In Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, the protagonist's rollercoaster journey began with her birth in the Newgate prison and ends in England where she lives the rest of her life repenting her sins. Along her journey, Moll Flanders meets many people as she attempts to avoid the deadly snares of poverty prevalent in the seventeenth century. Throughout her life, she fails to form emotional attachments with most of the people she encounters. However, Moll Flanders forms an everlasting relationship with the governess who helps her deliver an unwanted child and helps her survive as a single woman. The governess is an important character in Moll Flanders as her morally ambiguous personality has a profound effect on Moll Flanders; though the governess expresses mother-like love for Moll, she introduces her to the life of crime and her influence on Moll contributes significantly to the outcome of her journey.
Moll Flanders first comes to the governess because she was pregnant with an unwanted child. Even though Moll Flanders left most of her children in the care of others, she was unwilling to abandon the child without anyone to take care of him. The governess provides the child with a home and guardian which allows Moll Flanders to get married to the banker and proceed with her selfish lifestyle. Had the governess not done this for Moll Flanders, her banker husband could have discovered the similarities of Moll and his first wife as. The banker was upset that his first wife had a relationship with another man; therefore, he got a divorce from her. The knowledge of Moll Flanders’ past would have destroyed their relationship. The aid of the governess allows Moll to establish a family with the banker and live a sustainable life until his deat...
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...d to teach Moll to do the same for a while relying on crime represents the difficulties women faced during the seventeenth century.
In conclusion, the governess represents a significant character in the novel because she has an important but complex and puzzling influence on Moll Flanders. While it seems like she was hoping for the best for Moll, it is important to take into account that this novel is written from the perspective of Moll. The description of characters might reflect bias emotions favoring or opposing the characters. The governess helps shape the final end of Moll’s journey because the criminal lifestyle reintroduces her to her Lancashire husband whom she truly loved. While Moll Flanders journey had many turns and paths, she is eventually reunited with her husband with who she spends the rest of her life repenting the sins and crimes she committed.
To force me to give my fortune, I was imprisoned-yes: in a private madhouse…” (Maria 131-32). These lines from Mary Wollstonecraft’s (1759-1797) unfinished novella Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman substantiates the private operation of the madhouse where the protagonist Maria is confined. The importance of private ownership is that this places the madhouse outside the discourse of law. It is illegitimate yet it is legitimized as it is a symbol of male-dominated state oppression. Parallel to this Bastille becomes the direct symbol of the same repression which is used by Wollstonecraft to depict the predicament of dissenting revolutionary women in the late Eighteenth- century England. The language which she is using is evidently from the French Revolution as we know the symbolic importance of the dreaded tower of Bastille where political ‘criminals’ were imprisoned. So, Wollstonecraft’s objective is to politicize the genre of novel as the other Jacobin women writers- novel, for them, is a vehicle of political propaganda.
Louise, the unfortunate spouse of Brently Mallard dies of a supposed “heart disease.” Upon the doctor’s diagnosis, it is the death of a “joy that kills.” This is a paradox of happiness resulting into a dreadful ending. Nevertheless, in reality it is actually the other way around. Of which, is the irony of Louise dying due to her suffering from a massive amount of depression knowing her husband is not dead, but alive. This is the prime example to show how women are unfairly treated. If it is logical enough for a wife to be this jovial about her husband’s mournful state of life then she must be in a marriage of never-ending nightmares. This shows how terribly the wife is being exploited due her gender in the relationship. As a result of a female being treated or perceived in such a manner, she will often times lose herself like the “girl
Glaspell spent more than forty years working as a journalist, fiction writer, playwright and promoter of various artistic. She is a woman who lived in a male dominated society. She is the author of a short story titled A Jury of Her Peers. She was inspired to write this story when she investigated in the homicide of John Hossack, a prosperous county warren who had been killed in his sleep(1).Such experience in Glaspell’s life stimulated inspiration. The fact that she was the first reporter on scene, explains that she must have found everything still in place, that makes an incredible impression. She feels what Margaret (who is Minnie Wright in the story) had gone through, that is, she has sympathy for her. What will she say about Margaret? Will she portray Margaret as the criminal or the woman who’s life has been taken away? In the short story Minnie Wright was the victim. Based on evidence at the crime scene, it is clear that Minnie has killed her husband; however, the women have several reasons for finding her “not guilty” of the murder of John Wright.
