Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth as a Victim of Circumstance
When her parents die when she is still very young, innocent Ruth Hilton is sent to the city by the guardian she does not know. In the city she is to learn the trade very common for young girls during this time, that of the seamstress (Ugoretz), but events take a drastic turn when she becomes noble Mr Bellingham's mistress. Only 16 years old, Ruth is thrown into the for her unknown adult world and in this world, she cannot separate right from wrong and is thus considered to be a sinner. However, life is never simple and straightforward and in this essay, I discuss the moral aspects of the novel to decide if Ruth really is a bad person.
What do we know about Ruth? Well, she seems to be very innocent and not at all aware of Bellingham's intentions, maybe due to the fact that she was left an orphan at such early an age. Like in most literature of this era, descriptions of sexuality are left out and the only way we find out that Ruth and Bellingham have a sexual relationship (although of course we guess that this is the case) is when we are told that Ruth is pregnant, but we are never told whether she knows how this baby was conceived. My guess is that she had never been told about sexuality and knew little about marriage, else a religious and piteous girl like her would never have been this blind to what she was doing. She knows that her relationship with Bellingham make other people talk, but she does not seem to understand why. She could not have known how wrong it was and that this really is the case is confirmed by Ruth herself: "I was very young; I did not know how such a life was against God's pure and holy will - at least not as I know it now" (p 246). When she learns that she is expecting a child, her only wish is to make this child grow up to be good and religious. She promises God that she will try only to do good deeds to make up for her sins, a promise she keeps during the rest of her life.
The real hero in this novel is the Dissenter minister Mr Benson, who feels for Ruth and wants to protect her.
Catharine Maria Sedgewick’s heroine and title character of Hope Leslie does not convey the expected behaviors of a woman living in 17th century Puritan society. Hope Leslie is not a passive young woman that relies on the Bible for all advice and guidance. She does not stay quiet if something is on her mind. She refuses to allow the innocent to receive persecution for the wrong reasons. Hope is assertive, aggressive, courageous, bold, and quite outspoken. The characteristics that she portrays are atypical to those portrayed by 17th century women. Instead, Hope’s attitude and behavior more closely resemble that of a female from the 21st century living in an era not meant for her.
(Eq. 7) (Eq. 8) are both used to calculate the heat of the solution and the heat of the calorimeter.
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.
Nora and Mrs. Wright’s social standing when compared to the men in each play is inferior. Both works expose their respective male characters’ sexist view of women diminishing the women’s social standing. Each work features egotistical men who have a severely inflated view of their self-worth when compared to their female counterparts. The men’s actions and words indicate they believe women are not capable of thinking intelligently. This is demonstrated in “Trifles” when Mr. Hale makes the statement about women only worrying about mere trifles. It is also apparent in “A Dollhouse” when Torvalds thinks his wife is not capable of thinking with any complexity (Mazur 17). Another common attribute is of the women’s social standing is displayed as both women finally get tired of feeling like second class citizens and stand up to the repressive people in the women’s lives (Mulry 294). Although both women share much in common in their social standing there subtle differences. Torvald’s sexist view of Nora is more on a personal level in “A Dollhouse” while the male characters’ sexist views in “Trifles” seem to be more of a social view that women are not very smart and their opinions are of little value. This attitude is apparent in “Trifles” as Mr. Hale and Mr. Henderson’s comments about Mrs. Wright’s housekeeping (Mulry 293). As the women in both works reach their emotional
The objective of this experiment was to identify a metal based on its specific heat using calorimetry. The unknown metals specific heat was measured in two different settings, room temperature water and cold water. Using two different temperatures of water would prove that the specific heat remained constant. The heated metal was placed into the two different water temperatures during two separate trials, and then the measurements were recorded. Through the measurements taken and plugged into the equation, two specific heats were found. Taking the two specific heats and averaging them, it was then that
Cecilia was diagnosed with cancer while Ruth was in high school and the day before her daughter’s graduation, she passed away (Salokar & Volcansek, 1996). One of the greatest influences on Ruth’s life was her mother and the values she instilled in her from a young age. Two of the greatest lessons that Ruth learned from her mother was to be independent and to be a lady, and by that she meant not to respond in anger but to remain calm in situations (Reynolds, 2009).... ... middle of paper ... ...
