The Role Of Women In Jane Addams

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Recommended: Analyze the various roles women played during the Progressive era

American was soaring in the 19th century finding its national identity with new customs and traditions arriving. However the role of women were circumscribed with education opening new roles for women had difficulty finding employment in traditional jobs. The only hope women had for social status and financial support were in marriages. In marriage, many women were treated inhuman by abusive husband and were in caged at their home to complete tasks and take care of the children. Some middle-class white women invented new roles for themselves by taking interest in social causes, for example Jane Addams an American activist and a leader in women’s suffrage and world peace to work for a permanent peace. Addams can be consider a heroic figure …show more content…

Leonce is a Creole Catholic that makes Edna’s father hate him because her father (The Colonel) is a strict Protestant. “She fancied there was a sympathy of thought and taste between them, in which fancy she was mistaken.” (pg 18) Edna was hoping in her marriage with Leonce that stardust will sprinkle in her world and that he was different from her father. Leonce did what any men will do in his time, he claimed a trophy wife “…looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage.” (pg 2) Mr. Pontellier has the same belief as the Colonel, a believer in patriarchal society who sees Edna as an object not a subject. Edna’s childish act of defiance has let her stuck with a man that controls her just like her father. Edna completes Leonce’s social appearance: having a house, a wife, and children. She cannot escape the unescapable of leaving her husband and for that she buries herself into a bottomless trap hole with her thoughts and feelings of regret and sorrow. Edna’s pitiful thoughts has lead her wanting to destroy something. “… taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it.” (pg 52) Edna cannot break society rules. She is a women who has no ideas and thoughts of her own, she is commanded by society rules to attain her husband and children needs. Edna can’t simply soar away, she has a family that anticipate her to cover her wings around them such as a mother bird will do to her

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