Elizabeth Gaskell was the most established female figure in Victorian British Literature. By the time she blossomed into a literary career, she was thirty-eight years old. Most of her novels centered on the plight of the working people in England struggling to survive and dealing with the social stigma of class and wealth. Even though she received harsh criticism from critics for having sympathy for the poor, it didn’t deter her from a successful writing career, nor deny her talent as a writer. In her last work Wives and Daughters; Gaskell implements her satire writing style to examine social issues in England. In August of 1864, Cornhill Magazine published her first novel called, Wives and Daughters.
Brief Summary of Wives and Daughters:
In the story of Wives and Daughters, Molly Gibson is the much-loved daughter of a widowed town doctor. Dr. Gibson is yearning for a companion as well as a mother figure of his seventeen-year-old daughter Molly.
Squire Hamley and his disable wife are close friends to Molly and her father. On occasion, Molly would spend time with the Hamley’s who lover as if she was one of their own children. The Hamley’s have two son’s inspiring to be scholars of science at Cambridge University. Squire and his wife, dote on their oldest son Osborne because they consider him to be a genius with a guarantee successful future and riches. On the other hand, Roger is portrayed as a passive vessel that won’t amount to nothing more than a good lad with no grand success in his future. The youngest son Roger returned home from Cambridge to report news about the oldest son, Osborne and his failure to meet the standards of the scholars at Cambridge. When Molly’s eyes met Roger’s lovely face, she quickly became ench...
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...skell puts Molly’s reputation as a respectable young lady on the line by insinuating that she was behaving unfashionably with Mr. Preston. For the women of the Victoria era, a large burden was placed upon their shoulders, which nobody can carry or maintain their entire life. While the novel provides plenty of insight into the different characters with a splash of comedy, it still addresses critical and social roles women contend with in a male dominated society in the 1800’s.
In most of her novels, Gaskell was expressing the need for social reform if people were going to be able to survive.
Works Cited
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Wives and Daughters. Ed. Angus Easson. USA New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. “Gender Matters.” Victorian Web.
. Web. 25 August 2000.
www.wikiepedia.com
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, The Yellow Wallpaper we are introduced to characters that can be argued to be representational of society in the 19th century. The narrator, wife to a seemingly prominent doctor, gives us a vision into the alienation and loss of reality due to her lack of labor. I also contend however that this alienation can also be attributed to her infantilization by her husband, which she willingly accepts. "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage" (1). The narrator here realizes her place among the order of society and even notes that it is to be expected. She is aware of her understanding that things between she and her husband are not equal not only because he is a doctor but because he is a man, and her husband.
Lasch-Quinn, Elisabeth. "Family." Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History. Ed. Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter W. Williams. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001. Student Resources in Context. Web. 6 Mar. 2014.
The Victorian period was a time of great hypocrisy. Despite the fact that the Protestant work ethic was gaining popular support amongst the Victorians and myths such as Samuel Smiles' "rags to riches" became part of mainstream Victorian culture, the Victorians were greatly divided into their respective social classes. Works like Thomas Carlyle's "The Irish Widow" and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Cry of the Children" exemplified the blatant disregard of the upper classes to that of the lower class. If the Victorians were divided amongst themselves, imagine what it was like for people of different religions and races. The Blacks of this period was one such race that suffered tremendously throughout the Victorian period. They were referred to as The Othered Victorians.
Margaret Hale in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South exemplifies the new type of woman a mid-nineteenth century woman should emulate. The contemporary woman is capable of balancing being a dutiful, generous, just woman while also satisfying her own passion, intellect, and moral activity. England needs women that can manifest their innate ability to sympathize with a capacity to change and adapt. The progressive world will require the modern woman to redefine the norms of social life.
Klein, Joan L., ed. _Daughters, Wives, and Widows: Writings by Men about Women and Marriage in England, 1500-1640_. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
'Well, women are used to worrying over trifles,' (Glaspell 957) remarks crime scene eyewitness Mr. Hale in Susan Glaspell's short play Trifles. As this quotation blatantly demonstrates, literature has had a lengthy history of gender bias, both in terms of adequate representation of women as authors and as formidable, strong characters. In this reference to his and the sheriff's wives, Mr. Hale presents the argumentative conflict that will prove prevalent, if latent, throughout the course of this work. In the play, the male characters are regarded as intellectually superior to their wives, who are patronized as rather childish for their concern in domestic detail. In Trifles, Glaspell makes a feminist leap as she portrays her female characters with ample cunning to secretly and humbly triumph over male condescending.
