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Gender Roles in Literature
Gender Roles in Literature
Essays on gender roles in literature
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The narrator makes time to write each day in the form of journal entries where she explains her situation and her husband’s claims. Many of her entries include sentences that begin with “But John…” (Gilman 1) which suggests her submissiveness to him and to what he tells her to do. The narrator’s husband’s constant notions on how the narrator is to get better are interpreted as efforts with her best interests in mind to the narrator. She tells us, “He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get” (Gilman 2). Although she makes this statement regarding her husband’s intentions for coming to the mansion, she admits later on in one of her journal entries, “I must take care of myself for his
In the short story, “The Painted Door”, John and Ann are a married couple, who have been together for seven years, and yet despite this fact, they still have trouble communicating. Ann wishes, from the very beginning of the story, that John would stay at home with her rather than go to check on his father. However, rather than expressing these sentiments exactly, she acts very cold towards him and insists that she’ll be perfectly fine, trying to guilt him into staying. Though it works, as John offers to stay with her rather than visiting his father’s farm, Ann decides to instead push away her feelings of spite and loneliness and allows him to leave, despite worrying about his safety and how she’s going to cope while John is gone. This is the
This novel by Randy J. Sparks offers a rare glimpse into the perspective of two African slaves during the late eighteenth century. Not only are their accounts noteworthy in detailing the grueling journey through the Middle Passage, but also significantly sheds light on economic and societal dynamics at the time both within their African state (Old Calabar) and England. According to letters Sparks discovered, the two princes Little Ephraim Robin John and Ancona Robin Robin John, hereafter referred to as the Robin Johns, were members of a ruling-class family in Old Town before they were enslaved and taken to the New World. According to the Robin Johns, the elites of their rival town, New Town, conspired with English slavers to ambush and massacre their Old Town counterparts. Because the Englishmen often suffered when Old and New Town were quarreling, they agreed to partner with New Town as Old Town’s ruler Grandy King George was notoriously unjust and dishonest in his dealings. During the ambush, hundreds of Grandy King George’s entourage were murdered and his brother and nephew, the Robin Johns, taken as slaves. What is most significant about the Robin Johns’ accounts is how knowledgeable and accustomed to legal principles and slave-owning culture (being slavers themselves) they are, having been educated and in somewhat intimate contact with Englishmen beforehand. Because of this, we are given exceptional insight into the role of the state and how it penetrated their daily lives; more specifically, we will explore how the institution of religion and Old Calabar’s secret society Ekpe influenced their lives and communities.
The narrator introduces the character John as an authoritative figure, in that he is both her husband and her physician, which makes for a bad combination. His treatment of her so called a “ temporary nervous depression” is an underlining subdues to control her. John believes his methods of treatment are so sure work that he has on her on a set schedule. Gillman writes “So I take phosphates or phosphites ---whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again. His treat of her condition is that of a child as if say the she is not capable of taking care of one’s...
She has a secret dream of writing romance novels that no one, except her teacher, Mr. P, had known about. The book explains, "People just don 't live and hide in basements if they 're happy" (Alexie 39). Mary was not happy where she was at, she would not let anyone read her pieces of writing. Skip downing states in his article, “ Victims are people who do not feel they are in control of the outcomes in their lives” (Downing 42). The way she acted made it seem like she was not confident in what she had been doing. Victims, like Mary, feel they are stuck and that they have to support which makes their ability to reach their goals fall short. Mr. P explains, "She always thought people would make fun of her" (Alexie 37). All this has shown that being in the basement and not pursuing her dreams had taken a toll on her. Mary never acted different than
Throughout the text, the reader clearly sees that John has approached the near imprisonment of his wife with very tender and caring words and actions. He always refers to his “little gooses (Charters 228), his darling, and his dear, and he reads her bed time stories. However, the protagonist, as well as the reader, soon begin to see through this act. John may act as if he simply just cares about his wife, and that is why he is putting her through this. But why then does he not listen when she says that she feels worse rather than better? (Charters 232). Because he is not doing it for her at all. He is far more concerned for his career. He is a physician after all, and to have a mentally and physically unstable wife would be tumultuous for his future in that vocation. So he must lock her away in this vacation, away from civilization, so that no one will know. It seems that the protagonist realizes her husbands motives early on, but she is unwilling to believe what she fears is true. She willingly suspends her disbelief of her husband. She says things such as, “Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick” (Charters 231). In these statements she is not trying to communicate an idea to a reader, but rather attempting desperately to convince herself of the idea. Ultimately she succeeds, and this leads to her final mental collapse. Her willing suspension of disbelief causes her to
As the story begins, the narrator's compliance with her role as a submissive woman is easily seen. She states, "John laughs at me, but one expects that in marriage" (Gilman 577). These words clearly illustrate the male's position of power in a marriage t...