With a husband and two children at the age of twenty eight, Edna Pontillier realized that the mother-wife life was not for her. With her new found independence Edna’s husband was unsure of how to handle his new untraditional wife. “I came to consult—no, not precisely to consult—to talk to you about Edna. I don't know what ails her.”(pg. 109) Mr. Pontillier is a loving and good husband but, his slight narcissistic personality causes him to lose touch with his wife. Mr. Pontillier buys Edna bonbons and compliments her in front of their friends but it would seem that he enjoys spending time with his friends and working more than he values his time with his wife. “Coming back to dinner?" his wife called after him. He halted a moment and shrugged his shoulders.”(pg. 8) The only reason Mrs. Pontillier stays with her husband for so long is because of her children. Although the Pontillier children are not major characters they help demonstrate her true commitment. Edna would rather die than let her children think their mother left them to be with another man. “She thought of Leonce and the children. They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body...
Indisputably, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most influential figures of Enlightenment, also considered the ‘first feminist’. It is certain that her works and writing has influenced the lives of many women and altered the outlook of some societies on women, evolving rights of women a great deal from what they used to be in her time. It is clear that Wollstonecraft’s arguments and writing will remain applicable and relevant to societies for many years to come, as although there has been progression, there has not been a complete resolution. Once women receive so easily the freedom, rights and opportunities that men inherently possess, may we be able to say that Wollstonecraft has succeeded in vindicating the rights of women entirely.
concern to men of the seventeenth century. Out of the oppressive setting of the seventeenth century
In the Dictionary of Literary Terms, Harry Shaw states, "In effective narrative literature, fictional persons, through characterization, become so credible that they exist for the reader as real people." (1) Looking at Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders (2) and Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (3) the reader will find it difficult to make this definition conform to Moll and Behn's narrator. This doesn't mean that Defoe's and Behn's work is 'ineffective', but there is indeed a difficulty: it is the claim of truth. Defoe in his preface states, "The Author is here suppos'd to be writing her own History." (Moll Flanders, p. 1) and Behn claims, "I was myself an eye-witness to a great part, of what you will find here set down, and what I could not be witness of, I received from the mouth of the chief actor in this history, the hero himself, (...)" (Oroonoko, 75)
Although the dialogues have basically been unchanged from the dramatic version to the prose fiction version, Glaspell has passed her message more effectively in the narrative. While Glaspell uses the characters or actors to vocalize the emotions of the story from the play “Trifles”, she makes the reader feel the emotions in “A Jury of Her Peers” by including descriptive passages to accompany the dialogue in her narration. The opening paragraph of the story was a description of Mrs. Hale’s unkempt kitchen “… which will later serve as a point of comparison with the major scene of the story, Mrs. Wright’s kitchen” (Mustazza). This opening description helps readers foreshadow why Mrs. Hale could easily identify with Mrs. Wright. “Through her brief opening description of the landscape Glaspell establishes the physical context for the loneliness and isolation, an isolation Minnie inherited from and shared with generations of pioneer and farm women before her” (Hedges). The description of the road to Mr. Wright’s farm also helps reveal to readers Mrs. Wright’s “geographical isolation” (Hedges). Glaspell provides the short story v...