Through attention to detail, repeated comparison, shifting tone, and dialogue that gives the characters an opportunity to voice their feelings, Elizabeth Gaskell creates a divide between the poor working class and the rich higher class in Mary Barton. Gaskell places emphasis on the differences that separate both classes by describing the lavish, comfortable, and extravagant life that the wealthy enjoy and compares it to the impoverished and miserable life that the poor have to survive through. Though Gaskell displays the inequality that is present between both social classes, she also shows that there are similarities between them. The tone and diction change halfway through the novel to highlight the factors that unify the poor and rich. In the beginning of the story John Barton exclaims that, “The rich know nothing of the trials of the poor…” (11), showing that besides the amount of material possessions that one owns, what divides the two social classes is ability to feel and experience hardship. John Barton views those of the upper class as cold individuals incapable of experiencing pain and sorrow. Gaskell, however proves Barton wrong and demonstrates that though there are various differences that divide the two social classes, they are unified through their ability to feel emotions and to go through times of hardship. Gaskell’s novel reveals the problematic tension between the two social classes, but also offers a solution to this problem in the form of communication, which would allow both sides to speak of their concerns and worries as well as eliminate misunderstandings.
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...
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre entails a social criticism of the oppressive social ideas and practices of nineteenth-century Victorian society. The presentation of male and female relationships emphases men’s domination and perceived superiority over women. Jane Eyre is a reflection of Brontë’s own observation on gender roles of the Victorian era, from the vantage point of her position as governess much like Jane’s. Margaret Atwood’s novel was written during a period of conservative revival in the West partly fueled by a strong, well-organized movement of religious conservatives who criticized ‘the excesses of the sexual revolution.’ Where Brontë’s Jane Eyre is a clear depiction of the subjugation of women by men in nineteenth-century Western culture, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale explores the consequences of a reversal of women’s rights by men. 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 prominence. 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.
The nineteenth century saw rapid development and reform across the whole of the country; with the Industrial Revolution transforming life in Britain. For working class women life was an endless struggle of passivity and labour; as soon as they were old enough they worked on farms, in factories or as servants to the middle classes (Lambert, 2009). For women in general, life was oppressive; constantly overshadowed by the male gender who were considered dominant leaders. In a Victorian household, the male was head of the family; his wife and children respected him and obeyed him without question. This critical analysis of two nineteenth century novels - Hard Times by Charles Dickens and Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, will discuss the representation of the two female protagonists in the context of the Victorian period and question whether they do indeed portray an endless struggle for survival and independence.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was born in London on Setpember 29th, 1810 to William and Elizabeth Stevenson. Her father William was a former Unitarian minister who, after retiring from the ministry, “combined farming, writing, and teaching before being appointed Keeper of the Records to the Treasury" (Allott 10). Her mother, Elizabeth died just over a year after giving birth and, consequently, while still an infant, Gaskell was sent off to live with her aunt, Hannah Lumb who resided in Heathside, Knutford. Throughout her young life, up until her 1832 marriage, Gaskell lived in various places around England including Stratford-on-Avon, where she received some education, Newcastle, Edinburgh, and Manchester. It was in Manchester that she met her husband, William Gaskell, a minister’s assistant, “who was eventually to [become] Senior Minister and remain at Cross Street [Unitarian Chapel in Manchester] for the rest of a long, active life (Allott 11).” From 1832 to 1848, after her marriage to William Gaskell, Mrs. Gaskell lived a life of domesticity, giving birth to 6 children, with 4 surviving. Besides raising the 4 surviving children, Gaskell worked with her husband to aid, comfort, and minister to the poor of Manchester. In 1845, Gaskell suffered the haunting loss of her only son to scarlet fever at just nineteen months old. With the encouragement of her husband, Gaskell turned her grief towards writing, and her literary career began.
“Jane Austen is one of the few novelists in world literature who is regarded as a ‘classic’ and yet is widely read” (Kelly 1). Austen is the only novelist, prior to Charles Dickens, whose novels maintain a significantly popular readership, and generations of students regard her fictional world as literature with a capital ‘L.’ The British author, Jane Austen, gave the novel its distinctly modern character in the 19th century by describing ordinary people in everyday life, portraying strong female protagonists, and depicting the perils of misconstrued romance.
This novel was written in the Victorian Era, a time when society faces many social difficulties such as industrialization, prostitu...
Ross, Maggi. "Love and Marriage." Life in Elizabethan England 10:. N.p., 2008. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
Jane Austen had a limited range and it is commonly held that she was ignorant of the “great world” of history and poverty and royalty and that her ignorance dictated her choice of a domestic object.As the first great woman author in England . Jane Austen gave meaning to domesticity for the first time in English Fiction. Her novels are the first to assert the cultural significance of marriage and family their role in social and moral change.