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The portrayal of women in 19th century literature
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Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret illustrates Helen Maldon and Lady Audley’s struggle to accept their position in society, which reflect their inability to have a stable identity. Initially, Helen Maldon creates an identity as Lady Audley to seek her desire for wealth. Growing up, she did not have an upper-class up-bringing, which influences her motive for her change in status. As a result, she learns to depend on her marriage to provide the necessities in her life. When George Talboys does not provide her the wealth she desires, Helen Maldon, moves on to fake her death and establish herself as Lady Audley, committing to a marriage with Sir Michael Audley. Therefore, part of developing a new identity, comes from her struggle to …show more content…
Apart from her own experience as lower class, Helen Maldon transforms herself as Lady Audley to accept her surroundings, since she mainly surrounds herself with upper class people. For that reason, Helen Maldon searches for a man who would provide her with a better up-bringing. She depends on society’s standard of marriage, where the man provides her income to shape her identity. Nonetheless, once she develops a relationship with George, she expects to gain some wealth, except she faces the role of staying at home. The dynamic with George illustrates society’s expectation of gender roles, Helen cannot accept. “People pitied me; and I hated them for their petty,” she explains the community’s response to her, when George leaves (Braddon 300). Therefore, she struggles to accept her identity with a role she struggles to fulfill as a woman who stays at home, now bearing a child without any help from a man. Similarly, Lady Audley only accepts her identity when she accepts her purpose her in …show more content…
Unable to rely on man for her wealth, she finds an identity outside the gender stereotypes and takes a job as a governess. Although she abides to taking care of others, she escapes the thought of gaining wealth until she meets Sir Michael. Therefore, Lady Audley accepts an identity when she abides to society’s expectation as a woman because she is able to gain the wealth from Sir Michael, who does not leave her and she finds security within the home. Furthermore, Lady Audley does not truly change her perspective of society’s pity, when she is a new relationship. However, accepting a new identity as Lady Audley, she tries to remove and coincidences with her past such as George’s arrival to Audley court. Unable to accept her past, she cannot escape what she cannot hide. Moving forward from society’s expectation, Lady Audley develops her own emotions and controls where she goes, without having Sir Michael or any men stop her journey, such as leaving for
In this chapter, Lady Audley greatly discusses how she would likely kill Robert Audley so he will not say anything. She states, “If he stood before me, and I could kill him…I would do it!” (Braddon, 640). She greatly fears that Robert Audley will tell everyone the truth so she describes on different methods on how to keep him silent. Also, in this chapter, Lady Audley leaves a candle lit in Phoebe Marks room so she can kill Robert Audley. She tells Phoebe that the wind blew out the fire when, in reality, it did not.
The Regency Period in England was an extravagant era often associated with prominent social, political, economic, and artistic advancements. It took place in the early 1800’s and was a time of much elegance and aristocracy. Movies and books set in this time period all seem to highlight the elegance and romance that was prevalent at the time. Famous Regency Era literary works, such as Pride and Prejudice, portray young English women getting their happily-ever-after endings with their true loves. Unfortunately, such endings did not actually happen to real women of the era because they lived very austere and vapid lives. They hardly had a choice in many of their lives’ decisions and had little to no career options. These women were raised from birth to be lady-like, obedient, and agreeable in order to attract respectable men to marry, as they were fully dependant on men. Women were essentially treated as property passed on from their fathers to their husbands. They had many restrictions placed on them and often weren’t even allowed to walk outside without proper accompaniment. Because the expectations placed on women were so rigid and absurd, some feminist authors from the time ridiculed these social standards in their writing. Famous novelist Jane Austen was known for satirizing many social customs of the Regency Period in her romantic fiction novels, placing a special emphasis on women’s rights. Pride and Prejudice in particular depicted protagonist Elizabeth Bennet as a smart, headstrong, free thinking individual who didn’t let negative outside forces sway her beliefs. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen challenges the social propriety and creates her own ideals for women through Elizabeth Bennet’s independence, intelligence, and stron...
Lady Audley’s Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, is a novel of many elements. It has been placed in many different style or genre categories since its publication. I feel that it best fits under the melodrama or sensational genre, and under the subgenre of mystery. It contains significant elements of both types of writing, so I feel it is best to recognize both, keeping in mind that melodrama is its main device and mystery is a type of Victorian melodrama. In order to understand how the story fits into these categories, it is necessary to explore the Victorian characteristics of each, and apply them to the text. In addition to establishing the genres, it is important to explain why and how these genres fit into Victorian culture.
Secrets are the integral driving force behind the plot of George Elliot’s Middlemarch. From the first paragraph when a young girl and her brother try to leave to save the world, to when Rosamond tries to sabotage Dorothea and Will, secrets abound. The time period Middlemarch was written about seems to be fraught with the keeping of secrets. The idea of wives keeping secrets from their husbands, husbands from their wives, parents from children, and vice versa is not a foreign thought, but the amount of surreptitiousness is astounding. Secrets drive every decision made in the town of Middlemarch. Dorothea keeps the truth from Casaubon about the reason she married him. Rosamond keeps the secret that she only married Lydgate to get away from Middlemarch, while Lydgate hides most of his past, as well as massive amounts of debt from all he knows.
Jane Fairfax is a minor character in Emma who is a Bates woman. After Miss Campbell’s marriage to Mr. Dixon, Jane returns to Highbury. Emma, who is the main heroine in the text, shows her dislike towards Jane in many ways. Emma thinks that Jane’s position in society is lower than hers and it is not expres...
