality and way of life drastically contradicted the desired archetype of New Soviet Man. Like most of the people in her village,
Bolsheviks entered the political world in 1917 with the ideas of deliberating women and making them equal to men as well as this idea of westernizing Russia. Based on the book, both ideas were closely associated. Women were seen as raw materials that can be used to transform. As a result, women who were already member of the Communists party were sent to the countryside to transform primitive women also known as babas and transformed them into Comrades, the free and knowledgeable women. These transformed women would then move to the city and work in factories and industrial workshop to westernize and industrialize Russia and that will symbolize women freedom and equality to men. Even though these women will have a much lower...
When you start to discuss such symbolic topics such as women 's rights, one tends to realize the depth and significance it has had on the world throughout history. In the short stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin we discover how this particular subject was projected in this general time period.
This ascribed identity is the result of restrictions placed on her by domesticity and the female oppression that weakened and upset her normal course of development. Through tyrannical marriages, her confidence would be shattered and she would be entirely dependent upon her husband; even surrendering control of her body to him. In education, she would be taught to be obedient and superficial so that she would remain dependent in the domestic sphere and serve as a decorative object for her husband. She was kept of out of working professions to force a sense of respectability on her and prevent her from using the intellect and talent she was born with. All of these mistreatments impacted some portion of middle-class life that prevented women from living the same quality of life as men. Therefore, the domesticity described by these two women was used to justify a forced subjugation that disrupted the natural progression of female intelligence, and
Women had no choice but to follow whatever society told them to because there was no other option for them. Change was very hard for these women due to unexpected demands required from them. They held back every time change came their way, they had to put up with their oppressors because they didn’t have a mind of their own. Both authors described how their society affected them during this historical period.
At this time society was dominated by men, making women’s life extremely challenging and limited. The position and status of a woman ultimately depended on that of her husband. She was not given many rights unless it was allowed by her husband. Women had to withstand arranged marriages and there were times they encountered abuse from their spouse. What many people do not see in this society is that women longed for their own empowerment and they wanted to be given the opportunity to create their own success in life without being overshadowed by their husbands.
Jane Eyre is the story of a journey to be loved. Jane seeks not just for romantic love but for being valued. Throughout the course of the book, Jane must learn how to gain love without sacrificing herself in the process. Only after proving her self-sufficiency to herself can she marry Rochester and not be asymmetrically dependent upon him as her “master.” The marriage can be one between equals. As Jane says: “I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. . . . To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.
An article from the Library of Congress states, “Russian women did not enjoy the same position as men in society or within the family” (Curtis). In the 19th century, Russian men were dominant in the society over their female counterparts. In fact, it was not just social values that were held by the people. The patriarchy was codified into the law of Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Russian legal code gave the husbands, or male head of the household, almost unlimited power to make decisions within the family (“Russian”). The wives were expected to obey their husbands every wish and demand without a say so. While Madam’s husband is dead by the time we are introduced to the character, one can still see the patriarchy involved. Gayev, Madam’s brother, seems to be the one to make the final decision for the family in the play and he is the one to go with Lopakhin to the auction of the cherry orchard, even though he has proved himself time and time again to be completely incompetent at doing business. Madam surely knows this and does not react as it has been conditioned in her to obey a male’s every
The Bolshevik Revolution played a role of women’s lives in Russia. According to Stites and Rimmel, the Revolution affected the women’s lives positively or not at all. The Soviet women went through phases throughout the Revolution and experienced several difficulties before, during, and after the Revolution. The difficulties included inequality among education, labor, leadership, and a person’s rights overall (Stites 165). Women were basically required to maintain their households and take care of their children while men made the decisions and worked for their families (164). This document argues both sides of how the Revolution improved or did not affect women’s lives. Stites believes that the Revolution started the steps for women to improve their lives, while Rimmel believes the Revolution did not affect women’s lives (163). The Revolution, in my opinion, mostly improved the lives of women but the women did not secure their overall rights. The Soviet women during the Revolution had an idea on how to improve their lives and succeeded to a certain extent but that idea was not fully achieved and is still hard to achieve to this day.
The brief ending in Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Lapdog” depicts the future of Gurov and Anna’s relationship beyond the story’s pages and ultimately sparks more questions, rather than answering them. When true love is finally fortified with an embrace between the two characters in the ending, “…it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin” (Chekhov, 420). This scene for these two lovers represents a pivotal moment, not only for their relationship, but also for themselves as individuals. Up until this point in his unhappy life, Gurov attempts to quench his desire for passion through womanizing and superficial festivities with officials,
Kenneth Burke, “The rhetorical theorist and critic who probably has had the greatest impact on rhetorical criticism as it is practiced today” (¬Foss, 2009, 63), revealed to the world the methodology of cluster analysis in an attempt to gain understanding about a rhetor’s worldview. In Samy Charnine’s nondiscursive paintings, words seem to explode off of the canvas and out at anyone who is viewing his work. The method of cluster analysis involves collection of these words, or key terms, and examination of what elements seem to cluster around them resulting in four steps of the method. Burke believed that the terms that one is able to gather from a discursive or nondiscursive artifact formulate that rhetor’s terminsitic screen, and become a way of showing to others whether consciously or subconsciously, the values, morals, and things that the rhetor holds to be of importance in life. Both verbal as well as visual communication brought out in an artifact can be of equal importance (Mukarovsky, 1977). Charnine’s paintings take a supportive stance on sustainability to be further elucidated through three steps.
Many women in modern society make life altering decisions on a daily basis. Women today have prestigious and powerful careers unlike in earlier eras. It is more common for women to be full time employees than homemakers. In 1879, when Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, there was great controversy over the out come of the play. Nora’s walking out on her husband and children was appalling to many audiences centuries ago. Divorce was unspoken, and a very uncommon occurrence. As years go by, society’s opinions on family situations change. No longer do women have a “housewife” reputation to live by and there are all types of family situations. After many years of emotional neglect, and overwhelming control, Nora finds herself leaving her family. Today, it could be said that Nora’s decision is very rational and well overdue.