Michèle Roberts’s The Looking Glass
The understanding of history as a linear and unproblematic narrative, dominated by kings and queens, warriors and heroes, has long been denied by women writers. As Linda Anderson argues, these events ‘take on a different meaning, a different configuration when we begin to see through them – in both senses – to women’s concealed existence in the private sphere of family and home’ (Anderson, p.130). Women have little place in traditional linear history and have come to deny its authority and question its dominance. Frieda Johles Forman, in her introduction to a 1989 collection of essays on women’s temporality, argues that women suffer from a lack of history, an unrecorded past, and that this ‘absence strikes at odd, unsuspecting moments’ (Forman, p.8). But this absence of history is changing, as women begin to write their own stories and their own conceptions of the past. Women’s time and the political implications for feminism of feminist historiography have spawned a wealth of writing in recent years. Even in the academic world of history, reliance upon major events as the narrative of history has been undermined by the possibility of a narrative of everyday lives, of everyday events and occurrences.1 However, this re-recording and re-making of history is fraught with danger, as Anderson warns:
The ‘reclaiming of history’, the discovery of how our foremothers preceded and even anticipated us, can help to assure us that, despite the evidence, we do in fact exist in the world; yet if we ignore how that existence is textually mediated we end up simply reconstituting ‘reality’ as it is. (p.134)
Anderson argues that, despite the development of a critique of history’s claim to objectivity a...
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... and Sowton, Caoran, eds., Taking Our Time: Feminist Perspectives on Temporality (Oxford: Pergamon, 1989)
Heath, Stephen, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
Irigaray, Luce, Sexes and Genealogies, trans. Gill, Gillian C. (New York: Cornell University Press, 1993)
Michaud, Guy, Mallarmé, trans. Collins, Marie and Humez, Bertha (London: Peter Owen, 1966)
Millan, Gordon, Mallarmé: A Throw of the Dice (London: Secker and Warburg, 1994)
Oliver, Hermia, Flaubert and an English Governess (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980)
Pearson, Roger, Unfolding Mallarmé: The Development of a Poetic Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996)
Roberts, Michèle, The Looking Glass (London: Little Brown, 2000)
Spencer, Philip, Flaubert: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1951)
Steegmuller, Francis, Flaubert and Madame Bovary (London: Constable, 1993.
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.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental feminism and literature's ancestral house: Another look at The Yellow Wallpaper". Women's Studies. 12:2 (1986): 113-128.
Throughout history, women have struggled with, and fought against oppression. They have been held back and weighed down by the sexist ideas of a male dominated society which has controlled cultural, economic and political ideas and structure. During the mid-1800’s to early 1900’s women became more vocal and rebuked sexism and the role that had been defined for them. Fighting with the powerful written word, women sought a voice, equality amongst men and an identity outside of their family. In many literary writings, especially by women, during the mid-1800’s to early 1900’s, we see symbols of oppression and the search for gender equality in society. Writing based on their own experiences, had it not been for the works of Susan Glaspell, Kate Chopin, and similar feminist authors of their time, we may not have seen a reform movement to improve gender roles in a culture in which women had been overshadowed by men.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" Women's Studies. 12 (1986): 113-128.
Woodbridge, Linda. Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540-1620. Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois, 1986.
Roediger, David R. & Foner, Phillip S. Our Own Time. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" Women's Studies 12:2 (1986): 113-128.
Society continually places restrictive standards on the female gender not only fifty years ago, but in today’s society as well. While many women have overcome many unfair prejudices and oppressions in the last fifty or so years, late nineteenth and early twentieth century women were forced to deal with a less understanding culture. In its various formulations, patriarchy posits men's traits and/or intentions as the cause of women's oppression. This way of thinking diverts attention from theorizing the social relations that place women in a disadvantageous position in every sphere of life and channels it towards men as the cause of women's oppression (Gimenez). Different people had many ways of voicing their opinions concerning gender inequalities amound women, including expressing their voices and opinions through their literature. By writing stories such as Daisy Miller and The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James let readers understand and develop their own ideas on such a serious topic that took a major toll in American History. In this essay, I am going to compare Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” to James’ “Daisy Miller” as portraits of American women in peril and also the men that had a great influence.
...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).
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" Women's Studies. 12 (1986): 113-128.
French, Katherine L., and Allyson M. Poska. Women and Gender in the Western past. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Women’s History & Ancient History. The University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Wojczak, Helena. “English Women’s History.” English women’s history. Hasting Press. n.d. Web 24 Nov 2013
“It was a new discovery to find that these stories were, after all, about our own lives, were not distant, that there was no past or future that all time is now-time, centred in the being.” (Pp39.)
Throughout literature’s history, female authors have been widely recognized for their groundbreaking and eye-opening accounts of what it means to be a woman in society. In most cases of early literature, women are portrayed as weak and unintelligent characters who rely solely on their male counterparts. Also during this time period, it would be shocking to have women characters in some stories, especially since their purpose is only secondary to that of the male protagonist. But, in the late 17th to early 18th century, a crop of courageous women began publishing their works, beginning the literary feminist movement. Together, Aphra Behn, Charlotte Smith, Fanny Burney, and Mary Wollstonecraft challenge the status quo of what it means to be a woman during the time of the Restoration Era and give authors and essayists of the modern day, such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a platform to become powerful, influential writers of the future.