The physical and social setting in "Mrs. Dalloway" sets the mood for the novel's principal theme: the theme of social oppression. Social oppression was shown in two ways: the oppression of women as English society returned to its traditional norms and customs after the war, and the oppression of the hard realities of life, "concealing" these realities with the elegance of English society. This paper discusses the purpose of the city in mirroring the theme of social oppression, focusing on issues of gender oppression, particularly against women, and the oppression of poverty and class discrimination between London's peasants and the elite class.
Another form of Emma’s neglect is one of manipulation, mostly through her control over Harriet Smith. Emma is “willful, manipulative, an arranger or rather a misarranger of other people’s lives. Much of the time she fails to see things clearly and truly, and her self-knowledge is uncertain” (Goodheart)25. “One significant effect of harping on Emma's snobbery is to set in relief her romantic notions of Harriet's origin and destiny” (Brooke)26. Although to Harriet, Emma’s “help” to her is one that will reveal optimistic results and a proper husband, Harriet is incapable to taking up for herself against Emma, but if “[s]he would form her opinions...
Although Jane respects Helen’s honesty and stoicism, she cannot. understand her beliefs and the way in which she accepts her constant chastisement so submissively; she herself ‘should wish the earth to. open and swallow me up.’ After talking to Helen, Jane comments that. her feelings were ‘better regulated’ and ‘thoughts more harmonious’. Finally, Mrs. Temple finds someone whom she can respect.
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 ...
Mary Crawford is not the heroine of Mansfield Park. Heroines in Jane Austen’s novels end up married to a man they love and this is not Mary’s fate. Mary did have the opportunity to become a heroic figure but did not take it. If Mary had changed her ways, put her feelings for Edmund above her desire for wealth, her character development and change of heart would have made her acceptable to the Regency Era audience. However, she is steadfast in her opinions and makes no concessions. Mary’s stubbornness, disregard for standards of the times, and wittiness makes her unfit as a heroine when the book was published. However, in contemporary times these characteristic appeal to audiences, as one is more likely to relate to Mary’s practical, although controversial, opinions.
Primarily, Mansfield uses the foil characters Laura and Mrs. Sheridan to accentuate Laura’s beliefs in social equality while bringing out Mrs. Sheridan’s opposite actions. After the news of the death of their neighbor, Mr. Scott, Laura feels she “...can’t possible have a garden-party with a man dead just outside [her] front gate”(5) she feels sympathetic towards the family as she knows they will be able to hear their band as they are mourning. On the contrary, Mrs. Sheridan does quite the opposite when alerted of the news, and even more so when Laura tells Mrs. Sheridan of her plans to cancel the party. Mrs. Sheridan strongly believes that “People like that don't expect sacrifices from us.”(6) Mansfield shows the reader how these two characters are quite different from each other. Laura doesn’t want a garden party to be disrespectful of the Scotts, but Mrs. Sheridan believes quite the opposite as she is rude and doesn’t believe the Scotts are on the same level as the Sheridans, being quite lower...
Women in the Victorian era were held to an inferior status. Many had to hide their feelings, conceal their creativity and they were sought to conform to societal rules. Jane Eyre never quite followed this, growing up in a contemptuous household Eyre acted out, calling her provider, Mrs. Reed, "deceitful" and describing her upbringing as "miserable cruelty" (Bronte 37, 36). Jane's upbringing instills her strong belief in justice toward those who treat others unfairly. When Jane becomes a student at Lowood Institute, the orphan school, Jane endures cruelty from the headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst. Due to her rough childhood, Jane's passion is uncontrollable. Rather than being passionate for love, she is passionate for justice. While at Lowood, she eventually learns the meaning of forgiveness and strength. Her good friend, Helen Burns, teaches her to accept others opinions of her, to be humble and recognize one's own faults. Helen councils Jane, saying "Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs" (58). Helen's advice to Jane teaches her self-possession, to endure hardships that come her way ...
In the novel, Emma, Austen introduced her audience to a new idea of patriarchy. While she is known to satirize society for the “faulty education of female children, limited expectations for girls and women, and the perils of the marriage market” (“Austen, Jane”). Austen expresses the irony of the men of her patriarchal society and proposes the ideal gentleman in Mr. Knightley. In Emma, Austen moves away from “a traditional idea of 'natural' male supremacy towards a 'modern' notion of gender equity” (Marsh). Jane Austen is a revolutionary in the way she transforms the idea of Nineteenth Century patriarchy by not “reinforcing the traditional gender stereotypes” (Rosenbury) but instead challenging the status quo. While her characters still hold some ties to traditional ideals, Austen proves to be ahead of her time, influencing the way gender is regarded today.
While at Lowood, a state - run orphanage and educational facility, Jane’s first friend, Helen Burns, teaches her the importance of friendship along with other skills that will help Jane grow and emotionally mature in the future. She serves as a role model for Jane. Helen’s intelligence, commitment to her studies, and social graces all lead Jane to discover desirable attributes in Helen. Helen is treated quite poorly, however, “her ability to remain graceful and calm even in the face of (what Jane believes to be) unwarranted punishment makes the greatest impression on the younger girl” (Dunnington). Brontë uses this character as a way to exemplify the type of love that Jane deserves. This relationship allows Jane to understand the importance of having a true friend. Given Jane’s history at Gateshead, finding someone like Helen is monumental in her development as a person. Helen gives through honest friendship, a love that is
George Eliot provides a valuable look into the lives of historically unremarkable and ordinary people in her novel Middlemarch. This insight allows the reader to discover the established society within 19th century Provincial England, and how that society shapes a relationship with the individual. Eliot uses Middlemarch and its disdain for the tropes of conventional romance to embody unimportant people –rather than magnificent journeys, struggles, and victories of princes and kings – whom are affected by the social web in which they inhabit and interact with each other. This human social web is the main focus of the novel, and, therefore, a world in which characters are free to imagine themselves free from social pressures, such as marriage idealism, that determine their lives is created.