Women, as stated by Gilbert and Gubar in The Madwoman in the Attic, are often portrayed in literature as one of two binary opposites, ‘monstrous’ or ‘angelic’. Arguing throughout their theory that women are either represented as the ‘sweet dumb Snow White’ character or the ‘fierce mad Queen’2, Gilbert and Gubar expose how the female protagonist can never be understood as anything in between these two states. This dichotomy is clearly demonstrated in Felecia Hemans’s ‘The Indian City’, throughout which, the female protagonist is seen abandoning a life of angelic domesticity for one of monstrous masculinity. Consequential of this transition is the woman’s taking of her own life, which is presented by Hemans as the only way she can resolve the issue of now being monstrous.
Throughout the first section of Hemans’s ‘The Indian City’, the female protagonist ‘Maimuna’ is depicted as a feminine ideal, embodying eloquence and maternal instinct. Introduced to the reader as a doting mother, watching over her son ‘[…] O’er heaven and earth with a quiet smile…’3, (66) the character immediately appears to possess angelic qualities of transcendence and benevolence. As the relationship between mother and son is further explored throughout the poem, it becomes lucid that there is a deep-rooted connection that binds the two together. Described as having ‘[…] stood, when she had sorrow’d, beside her knee’ (111) and ‘[…] smil’d o’er her path like a bright spring-day’ (115), the child appears to give the woman’s life purpose, which arguably lowers the reader’s expectations of her, since she merely has one role to fulfil. This idea of representing women as a solitary thing is explored throughout Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic theory. ...
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...ust o’er her soul again’ (216) and eventually, having completely lost any purpose in life, dies. Similar themes can be found in Hemans’s later poem ‘The Indian Woman’s Death Song’, within which the female heroine drowns both herself and her child to escape ‘woman’s weary lot’5.
In conclusion, Felecia Hemans’s ‘The Indian City’ perfectly reflects the argument made by Gilbert and Gubar in The Madwoman in the Attic. While the female protagonist is portrayed as a motherly ‘angel’, she is viewed as virtuous and flawlessly feminine. However, once she has broken free from this domestic role and has transitioned into a masculine, revenge seeking ‘monster’, she is no longer a depiction of femininity. With no in-between status available for the woman and no other womanly duties for her to fulfil, the only choice she has is to end her life and relieve herself of her pain.
Even though women such as Lucy demonstrate stereotypical female weakness, characters such as Mina defy the conventional submissive female, as an independent woman, a role uncommon of novels in this era. In addition, Mina, in comparison to men, possesses substantially stronger emotional fortitude and controls her emotions, while the men who are supposed to be strong expose emotional weakness and frailty. Ultimately, however, no matter Mina’s intelligence or strengths, the men continually suppress Mina’s vast amount of wisdom in order to maintain their perceived dominance. Nonetheless, Stoker’s messages throughout the novel regarding women silently protest the sexist expectations of the overly limiting Victorian era. Should today’s modern feminists take Stoker’s peaceful approach and protest subtly hoping for long-term change? Or should feminists act with violent protests in hope for prompt change? Gender equality will not happen overnight, however, instead of rushing minuscule modifications with violent protest, society must patiently wait for productive and peaceful change, in order to prevent an even larger
The characterizations of women have, throughout history, been one of the most problematic subjects in literary tradition. An extraordinary dichotomy has existed with women as being both the paragon of virtue and the personification of evil. Ancient Greeks feared women, and poets such as Hesiod believed the female sex was created to be the scourge of the gods and the bane of men (Fantham 39). Romans, on the other hand, incorporated tales of brave and virtuous women as an intrinsic part of their legendary history (219). Many Catholic saints, revered for their piety, were notoriously misogynistic (Dollison 106), and yet the church counted legions of holy women in the rosters of saints alongside their male counterparts. Despite much historical controversy as to the precise nature of women, none of this confusion seems to seep into the writings of George MacDonald, and there appears to be no conflict to MacDonald’s regard towards women in his female characters in The Princess and the Goblin. The character of the Grandmother in particular is one of the most complimentary fabrications of the figure of the mature female in literature. MacDonald created this fascinating construct of femininity by steeping the Grandmother not only in the arcane feminine symbols such as spinning, pigeons, and the moon, but also in his own concept of the ideal woman, as wise and compassionate as she is mysterious.
Society often views individuals that do not conform to its expectations as separate from the societal group. The Story of the Marquise-Marquis de Banneville, by Charles Perrault, François-Timoléon de Choisy, and Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier follows two main characters, one of which does not fully conform to binary gender presentation. The Girl with the Golden Eyes, authored by Honoré de Balzac, portrays an “oriental” woman as an object to be purchased and used. In Le Roman de Parthenay Ou Le Roman de Melusine, written by Coudrette, the heroine is a half human, half fairy who holds great power. In this paper, I argue that the majority of biologically female protagonists in these novels exist in-between the expectations society has for them, which
The society of women complied with replicated this God-like figure, which is impossible to achieve since no living human can reach this supreme stature. The novel manages to offer insight into the different characters while still addressing critical and social roles in a male oriented society.
