BLISS (1918)
The short story " Bliss" is written by Katherine Mansfield and was published in August 1918 in the "English Review" for the first time. The short story is then reprinted as Bliss and Other Stories. The main character of the short story "Bliss" is Bertha Young who lives in Hampstead, London. In the story, Bertha is a woman at the age of thirty, who seems so innocent and have a pure feelings towards the people around her. She is also described as a happy soul who feels so blissful and childish. There comes a day where Bertha had arranged a dinner party for the people who are close to her and her husband, Harry.The main character with her husband in the story is considered as an upper class society with the presence of servant in the setting of the story.
The other characters in the story is Harry, the husband, Pearl Fulton, the best friend of Bertha, Mr and Mrs. Norman Knight, the dinner guests followed by Eddie. There are also characters that played a minimal role in the story is Mary, the servant, Nurse, the nanny of Little B and also Little B or Little Bertha, the daughter of Bertha's and Harry's. The husband, Harry is a character that is characterized through the eyes of Bertha and at the last, she realized that the personality of her husband is not as her thoughts towards him. The image that reflected by Harry, the husband was totally unexpected and made her to be in question about her life that she had to go through after knowing the relation between him and her best friend.
The dinner guests, Mr. Norman Knight as a playwright and Mrs. Norman Knight as an interior designer are close friends to the couple and known as ' Mug' and ' Face ' to the family followed by Eddie who is an effeminate as well as a poet wi...
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...ey and listen to what they said and the highlights here is accept the things done by the man whether it is wrong or right.
As a conclusion, the woman in early 20th century was criticized and pulled back from expressing the desire of their sexuality and freedom to do what they like. The setting of house with a garden that symbolize the luxurious and happiness that have by Bertha is described throughout the story.The story of Bliss tells that although it is a woman, do not under estimate the capable of her doing work and stuff that might be better than men does.The rights for woman should be protected and an appreciation should be given to the woman who make the world. Moreover, the woman especially the married one should not stop there in achieve their dream and wish just because you are married to someone, it does not mean you can't achieve anything in your life.
This source provided the unique perspective of what was thought to be the perfect household, with a man who worked and a wife who cooked and cleaned. However, it also showed how a woman could also do what a man can do, and in some cases they could do it even better. This work is appropriate to use in this essay because it shows how men talked down to their wives as if they were children. This work shows the gradual progression of woman equality and how a woman is able to make her own decisions without her husband’s input.
The book became a great source of information for me, which explained the difficulties faced by women of the mentioned period. The author succeeded to convince me that today it is important to remember the ones who managed to change the course of history. Contemporary women should be thankful to the processes, which took place starting from the nineteenth century. Personally, I am the one believing that society should live in terms of equality. It is not fair and inhuman to create barriers to any of the social members.
The central characters, setting, and tone of the story help create the central idea of the psychological and internal desires of a woman. Through the view of the central characters it is established that the lawyer’s wife wants more than her average day and is searching for more to life than the daily routine of a house wife. Jean Varin is believed to be the desire she is looking for; however, she is not fulfilled or happy with the outcome of her choices. The setting and the tone reveal the psychological need for the wife to have an adventurous, lavish, and opulent lifestyle that she feels can only be achieved in Paris.
In the nineteenth century the inequality of women was more than profound throughout society. Margaret Fuller and Fanny Fern both women of the century were much farther advanced in education and opinion than most women of the time. Fuller and Fern both harbored opinions and used their writing as a weapon against the conditions that were considered the norm in society for women. Margaret and Fuller were both influential in breaking the silence of women and criticizing the harsh confinement and burden of marriage to a nineteenth century man. Taking into consideration Woman in he Nineteenth Century by Fuller, Aunt Hetty on Matrimony, and The Working-Girls of New York by Fern, the reader can clearly identify the different tones and choice of content, but their purposes are moving towards the same cause. Regardless of their differences in writing, both Fern and Fuller wrote passionately in order to make an impact for their conviction, which was all too similar.
Finally, even though, for a long time, the roles of woman in a relationship have been established to be what I already explained, we see that these two protagonists broke that conception and established new ways of behaving in them. One did it by having an affair with another man and expressing freely her sexuality and the other by breaking free from the prison her marriage represented and discovering her true self. The idea that unites the both is that, in their own way, they defied many beliefs and started a new way of thinking and a new perception of life, love and relationships.
Specific characters in which their names act as their genes are Bertha and Lily. Very few female characters’ names are not in the diminutive, and one is Bertha, a preeminent figure in the upper class. When Lily is about to reveal Bertha’s affair her “words died under the impenetrable insolence of Bertha’s smile…then without a word, she rose and went down to her cabin” (Wharton 221). Bertha’s superiority is evident in Wharton’s’ diction and Lily’s symbolic positioning. Because Lily’s words die under Bertha and she goes downstairs, or below Bertha, it signifies her subservience. Lily’s name is even in the diminutive, since it ends in “y”, which further represents her subordination. This enables Wharton to use Bertha’s name to foreshadow, or predestine, her eventual dominance over Lily. Like Bertha, Lily’s name denotes her fate, particularly her alienation. Her name represents nature, but, since a flower cannot survive in this metropolitan environment, it symbolizes why Lily cannot conform and will not prosper. A lily further allows Wharton to comment on Lily’s personality. If she were to succumb to the values of her class she would “…sacrifice [the] fineness of spirit that sets her apart” (Barnett). This fineness relates to Lily’s innate morality, such as a lily’s white coloring. Since she is characterized as virtuous, she will fail
Jane spends her first 10 years of her life at Gateshead Hall, a lavish mansion. She lived with her Aunt, Mrs Reed, and three cousins, Eliza, Georgina and John. During her time in the mansion she wouldn't dare argue with the mistress, and fulfilled every duty. Jane is deprived of love, joy and acceptance. She is very much unwanted and isolated.