Miss Lottie, the woman that she had once believed was different from those she thought of as normal, was really a person aged from difficult times. Lizabeth’s actions, although at the time had brought her small joy and an antidote to her boredom, had effected Miss Lottie by taking away the last bit of hope and care put into the flowers. Her father was no longer the center and the support of her family, but just a person who could no longer work and earn like he had once done. Lizabeth had not noticed the change and the depression in her father, as a result of childhood blinding her to the troubles of the rest of the world. Lizabeth’s confusing emotions spurred her to continue the destruction of the marigolds, as her brother, who did not understand her actions, sat confused and upset. He was not experiencing the rite of passage that his sister was faced with. As Lizabeth is sitting in the middle of the mess she made in Miss Lottie's garden, “...that was the moment when childhood faded and adulthood began.” Lizabeth's actions as child had opened her eyes as an adult and “... gazed on a reality that is hidden from childhood.”
From the first interactions with the young children, the governess's infatuation with their uncle, her employer, eventually proved to be her own failure in every fashion. In talk with the head maid, Ms. Grose, the governess explained her meeting with her employer and how she had fallen in love with him on their first meeting. Ms. Grose then began to explain that that was the nature of the her employer, to draw a women he could entrust his estate to, and that the governess was not the only one so taken by him to leave the infatuated governess without further communication.
Margaret is an intelligent, articulate, and ambitious woman who desires to rise up in social status by marrying a man of higher social rank. She attends to those above her, in hopes of elevating her status as she becomes closer to the upper-class. As a minor character, she plays a small yet crucial role in advancing Don John’s plot to slander Hero and spoil her wedding. As a lower-class character, Margaret serves as a foil to the rich girls, particularly Hero, who embodies every attitude and mindset Margaret does not. But she also offers an alternative perspective on the upper-class characters in the play. Because Margaret is victimized because of her social ambitions, punished for wanting to rise above her ...
Most women in Mrs Mallard’s situation were expected to be upset at the news of her husbands death, and they would worry more about her heart trouble, since the news could worsen her condition. However, her reaction is very different. At first she gets emotional and cries in front of her sister and her husbands friend, Richard. A little after, Mrs. Mallard finally sees an opportunity of freedom from her husbands death. She is crying in her bedroom, but then she starts to think of the freedom that she now has in her hands. “When she abandoned herse...
One of the first characteristics readers see of Mathidle is her longing for a wealthy lifestyle. Since she did not marry a “…rich and distinguished man…,” she regrets marrying her small town man; however, her husband tries to do everything in his power
As previously mentioned, inferiority perceptions and obstacles for women remain prevalent in the twenty-first century. Although substantial progress has been made with regards to the educational opportunities for women, as well as educating both men and women to view women with equal regard, we have yet to achieve parity among genders. In particular, “Contemporary feminists, such as Catherine MacKinnon, argue that the law and society’s political institutions are based on male assumptions, such that women can never achieve equality within them” (Tannenbaum, 2012, p. 220). Additionally, the recent focus on gender socialization directly relates to Wollstonecraft’s writings. In fact, she may be one of the first philosophers to establish the foundation for studying gender socialization through her assertions from two hundred years ago, “the character of women was artificial, and a consequence of the roles society defines for them” (p. 213a). Tannenbaum’s summary of Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, reads as though it’s from a current Sociology course in gender equality and diversity. “Women are fond of dress and gossip; are helpless, emotional, weak; and act like children, not because it is there nature, but because they are educated or trained this way” (p. 213b). Wollstonecraft’s assertions were revolutionary when taking into account the historical context of her vision. Hence, both genders can benefit from studying her feminist perspective, then contemplating how her vision has evolved over time in society, as well as advocating for its continued
In actuality, she was defiant, and ate macaroons secretly when her husband had forbidden her to do so. She was quite wise and resourceful. While her husband was gravely ill she forged her father’s signature and borrowed money without her father or husband’s permission to do so and then boastfully related the story of doing so to her friend, Mrs. Linde. She was proud of the sacrifices she made for her husband, but her perceptions of what her husband truly thought of her would become clear. She had realized that the childlike and submissive role she was playing for her husband was no longer a role she wanted to play. She defied the normal roles of the nineteenth century and chose to find her true self, leaving her husband and children