In this essay I will be discussing how Mary Shelley used the description of femininity her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft created in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. For that to be done I will analyzing three female characters from the novel and discuss how these characters are leading examples of the early nineteenth century woman. I will be using examples from both A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Frankenstein to support my arguments. Lastly I will discuss what the characteristics of the female characters in the novel say about Mary Shelley’s thoughts on women and femininity during the early nineteenth century. Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and advocate of women’s rights; she was also the mother to English writer and feminist Mary Shelley.
Virginia Woolf - Moving Beyond a Convoluted Memory of Her Parents Why would I start with Julia Duckworth Stephen to get to Virginia Woolf? One answer is Virginia’s often quoted statement that "we think back through our mothers if we are women" (Woolf, A Room of One’s Own). Feminism is rooted not just in a response to patriarchy but also in the history of females and their treatment of each other. Part of feminism is a reevaluation of the value of motherhood. But what does Virginia’s mother have to do with Virginia’s writing?
Like the five authors that were included in this group Alice walker was born on April February 9, 1944, which was during the second wave of feminism, had in some way established themselves in the world of literature during third wave. “Whereas the first wave of feminism was generally propelled by middle class white women, the second phase drew in women of color and developing nations, seeking sisterhood and solidarity". In many of Walker's literary works she includes vivid sexual and violent images that would make some cringe, but many of the stories have allowed her to engage fully in changing the face of the emerging wave of feminism. Alice Walker, influenced the second wave of feminism by creating something that could relate to black women specifically to have an equal voice in a society ran by men. Walker chooses the "womanist" theory of feminism because she feels it fits her particular circumstances in a better way than feminism.
Jane Elton's Identity Conflict in Catherine Maria Sedgwick’s A New England Tale In her article “‘But is it any good?’: Evaluating Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Fiction,” Susan Harris provides methods and criteria for examining Women’s Fiction in what she calls “process analysis” (45). To apply Harris’ guidelines to Catherine Maria Sedgwick’s A New England Tale, I must first “acknowledge the ideological basis of [my] endeavor” (45) as a feminist/equalitist critique of the text. Furthermore, I identify the three-fold approach that Harris describes as historical, in distinguishing early nineteenth-century from mid- to late-century attitudes, rhetorical, in labeling Sedgwick’s communication to readers didactic, and ideological, by understanding my objections stem from twenty-first-century attitudes. Harris also explains, “If we look at them as both reactive and creative…we can understand [texts’] aesthetic, moral, and political values” (45); I consider A New England Tale to have a sentimental aesthetic, a Christian morality, and a support of female subordination. The concern of this paper is the “happy ending,” typical in Women’s Fiction according to Harris (46), present in A New England Tale, in which Jane Elton sacrifices her autonomous self through marrying Mr. Lloyd.
Circe utilizes her divine tool of magic to use them for her own profit. She keeps all her animals, men, as her pets. Homer tells the readers that figuratively, women use wiles (the drugs) to Mencia ... ... middle of paper ... ..., Homer sees women as problematic and troublesome inhabitants of the earth. Throughout the Odyssey, the author delineates the female characters as existents who have a sharpness of mind, fragility at heart, yet deviousness in soul. The world needs to know about this because Homer's interpertation of women holds some truth.
Lady Macbeth adopts a different strategy to use her female influence to convince her husband Macbeth to kill for the coveted throne, but each conversation takes her closer to her untimely deat... ... middle of paper ... ... pity and fear. In another step further in removal from womanhood, she requests from creatures of evil to turn her mother’s milk into a poison unfit for maternal care of a child. Such acts against the womanly disposition are labeled by Elizabeth Klett to be unnatural. In her introspective article about the women in Macbeth she claims they are so, “Not […] necessary evil, but because they critique their roles, either directly or indirectly, in an oppressive patriarical world”. Lady Macbeth upsets the natural order of known behaviors to women, and changes the course of her husband’s destiny as well as her own.
A closer look at the female leads in La Bohème and Rent shows that Dumas, fils’ Marguerite served as an ancestral ideal of femininity for her descendants in these works. Examining the texts of both La Bohème and Rent reveal separate but similar gazes backwards to Camille. Although removed from Camille by forty-six and two hundred and forty-six years respectively, La Bohème and Rent anxiously repeat the conventions of Dumas, fils in the construction of the ideal heroine and the treatment of disease in the feminine. First, research on “the ideal heroine” of the nineteenth century reveals how Camille’s Marguerit... ... middle of paper ... ...ickness: the femme fragile. The femme fragile of the nineteenth century is characterized by youth, fragility, and “budding sexuality” .
It was this exploration of women’s independence which created turbulence in the literary community when The Awakening was published in 1899. Unfortunately, Chopin was ahead of her time, ... ... middle of paper ... ...Chopin’s character, Edna Pontellier, serves as a reminder that if a suburban housewife can seize and transform her destiny so too can the rest of womankind. Works Cited Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Heath Anthology of American Literature.
When writing her novel, Alcott applied John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. It reflected both the usual and original strains in her work. Alcott developed the moral of her characters around the story of the pilgrim who travels from the City of Destruction to the Celestial city facing internal and external demons (“Novel Summaries Analysis” n. pg.). Little Women was typical of young adult books of the nineteenth-century because it was episodic in arrangement and the chapters were dedicated to individual sisters (Salwak 810).
This was the beginning of the "modern feminist movement." The women leaders pushed on until 1870, when the 15th Amendment allowed women the right to vote. (Seyersted, 45) This was also the year that Kate was married to Oscar Chopin. Noticing this we can realize how aware Chopin must have been of these changes, and how she used them to feel confident in allowing her novels to grow m... ... middle of paper ... ...rote the novel at the turn of the twentieth century, and it was received with mixed reviews. The novel, although published in 1906, was not appreciated until it was studied and reprinted in 1969.