The movement for female right is one of the important social issue and it is ongoing reaction against the traditional male definition of woman. In most civilizations there was very unequal treatment between women and men with the expectation being that women should simply stay in the house and let the men support them. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, and Trifles, by Susan Glaspell, are two well-known plays that give rise to discussions over male-female relationships. In both stories, they illustrate the similar perspectives on how men repress women in their marriages; men consider that women should obey them and their respective on their wives is oppressed showing the problems in two marriages that described in two plays. Therefore, in this essay, I will compare two similar but contrast stories; A Doll's House and Trifles, focusing on how they describe the problems in marriage related to women as victims of suppressed right.
From the beginning of this work, the woman is shown to have gone mad. We are given no insight into the past, and we do not know why she has been driven to the brink of insanity. The “beautiful…English place” that the woman sees in her minds eye is the way men have traditionally wanted women to see their role in society. As the woman says, “It is quite alone standing well back from the road…It makes me think of English places…for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people. There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden—large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them.” This lovely English countryside picture that this woman paints to the reader is a shallow view at the real likeness of her prison. The reality of things is that this lovely place is her small living space, and in it she is to function as every other good housewife should. The description of her cell, versus the reality of it, is a very good example of the restriction women had in those days. They were free to see things as they wanted, but there was no real chance at a woman changing her roles and place in society. This is mostly attributed to the small amount of freedom women had, and therefore they could not bring about a drastic change, because men were happy with the position women filled.
The Novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte took a surprising twist when Bertha "Mason" Rochester was introduced. Bertha leaves a traumatizing impression on Jane’s conscious. However, this particular misfortunate event was insidiously accumulating prior to Jane’s arrival at Thornfield. Through Bertha, the potential alternative dark turn of events of Jane’s past are realized, thus bringing Jane closer to finding herself.
...show us that the choices for women in marriage were both limited and limiting in their scope and consequences. As can be seen, it came down to a choice between honoring the private will of the self, versus, honoring the traditions and requirements of society as a whole. Women were subject to the conditions set down by the man of the house and because of the social inequality of women as a gender class; few fought the rope that tied them down to house, hearth, and husband, despite these dysfunctions. They simply resigned themselves to not having a choice.
The result of this was an alteration of society 's relation to nature. The text goes over the change of role for women due to this alteration, and it argues that women have always taken part in domestic labour before it was being eroded by technological advances. (Green 60) Schreiner explains through the text that industrial expansion was a huge factor in reducing and restricting the traditional roles of the female body: “For the present, we see no such natural and spontaneous division of labor based on natural sexual distinctions in the new fields of intellectual or delicately skilled manual labor, which are taking the place of the old.” (160-61) This portrays the access of labour through an appeal to the detrimental effects of technological progress for a women in the early twentieth-century. (Green 60) The “place of old” became elusive, and was taken over by the new. The female body was becoming degenerated as a whole by this technological growth. (Green 60) The text again displayed the constraint that these technological
It pinpoints out how women were taken as during the 1900’s. The story also highlights the extremes of repression and sexism by viewing the woman as mad by a rest cure. In the view of the Narrators role as a woman, lack of intellectual stimulation in her thought and unjust environment usually led her insane. This points out failure in the society in which sexism and oppression was carried out towards women. An aspect of feminism portrayed by the Narrator in the story is how she tries to dismiss John’s opinions. She repeatedly requests him to relocate her to another room downstairs. This is an aspect of feminism which should be encouraged among women to demand for their freedom. The Narrator takes part in not conquering with John. But as time goes she is less able to feel the usual relief. John rejects the request and replies to her that she must spend in the nursery room which is barred and rings similar to those of dungeon on the walls. She is denied the right to choose what pleases her. Later she comes to like the nursery room where other times she locks herself up to avoid husband’s disturbance upon the story. Also the act of Narrator’s wallpaper routine is a sense of imprisonment. She recognizes that the pattern is so ugly like a cage imprisoning women who are desperately trying to escape. The Narrator figuratively tears the bars and the wallpaper of the cage to clear her way to escape.
Charlotte Bronte utilizes the character of Bertha Rochester to interrupt Jane’s potential happy ending with Mr. Edward Rochester. Bertha is announced by Mr. Briggs as a way to stop the wedding and it also shows how hopeless Jane’s situation is. “That is my wife “said he. ‘Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know—such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours! And this is what I wished to have,’” (312) and “’I wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout,’” (312) are quotes that express Mr. Rochester’s reasons for trying to remarry while he already has a wife, meanwhile showing his disposition towards said wife. Had Mr. Briggs and Mr. Mason not been present for the ceremony, Jane may have lived happily in ignorance. Due to Bertha’s involvement however, Jane could never truly call herself Mr. Rochester’s wife. She says, “’Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire—I should then be your mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical—is false.’” (323) This quote shows that as a result of Bertha’s exposure, Jane refuses to marry Mr. Rochester. The influence that Bertha’s brief debut had on Jane’s life was significant enough to hinder the growth of her relationship with Mr. Rochester.
“There is no perfect relationship. The idea that there is gets us into so much trouble.”-Maggie Reyes. Kate Chopin reacts to this certain idea that relationships in a marriage during the late 1800’s were a prison for women. Through the main protagonist of her story, Mrs. Mallard, the audience clearly exemplifies with what feelings she had during the process of her husbands assumed death. Chopin demonstrates in “The Story of an Hour” the oppression that women faced in marriage through the understandings of: forbidden joy of independence, the inherent burdens of marriage between men and women and how these two points help the audience to further understand the norms of this time.