The purpose of this experiment is to try to find the original temperature of the hot water in the heater using the 60 degrees C thermometer. Use your 60°C thermometer, and any materials available in your laboratory, to determine the temperature of the water in the coffee pot. During this experiment we calculated the original temperature of a heater after it had been cooled down, and we did this by measuring hot, cold, and warm water, with a thermometer that had tape covering 60 degrees and up. When preformed each of these experiments with each temperature of water, plugging them into the equation (Delta)(Ti – hot – Tf) T Hot x Cp x Mass(Cold) = (Delta)(Tf – Ti – Cold) T Cold x Cp x Mass(Hot)(d
This novel tells the story of the cultural and social aspects of patriarchal culture, which attempt to subdue Adele Lindner, a young Jewish woman living in New York City during the turn of the 20th century. Adele must continually face patriarchal oppression of the “workhouse” under the authoritarian management of young women to be domestic servants, instead of being trained as independently minded businesswoman in the community. Arthur Hellman, the manager of the working house, is a major barrier to Adele’s education, as the Beauvoir’s theory of women as the “other” is expressed in her critical opinion of the taskmaster of the working house:
today and in the story of Ruth. This is evidenced in Ruth's decision to stay
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 ...
During the experiment I will be taking a number of measurements, I will firstly take the initial temperature of the water and initial mass of the alcohol I will then burn the alcohol until an increase in temperature of 20oc has occurred in the water I will then reweigh the alcohol.
“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte is a novel about an orphan girl growing up in a tough condition and how she becomes a mature woman with full of courage. Her life at Gateshead is really difficult, where she feels isolated and lives in fear in her childhood. Her parents are dead when she was little, her dead uncle begged his evil wife, Mrs. Reed, to take care of Jane until she becomes an adult. But Mrs. Reed does not keep her promise, no one treats Jane like their family members even treats her less than a servant. By the end of this essay it will be proven that Jane’s life at Gateshead has shaped her development as a young woman and bildungsroman.
I read this book out of interest for another Henry James piece, liking Daisy Miller so much. I found that this book, as in Daisy Miller, has a female point of interest throughout. Isabel Archer is a young American girl brought to Europe after her father has died in America. Isabel is an independent girl, easily noticed by many others in her circle. I felt that Isabel was a woman in her time, in that she took notice of things that she wouldn’t have without certain without the opportunities she was given. In America she would have see and done other things, but in Europe she saw so much opportunity. I like the carefree attitude she had, but with the regard for her elders and common courtesy. The example in the book about being a proper young lady when it was not looked at very well that she stay up ‘alone’ with her cousin and another young man. She had asked her aunt to help her and tell her when she is doing, or about to do something saw as improper. I admired that. I think nowadays young women would revolt against proper if it meant something they did not wish to do.
Victorian women lived according to strict social conventions, which dictated their actions, emotions, and beliefs. These conventions were often presented in antithetical pairs: private versus public spheres, the angel in the house versus the fallen woman. One of the most complex paradoxes for women to master was that of beauty versus vanity. Society’s rules required a young lady to be attractive, but not provocative; diligent about her appearance, but not overly so; aware of her beauty, and simultaneously unconscious of it. Balancing these meticulous distinctions, then, became an almost unattainable feat, but a crucial one, as success or failure directly translated into a woman’s moral status. In Adam Bede, George Eliot contrasts the idealized preacher Dinah with the fallible dairymaid Hetty by illustrating two very different examples of feminine beauty. Eliot directly addresses the complicated understanding of “moral” Victorian beauty through her physical presentation of these women and their actions throughout the story.