Modernism is the breaking of tradition that includes the embracement of racial, class, and gender struggles for knowledge about the senselessness and alienation of the time. Within earlier literature, women had always been regarded with contempt by a male-dominated society – a society that was more inclined to treat women as complacent to men in their lives rather than as individuals. However, literature around the rise of the modernist movement in the early 20th century depicted women as individuals of who insisted on their rights and choices. Male and female modernists used American literature differently to depict the role of women in society. While male modernists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby and T.S. Elliot in …show more content…
Particularly, male modernists “disdained Victorian women’s writings; yet they revived the ‘woman of the past’ in their art” (Walls 229). Fitzgerald’s portrayal of women such as Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker embraced counter-Victorian era freedoms of drinking, driving, and associating freely with men, while he simultaneously promoted older beliefs that women had little impact in society. Specifically, Daisy’s wish that her daughter will become “a beautiful little fool” because “that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world” is an example of the belief that the lives of women were purposeless in society, apart from their expectations to maintain their physical appearance, get married, and remain at home (Fitzgerald 17). Furthermore, Fitzgerald illustrates Daisy and Jordan as restless women who had the freedom to do what they wanted, yet were unable to do so because of their indecisive nature. Fitzgerald mocks the new-found freedom that women have found in the 1920’s by pointing out how women had the time to go do new things away from their home life when Daisy continually asks: “What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” (118). However, when Fitzgerald has women like Daisy question what will be done with their time, he highlights the inaction of women to make use of their freedom. T.S. Elliot’s The Wasteland introduces a woman wearing jewels who hears the footsteps of her husband, which prompts her to quickly begin brushing her hair and focusing on her cosmetic appearance because she is expected to focus on her looks. Ultimately, her conversation with her husband dwindles down to “What shall we do tomorrow? / What shall we ever do?” which parallels the restless features that Daisy Buchanan exemplifies in Fitzgerald’s writings (Elliot 2013). The
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...
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental feminism and literature's ancestral house: Another look at The Yellow Wallpaper". Women's Studies. 12:2 (1986): 113-128.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 1684-1695.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature 's Ancestral House: Another Look At 'The Yellow Wallpaper '." Women 's Studies 12.2 (1986): 113. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
In “The Wasteland” by T.S. Elliot, he expresses the bleak future of America. Elliot describes the world in a way in which all its ambitions and hopes are lost. This loss of the American Dream was a repercussion of materialism and amorality present in humanity.
As humans have progressed in history women’s role in society has changed in many ways. From reading novels during the times where these shifts occur one can see how we got to where we are from the reactions of these books towards the change. Looking at Bram Strokers Novel Dracula, Name of Charlotte Gilman’s book The Yellow Wallpaper, and Virginia Woolf’s book A Room of One’s Own, One can see the struggles society went through trying to accept the change.
When looking at two nineteenth century works of change for two females in an American society, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Stephen Crane come to mind. A feminist socialist and a realist novelist capture moments that make their readers rethink life and the world surrounding. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was first published in 1892, about a white middle-class woman who was confined to an upstairs room by her husband and doctor, the room’s wallpaper imprisons her and as well as liberates herself when she tears the wallpaper off at the end of the story. On the other hand, Crane’s 1893 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is the realist account of a New York girl and her trials of growing up with an alcoholic mother and slum life world. The imagery in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets uses color in unconventional ways by embedding color in their narratives to symbolize the opposite of their common meanings, allowing these colors to represent unique associations; to support their thematic concerns of emotional, mental and societal challenges throughout their stories; offering their reader's the opportunity to question the conventionality of both gender and social systems.
Modernism described as movement in arts would best be described as a movement that was used to unit America after a period of crisis, it did this by it being centered on explorations into the spiritual nature of men and the value of his society and institutions. In a way it was like realism they too focused on the changes on society. The modernistic writers always wrote in a very formal defined form.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wall-Paper." Fiction 100: An Anthology of Short Stories. 4th ed. ed. James H. Pickering. New York: MacMillan, 1985. 426-34.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a prominent American feminist, writer, and lecturer for social reform from that time period, was very opinionated regarding the expectations and gender roles that society placed on women. She used writing to portray her thoughts on those issues, which is what makes her such a prominent figure in literature to this day. “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Herland” are two of her texts that do just that. Gilman uses “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Herland” to contrast a society built on reason, equality, and cooperation—all standards we claim to value—with one organized along the lines we have in fact chosen: tradition, inequality, and competition.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Booth, Alison and Kelly J. Mays, eds. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. New York: Norton, 2010. 354-65. Print.
Wohlpart, Jim. American Literature Research and Analysis Web Site. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”” 1997. Florida Gulf Coast University
Tague, Ingrid H. Women of Quality: Accepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690-1760. Rochester: Boydell Press, 2002.
Lindberg, Laurie. "Wordsmith and Woman: Morag Gunn's Triumph Through Language." New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence: Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism, and Feminism. Ed. Greta M. K. McCormick Coger. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996. 187-201.
Abrams, Lynn. "BBC - History - Ideals of Womanhood in Victorian Britain." BBC - Homepage. 9 Aug. 2001. 10 Dec. 2011.