IAH 201: U.S. & The World (D) The Women’s Rights Movement Starting In the early 1800s women began to question their general role in society and how it is unjust and unfair. Interestingly the educated radicals and working class women in early 1800s were still concerned with the roles and rights of women, they did not classify suffrage as being the prominent issue. The idea of women’s suffrage did not become the primary goal of the Women’s rights movement until around the 1850s, and then remained the primary goal up until 1920 when women finally achieved the right to vote. Further, there were many significant male and female figuresthat played crucial roles in the Women’s rights movements that eventually led to, but didn’t stop at, the achievement of women’s right to vote in 1920. It was in the early 1800s when women began to question various issues such as their roles in society and their rights as a woman, or their lack of rights and unjust inequality in comparison to males.
In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, women as a social group are represented through two main female characters: Blanche and Stella (Williams, Tennessee). The play is set in postwar America, during which women had restricted freedom and were given a largely domestic role in society (A&E Television Networks, LLC.) Many women, however, who had played a more active role in society during the war found it difficult to adjust back to their lives after the war ended . Williams uses Blanche and Stella to convey society’s ideas about the role of women at the time, focusing on women’s domestic role, their passivity and what was presumed as ‘femininity’. Stella exemplifies the perceived domestic role of women during that period, staying at home while Stanley goes to work.
Issues of Women’s Liberation from the Oppression Found in Society and Marriages Sherry Heide ENG 125 Introduction to Literature Instructor: Louise Becker 09 January 2012 Issues of Women’s Liberation from the Oppression Found in Society and Marriages What is said of women suffrage is not always true today in America or other countries, what is the truth, is that it is based largely on the perception of the woman experiencing the suffering. Women throughout time have suffered from oppression in society and in their own marriages. Gender roles are not something we are but instead something we do. It is completely unnatural for women of today to be the money makers, everything to the children (taxi, disciplinarian, etc..),take out etc cook, housekeeper and so on yet still their husbands will is forced upon the entire family instead of taking his place with his wife as partners. Did the verse found in Genesis chapter 3 vs. 16 cause centuries of women's suffrage?
Middle class women, in the Victorian era, were subordinate to their husbands and maintained a special role in the household and in the marriage. George Egerton wrote “A Cross Line” which details the adventure of a sexually liberated woman. In K. Douglas King’s “Lucretia,” Lucretia, a middle class housewife, feels unappreciated by her husband and leaves him for another man. In George Egerton’s and K. Douglas King’s short stories the main female characters are empowered to break free of the social and sexual norms and roles of Victorian era society, by doing this the characters liberate themselves and take control of their own lives. Lucretia, the housewife of husband John Burnett, feels unappreciated and taken for granted while she maintains the house and raises their children.
The Nazi’s were fixed on the idea that a woman’s role was at home, being a mother and a wife. They wanted women to have plenty of children so the birth rates would go up and Germany could form a large army and become a more powerful nation. Working class women were removed from factories and encouraged to stay at home, and middle class women were removed from their professions. They were urged to wear traditional clothing, and behave in a much less liberal way than was allowed during Weimar times. Many middle class women were unhappy about this, and after the freedoms and empowerment of women during Weimar they did not like the new constrictions – it seemed almost like a step back for them.
Mrs Graham, a champion for women´s rights? The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848) is thought to be one of the first feminist novels. In this essay I mean to prove that Anne Brontë was inspired by a time when female emancipation was debated and that the character Mrs Graham was created to represent criticism against the contemporary attitude towards women. As the excerpt of the novel found in Stream of Literature focuses on child-rearing it is in relation to that subject these conflicting beliefs are debated. To begin, as we are introduced to Mrs Graham it becomes apparent that the author was not portraying what society then considered being an exemplary woman of the Victorian era, as it is stated in the prologue that Mrs Graham was “considered unconventional from the start because she lives alone at Wildfell Hall with only her son and an old woman servant”.
Montgomery goes against some of the 1900’s society beliefs on women and she seems to try to inspire the reader to be a woman like Anne. Even though the novel goes against society beliefs on women, in the end she preserves the most important values in women such as family, responsibility and home. To understand why Anne of Green Gables is a feminist novel, it is essential to look at the time when the novel was written. Montgomery published the book in 1908 and as Robinson explains in her essay: Negotiation in Nineteenth-Century Popular Girls' Stories, that time was “a historical period riven with contradictory messages about the role of women” (115). In the book Framing Our Past: Constructing Canadian Women's History in the Twentieth Century, the authors establish “Women were not treated as equally as man and they had no rights until 1918.
Girls were not given a formal education, and if they wanted to enter a higher education, such as college they would be rejected. Colleges at this time did not accept female students. The view in society of a women's education included learning to cook, clean, and take of the children. During the mid-1800s, more and more women became involved with reform movements from abolishment and the temperance movement. The American women finally thought they would be able do some good, outside of their homes.
In order to understand Shakespeare’s view upon women, it is essentially to investigate the social context of that time. The Elizabethan era is associated with Queen Elizabeth I's reign and is often considered to be the Golden Age in English history. Despite the power of Elisabeth I, women during this time had very little authority, autonomy, or recognition. Women acquired their status based on the position of either their father or their husband. Even more restricting than economic rights were the social and political rights of women.
A professional career was almost impossible, and despite Britain’s ruler being female for most of the nineteenth century until 1901 when Queen Elizabeth died, women were second class citizens. In 1870, Queen Victoria had written, ‘let women be what God intended, a helpmate for man, but with totally different duties and vocations.’ Trint, S. History Learning Site 2010-2011. Women’s Rights. www.historylearningsite.co.uk [accessed 07122011] Women’s subordination to men meant that their prime duty was domestic. Children were an economic responsibility for women - providing food, housing and clothing until the child was independent and could go out to work to provide for the family themselves.