Walking alone on the street, Claire stops to think about she’s going to do next. She thought of her day so far of hanging out with friends and wondered if there was anything she wanted to do. Not thinking of how other people perceived her or how she’s free to make her own decisions, she proceeded on with her day. A woman of her century, Claire doesn’t need to worry about status, who she is going to marry, or submit to someone else’s demands. In Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, this is the opposite of what his characters Eustacia, Thomasin, and Mrs. Yeobright have to worry about. Through the portrayals of these characters Hardy criticizes the limitations placed on nineteenth century woman.
Women in previous societal views were always seen fragile beings in need of protection. That’s why marriage, although unofficially, was always required to do anything within the world. Whether it was to gain a higher social status or to reach certain personal goals, marriage was allowed for a certain amount freedom for women. This view is true for Hardy’s character Eustacia. Trapped in Egdon Heath she viewed “Egdon [as] her Hades and since coming there she embodied much of what it was dark into its tone” (Hardy 58). Letting her feelings of resentment and entrapment cloud her view of the situation, she becomes depressed. She heard of the wealthy Clym Yeobright coming home and hearing comments of them making “a very pretty pigeon pair” makes her think he was the salvation she needed to escape her personal hell (95). This thought was not uncommon at the time, women often seeking to make their life better sought out men that they perceived as wealthy and higher status to achieve their goals. Thomasin, on the other hand, never bought into the ...
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...rent marriages and to allow the reader to compare the and come to their own conclusions on how the women were treated.
Limited in what they can do Eustacia, Thomasin, and Mrs. Yeobright can only hope to find something that would allow them to experience what they want to do in life without having to get permission from someone who is seen as higher than them. While Claire doesn’t have to worry about getting permission from someone, or having to relinquish her dreams to follow someone else’s, she is free to do as she pleases and can make her decisions by herself and have no one else influence it.
Works Cited
Brady, Kristin. "Thomas Hardy and Matters of Gender." Cambridge Companion Thomas Hardy. Ed. Dale K Kramer. Cambridge University Press, May 2006. Web. 23 Nov. 2013.
Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 199-. Print.
Turner fails to realize the extent to which Native Americans existed in the ‘Wilderness’ of the Americas before the frontier began to advance. Turner’s thesis relies on the idea that “easterners … in moving to the wild unsettled lands of the frontier, shed the trappings of civilization … and by reinfused themselves with a vigor, an independence, and a creativity that the source of American democracy and national character.” (Cronon) While this idea seems like a satisfying theory of why Americans are unique, it relies on the notion that the Frontier was “an area of free land,” which is not the case, undermining the the...
Every individual has two lives, the life we live, and the life we live after that. Nobody is perfect, but if one works hard enough, he or she can stay away from failure. The Natural is a novel written by Bernard Malamud. It is Malamud’s first novel that initially received mixed reactions but afterwards, it was regarded as an outstanding piece of literature. It is a story about Roy Hobbs who after making mistakes in his life, he returns the bribery money and is left with self-hatred for mistakes he has done. Hobbs was a baseball player who aspired to be famous, but because of his carnal and materialistic desire, his quest for heroism failed, as he was left with nothing. In the modern world, the quest for heroism is a difficult struggle, and this can be seen through the protagonist in The Natural.
In a lively account filled that is with personal accounts and the voices of people that were in the past left out of the historical armament, Ronald Takaki proffers us a new perspective of America’s envisioned past. Mr. Takaki confronts and disputes the Anglo-centric historical point of view. This dispute and confrontation is started in the within the seventeenth-century arrival of the colonists from England as witnessed by the Powhatan Indians of Virginia and the Wamapanoag Indians from the Massachusetts area. From there, Mr. Takaki turns our attention to several different cultures and how they had been affected by North America. The English colonists had brought the African people with force to the Atlantic coasts of America. The Irish women that sought to facilitate their need to work in factory settings and maids for our towns. The Chinese who migrated with ideas of a golden mountain and the Japanese who came and labored in the cane fields of Hawaii and on the farms of California. The Jewish people that fled from shtetls of Russia and created new urban communities here. The Latinos who crossed the border had come in search of the mythic and fabulous life El Norte.
Axtell, James. “Native Reactions to the Invasion of North America.” Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. 97-121. Print.
of the book. Ed. Charles Bohner and Lyman Grant. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006. Fitzgerald, F. Scott.
LaDuke, Winona. All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999. Print.
Francis, L. (1998). Native time, a historical time line of native America. New York: St Martins Press.
King, Thomas. “Let Me Entertain You. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 61-89. Print.
In Our savage neighbors written by Peter Silver, violence and terror characterized the relationship between the Indians and the Pennsylvanian colonists. The conspectus of Silver’s book resides on the notion that fear was the prime motivator that led to the rebirth
...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 Tenth edition. Edited by Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Longman Publishers, pp. 113-117. 371-377.
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...
...es for love and overcame the social expectations of the quintessential woman in the nineteenth century; whereas their counterparts around them would have chosen class and wealth. Edna Pontellier’s decision to move into her pigeon house and away from her husband’s rule and the vexing job of caring for her children was viewed as societal suicide, but to her liberation and self-actualization as a woman was more important. Elizabeth Bennet ultimately disregarded her mother’s wishes, and passed over Mr. Collins, she initially disregarded Mr. Darcy as a possible suitor but love proved otherwise. These women were on a path of destruction to free themselves from a long reign of oppression, their challenge of conventional methods within the nineteenth century, proved successful not only to them, but for a future collective group of women who would follow in their footsteps.
of Native American Culture as a Means of Reform,” American Indian Quarterly 26, no. 1
“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.