Extended Essay
English
“How does Mitchell and Wharton use the actions of Scarlett and Lily in the face of adversity to reveal societal and cultural differences?”
Anna Ginther: (0008280-0151)
Supervisor: Aimee Ricken
How does Mitchell and Wharton use the actions of Scarlett and Lily in the face of adversity to reveal societal and cultural differences?
IDEAS:
Relationships with men/ jealousy towards other women
Differences when going into work force
Ultimate demise (Suicide vs. Perseverance)
Reaction to depravity of situation
Juxtapose initial description to end
Conflict is a necessary tool for authors to use in order to weave a story and develop their characters. When faced with difficult decisions or grim situations, one's actions
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The Columbia Guide to American Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Columbia UP, 2000. Questia School. Web. 12 May 2015. This guide covers women in all regions of America in the nineteenth century, focusing on aspects such as their role in labor, household duties, gender roles, and the economy. It also contains other sources of related works for further research. It will be useful to me in evaluating and comparing Northern and Southern culture in the nineteenth century in its chapters on gender roles, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and households and labor.
Marcellus, Jane. "What It Means to Be a Lady- Margaret Mitchell’s "Gone with the Wind" (1936)." Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender. Ed. Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen S. Silber. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003. 118-19. Questia School. Web. 12 May 2015. This book contains an analysis of Scarlett O’Hara’s role in Gone with the Wind as a figure of strength through overcoming the traditional ideal of the South’s women, the Southern belle. It includes commentary on how characters Melanie and Mammy perpetuate the patriarchal system of gender roles in the South, which may be useful in my development of Scarlett’s character in my paper, by comparing her with other characters. However, I could argue with this source’s assertion that Scarlett loses her Southern belle charm by discussing her manipulation of men through her
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It discusses how Scarlett is still considered a heroine due to her strength and courage, despite the fact that she is selfish and is lacking in many virtues. It also contains information about Mitchell writing her novel in the 1920’s, which I could examine in determining if Scarlett’s characterization is an accurate appraisal of Southern culture, or Mitchell’s views in her own time.
Sochen, June. Herstory: A Woman's View of American History. New York: Alfred, 1974. Questia School. Web. 12 May 2015. This book discusses how in an industrial society, women in high society were figurines that displayed their husbands wealth. It describes the increase in conspicuous consumption and idolization of the rich. This could help me develop why Lily is so determined to remain at a high social class and why she fell into a depression, because she was not accustomed to the active role that women of the lower class had to fill.
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone with the Wind. New York: Macmillan, 1936. Print. This book is tells the story of Scarlett O’Hara whom I will be analyzing, therefore a majority of my quotes will be found from
In the movie Gone With the Wind, Scarlett, the main character was a woman with many struggles in her life. She lived on a farm with her father, her mother, and her slaves but when she left to go help the wounded, the Yankees came to her house and used it as a base camp. The Yankees took all of Scarlett?s family?s food, crops, and animals. Also while Scarlett was gone her mother got sick. Once Scarlett came back to her farm (Terra) her mother was dead. When the war ended her family was too poor to pay the taxes so she married Frank, a rich businessman, so she could pay the taxes. After her husband died she remarried a richer man named Rhett and they had a child named Bonnie.
The primitive American culture during the 1950’s has damaging effects on Esther’s mental stability because she discovers that marriage halts career focus and promotes male dominance. Esther is a young woman who aspires to achieve a high standing in society by becoming a renowned writer. However, her motivation to follow her passion is stifled by the other women prevalent in the society. During her internship for the New York magazine, Esther witnesses:
As many women took on a domestic role during this era, by the turn of the century women were certainly not strangers to the work force. As the developing American nation altered the lives of its citizens, both men and women found themselves struggling economically and migrated into cities to find work in the emerging industrialized labor movement . Ho...
Different documents in the Gilded Age prominently illustrated gender inequality in their portrayal of men and women within society. Many photographs in the time period by Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine did not shed light on a woman’s hardships, but rather undermined their domestic work. Society failed to give women credit for their work at home due to the common misconception that a woman’s work was easier than that of a man’s. Margaret Byington’s article Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town contrastingly gave an accurate portrayal of the distress women faced in their everyday life. The representation of women in the Gilded Age varies significantly between that in the photographs, and their domestic, weak personification, and in Byington’s article, which gives women a more accurate depiction through their domestic duties.
