Story of an Hour and Yellow Wallpaper It was the norm of the society in the nineteenth century to have women dependent on the males. Women were most often than not, regulated by their spouses, and were expected to do nothing but make life, and living, an easy experience for their husbands; in return, the women of that era, were loved, protected, and cared for by their husbands. It was while ensuring that these norms of the society were maintained, that both women in the short stories, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, were destroyed by death and madness respectively. In the two stories, both women were trapped in a situation in which they would have preferred not to be in, with the husband and the expectation of the society being the cause of their imprisonment. However, it should be understood that in neither of the situations were the husband’s actions intentionally done; instead, they too were living up to society’s expectations in order to maintain social order.
The Discrimination against Women Identities Throughout history, female were considered lesser beings and nothing more than the property of their husband. In the short story, Blank Spaces by Joanna Cockerline, the acknowledgment of female being inferior creatures in comparison to men is highlighted. Struggle against misfortunes, Elizabeth is oppressed by the social inequality due to the fact that she is a girl. In Blank Spaces, the social inequality implied by the narrative severely impacts Elizabeth’s career hierarchy, character traits, and life experiences. Like many feminist writer, Cockerline focuses her emphasis on how social norm discriminate women by inhibit their job opportunities.
Women carry out the triple burden in the household; the domestic labour, emotional labour, and paid labour. As shown in the item most of this work is ‘unpaid and hardly recognised work at all’. Oakley argues the only way women will gain independence and freedom in society is for the role of the housewife to be removed aswell as the present structure of the family. Wilmott and Young believed the family is symmetrical and that both husband and wife have joint conjugal roles making the family a functional institution and their research showed that men do help women with housework. Radical feminists such as Dobash and Dobash also disagree with Willmott and Young’s theory that the family is symmetrical.
History 201 Professor Studebaker “Her-Story of Women’s Suffrage” Makyla Pittman Imagine living a life filled with all forms of discrimination where you have no voice in the government under which you live and in the equality of social life where you are a chief factor. It is a difficult scenario to visualize and before the 19th century that was the reality of a women’s position in this world. With limited access, a young wife and mother was expected to manage a household, train her children, keep her friends and sustain the affections of her husband. In a world filled with patriarchal constraints women were forced to fall back on their instinctive resources of common sense, wisdom, diplomacy and knowledge of human nature. Education, employment, and politics are all barriers where women were held back from the full development of their faculties.
The paper referred to prostitutes as sisters and Men were usually depicted as the wrongdoers. This was a concept unheard of in Ingraham’s society. Ingaham shed light on the fact that once a woman was violated and abandoned by a man, she became shunned by the community, lost all opportunities to be married to a “good man,” had few job prospects available to her, as well as had no legal recourse. The only job women could hold at the time was as sweat shop employees, where they would be paid extremely low wages, on which survival was difficult, especially if the women had to support her children. Ingraham felt this broken system had been pushing women onto the street and into prostitution.
Joel Arpin Prof Karl Anderson English Com & Lit 102-05 March 3, 2013 A Feminist Theme Comparison of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ & ‘Trifles’ This exposition should convince the reader that there are clear underlying feminist themes connecting Trifles and The Yellow Wallpaper. The foremost common themes in these stories address the patriarchal dominance of an earlier -turn of the century- society and the demoralizing effect it has on the lives and emotional wellbeing of the women in the stories. The male characters are portrayed as domineering yet clueless authority figures who maintain their position certainly by virtue of their gender. Being a product of Victorian mores, the men are almost subconsciously dismissive of the female intellect, regarding it as childish and inferior. The women are casualties of a domestic prison, a prison for the mind, created by society and their husbands, who are victims themselves in their own way, of a Gilded Age mindset.
It is hard to imagine the suppression and adversity women lived with only a few centuries ago. Our history has alluded to an inequality of women among men, telling us that women did not deserve the same inalienable rights; the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments’, these are spelled out quite specifically and are drawn on by her own personal experience which speak loudly for the voice of women in the mid 1800’s. It is through the work of Stanton and her supporters that women today have the rights and choices they do and through the writings of Chopin and Wollstonecraft which provide an insightful look into the suppressed yet intellectual nature of the women of their day. The contemporary
The Women of Waknuk The Chrysalids by John Wyndham illustrates women differently towards their husbands, and their family members. Women in Waknuk are pressured to be perfect. Most likely women like Elias Strorm’s wife, who was a beautiful young lady. Elias Strorm’s strict ways turned his wife into a withered, grey woman, who was almost glad to die one year after David’s father was born. This explains that such a society stifles life.
I was a looker, I brought in the customers, and that was fine as long as it lasted… but now… now I’m fucked. p. 128 With the reputation of a whore no job, husband, or family Pierette has nowhere to go and has made it impossible for her to lead a “normal” life because of the fact that she chose to live life like a whore instead of the saint like life the other woman try to achieve. It is not surprising because, Pierrette was raised in the environment and with the understanding that all woman should act like saints, and the men should be the ones working to provide for their families, when Pierrette made the conscious decision to completely go against the morals she was taught to live by, everyone lost respect for
The women were treated very badly and were paid very poorly. In the nineteenth-century women’s roles were claimed to be “civilly dead”, however significant leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Catharine Beecher fought for their femininity and gradually won their rights for half the population, showing how important women truly are.