The narrator is trying to get better from her illness but her husband “He laughs at me so about this wallpaper” (515). He puts her down and her insecurities do not make it any better. She is treated like a child. John says to his wife “What is it little girl” (518)? Since he is taking care of her she must obey him “There comes John, and I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word”. The narrator thinks John is the reason why she cannot get better because he wants her to stay in a room instead of communicating with the world and working outside the house.
The story begins when she and her husband have just moved into a colonial mansion to relieve her chronic nervousness. An ailment her husband has conveniently diagnosed. The husband is a physician and in the beginning of her writing she has nothing but good things to say about him, which is very obedient of her. She speaks of her husband as if he is a father figure and nothing like an equal, which is so important in a relationship. She writes, "He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction." It is in this manner that she first delicately speaks of his total control over her without meaning to and how she has no choices whatsoever. This control is perhaps so imbedded in our main character that it is even seen in her secret writing; "John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition...so I will let it alone and talk about the house." Her husband suggests enormous amounts of bed rest and no human interaction at all. He chooses a "prison-like" room for them to reside in that he anticipates will calm our main character even more into a comma like life but instead awakens her and slowly but surely opens her eyes to a woman tearing the walls down to freedom.
There are multiple possible causes for the internal conflict the narrator faces. The first being nervous depression and the other is the fact that her life is being controlled by her husband. Her husband is in full control because in the beginning of the story, John, her husband, influences how she should act. He decides the actions that should be taken in regards to her health and sanctity. Although she finds herself disagreeing with his synopsis, she is confined and does not admit how she feels to him. This also brings about another a major conflict that occurred in the 19th century, men being dominant and woman being categorized as inferior. Evidence can be found when the narrator states, “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband assures friends and relatives that there is nothing the matter with o...
She proclaims her husbands love throughout the story, I feel, in an attempt to bind the disconnection she feels with her husband.
Each John, the narrator's husband in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Brently Mallard, Mrs. Mallard’s husband in “The Story of an Hour” and Henry Allen, Elisa Allen’s husband in “The Chrysanthemums” unknowingly lead their wives to a state of mental confinement through their actions taken that are meant to help them. John tells his wife to rest and not to think of her condition for the sake of him and the children which drove her mad because
Gilman shows through this theme that when one is forced to stay mentally inactive can only lead to mental self-destruction. The narrator is forced into a room and told to be passive, she is not allowed to have visitors, or write, or do much at all besides sleep. Her husband believes that a resting cure will rid her of her “slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 478). Without the means to express herself or exercise her mind in anyway the narrator begins to delve deeper and deeper into her fantasies. The narrator begins to keep a secret journal, about which she states “And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way - it is such a relief” (Gilman 483)! John tells his wife that she must control her imagination, lest it run away with her. In this way John has asserted full and complete dominance over his wife. The narrator, though an equal adult to her husband, is reduced to an infancy. In this state the narrator begins her slow descent into hysteria, for in her effort to understand herself she fully and completely loses herself.
She knows her husband's weakness, how he scruples 'to catch the nearest way' to the object he desires; and she sets herself without a trace of doubt or conflict to counteract this weakness.”
Her role as a wife and a mother starts to become her daily routine, and she is not satisfied with it. She tries her best to satiate herself. She starts making efforts to achieve different approaches to satisfy these efforts but still “she does not get pleasure in her duties” (Goodwin 39), and this is the reason why she always get dissatisfaction in her life. Her dissatisfaction with this role in life also leads the narrator protagonist to try on other roles. Though she tries on many, none of these seem to satisfy her either; she "tried these personalities on like costumes, then discarded them" (Goodwin 38). Her inability to find any role that satisfies her probably contributes to her general sense of helplessness, and continues to withdraw from her family. Since she cannot find any particular role that suits her, she attempts not to have any role at all; the coldness and isolation of the undecorated white room make it seem that she is trying to empty herself of her previous life.
The narrator has no way of expressing her emotions which makes her more unstable and sinks deeper into her problems. From the time after she had her baby and up until her husband finds that she has gone insane, the narrator has focused on the wallpaper in the bedroom. (enotes.com) the narrator says on page 242 section eight ” Sometimes I think there are a great many woman behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard”. This signifies that she has a mental disorder and is not in the right state of mind but I think that if John would have treated her like a wife instead of a patient then she would have gotten better, although I don’t think many people knew about mental illness back then and so they wouldn’t know how to treat them and some people just thought they were