Meyerowitz, Joanne. “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946-1958” The Journal of American History (March 1993): 1455-1482
For readers who observe literature through a feminist lens, they will notice the depiction of female characters, and this makes a large statement on the author’s perception of feminism. Through portraying these women as specific female archetypes, the author creates sense of what roles women play in both their families and in society. In books such as The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the roles that the main female characters play are, in different instances, both comparable and dissimilar.
There is a sense that the women have been thrust into an environment that is not complimentary to their quality. Rosa Coldfield is “strong with forty-three years of hate,” against a world that has wronged her (the world of the South) with its male insistence that “if you haven’t got honor and pride, then nothing matters” (Faulkner 279). What Rosa has is emotion, true reaction, feelings, instinct. In the realm of the South, the instinct of emotion and truth is something that runs behind honor and pride, its presence fully realized and known but not given credibility over hierarchy: “Only there is something in you that doesn’t care about honor and pride yet that lives, that even walks backward for a whole year just to live” (279). The inner struggle of the South sets forth a destructive trap that derives from the arbitrarily enforced systems of male creation, especially honor and pride, that are not only based in domination but also in a false sense of hierarchy.
MANLINESS AND CIVILIZATION : A CULTURAL HISTORY OF GENDER AND RACE IN THE UNITED STATES, 1880-1917. BY Gail Benderman.
The Scarlet Letter is a well-known novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In this novel Hawthorne wrote in depth about the Puritans’ reception to sin, in particular, adultery. He also includes brilliant visuals of the repercussions that occur when the town of Salem hears of Hester’s adultery. There are many relationships within the book, from a lover to a beautiful yet illegitimate daughter. Symbolism runs throughout, even a simple rose bush outside of a jail holds so much meaning. Hawthorne reveals themes all through the novel one in particular, was sin. Although sin does not occur often in the Puritan lifestyle Hawthorne shows the importance and change this one deceit makes for the town of Salem.
The “Bonds of Womanhood,” emphasizes the historical transformations that occurred prior to the Victorian period, for they resulted in vast changes to the role of women in the United States. The transition from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy led to the mass production of goods, among them textiles; with the invention of power looms in 1814 young women were often hired outside of their households to make textiles, thus increasing their independence. However, along with industrialization came many societal changes that affected women. Since working conditions in factories were atrocious, home became a means of escape that pressured wives to create a pleasant home environment for their husbands. This ideology contributed to the margina...
Hewitt, Nancy. "Beyond the Search for Sisterhood: American Women's History in the 1980's."Social History. Vol. 10: No. 3 (1985): 299-321
Throughout time women have been written as the lesser sex, weaker, secondary characters. They are portrayed as dumb, stupid, and nothing more than their fading beauty. They are written as if they need to be saved or helped because they cannot help themselves. Women, such as Daisy Buchanan who believes all a woman can be is a “beautiful little fool”, Mrs Mallard who quite died when she lost her freedom from her husband, Eliza Perkins who rights the main character a woman who is a mental health patient who happens to be a woman being locked up by her husband, and then Carlos Andres Gomez who recognizes the sexism problem and wants to change it. Women in The Great Gatsby, “The Story of an Hour,” “The Yellow Wall Paper” and the poem “When” are oppressed because the fundamental concept of equality that America is based on undermines gender equality.
19th-Century Women Works Cited Missing Women in the nineteenth century, for the most part, had to follow the common role presented to them by society. This role can be summed up by what historians call the “cult of domesticity”. The McGuffey Readers does a successful job at illustrating the women’s role in society. Women that took part in the overland trail, as described in “Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey” had to try to follow these roles while facing many challenges that made it very difficult to do so. One of the most common expectations for women is that they are responsible for doing the chore of cleaning, whether it is cleaning the house, doing the laundry.
“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.
Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different nature than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may represent his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays hers as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s.