This essay explores the role of women in Homer's Odyssey, James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Derrick Walcott's Omeros (1990), epics written in very different historical periods. Common to all three epics are women as the transforming figure in a man's life, both in the capacity of a harlot and as wife.
Society’s gender roles have been changing and evolving, though not necessarily a positive change. Women’s expected and defined role have changed and broken by women who refuses to follow their expected roles in society and decide to rebel against the norm. The pages of history have their own evidence of evolution of these female gender roles into the roles they are following now. Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” and Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” both contain a female protagonist and make us observe and understand how society in their period of time expects of them and their roles. Both these plays let us rethink and compare a female’s role in their period of time with our modern time through points and events that led them into realization of their roles and identity.
Margaret Atwood’s speech ‘Spotty-Handed Villainesses’ is an epideictic text, which explores the significance of having a multi-faceted depiction of female characters within literature as a means of achieving gender equity, centring on the fictional presentation of women as either virtuous or villainess. The title of the speech
Throughout most of literature and history, the notion of ‘the woman’ has been little more than a caricature of the actual female identity. Most works of literature rely on only a handful of tropes for their female characters and often use women to prop up the male characters: female characters are sacrificed for plot development. It may be that the author actually sacrifices a female character by killing her off, like Mary Shelly did in Frankenstein in order to get Victor Frankenstein to confront the monster he had created, or by reducing a character to just a childish girl who only fulfills a trope, as Oscar Wilde did with Cecily and Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. Using female characters in order to further the male characters’
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre entails a social criticism of the oppressive social ideas and practices of nineteenth-century Victorian society. The presentation of male and female relationships emphases men’s domination and perceived superiority over women. Jane Eyre is a reflection of Brontë’s own observation on gender roles of the Victorian era, from the vantage point of her position as governess much like Jane’s. Margaret Atwood’s novel was written during a period of conservative revival in the West partly fueled by a strong, well-organized movement of religious conservatives who criticized ‘the excesses of the sexual revolution.’ Where Brontë’s Jane Eyre is a clear depiction of the subjugation of women by men in nineteenth-century Western culture, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale explores the consequences of a reversal of women’s rights by men. This twentieth-century tradition of dystopian novels is a possible influence, with classics like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 standing prominence. The pessimism associated with novels of this genre—where society is presented as frightening and restrictive—exposes the gender inequality between men and women to be deleterious.
Like the Good Other Woman, the Evil Other Woman often spends much of her life hidden away in the castle, secret room, or whatever, a fact suggesting that even a virtuous woman’s lot is the same she would have merited had she been the worst of criminals. The heroine’s discovery of such Other Women is in the one case an encounter with women’s oppression-their confinement as wives, mothers, and daughters-and in the other with a related repression: the confinement of a Hidden Woman inside those genteel writers and readers who, in the idealization of the heroine’s virtues, displace their own rebellious
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
Mary Wroth alludes to mythology in her sonnet “In This Strange Labyrinth” to describe a woman’s confused struggle with love. The speaker of the poem is a woman stuck in a labyrinth, alluding to the original myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The suggestion that love is not perfect and in fact painful was a revolutionary thing for a woman to write about in the Renaissance. Wroth uses the poem’s title and its relation to the myth, symbolism and poem structure to communicate her message about the tortures of love.
“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.
In the Victorian Era of mid nineteen to early twentieth century, a woman’s role in society remained to be in the household, away from the business and cares of men. The feminine side is portrayed as negative, powerless, and lacking (Kileen 49). Society discouraged women from having power in society and neglecting women represented normal in the eyes of most men and women. However, Victorian novels such as The Picture of Dorian Gray illustrate the consequences of disregarding women. In Oscar Wilde’s only novel, the lack of importance surrounding the female characters and their careless treatment from men results in the selfishness of the male characters exemplified through Dorian Gray’s acts of evil.
In contemporary society, feminism is emerging as a theory of social construct. In literature it is often challenging to discover female characters that go beyond the limits of marginalized female stereotypes and roles as a means to transgress beyond societal norms. Women are characterized as subordinate objects, amid the dominant patriarchal nature entrenched amid the epic. In The Ramayana, women are portrayed as powerless objects that succumb to the manipulation of men as the text portrays a false empowerment of women, which ultimately succumb to common archetypes accustomed to women in literature; implementing a hierarchy of gender that institutionalizes male dominance amid female inferiority. The women of The Ramayana struggle to oppose the systemic patriarchy and pursue a pathway towards attaining dynamic elements of power, that enable their ability to embody autonomous authority. In Valmiki’s The Ramayana, while women appear to be empowered, ultimately they are feeble instruments utilized to fulfill the desires of men.