In one of her more revealing moments, she threatens to have the black stable-hand lynched if he complains about her to the boss. Her insistence on flirting with Lennie seals her unfortunate fate. Although Steinbeck does, finally, offer a sympathetic view of Curley’s wife by allowing her to voice her unhappiness and her own dream for a better life, women have no place in the author’s idealized vision of a world structured around the brotherly bonds of men. In Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men women are portrayed as discriminated. In the times John Steinbeck lived in women were not held in high regard but they were just present to serve men.
Alcee Arobin is a lady’s man who has many affairs with different women and intends to make Edna another one of his affairs. But Edna doesn’t let Alcee take control of the relationship; she writes him when she wants and decides when they should go out. Being in control is a reverse role for Edna, but she knows it is really who she is, and it is what she wants. Alcee plays along and lets Edna take control, and Edna discovers the satisfaction of using a man the way men usually use women. Although Edna has taken control of her own life, she is still not happy with her life because of the many different types of love she has experienced.
Your father's reputation as a public official was not above suspicion”, which means Nora’s father, to some extent, was also a socially undesirable person. Nora’s inheritance of traits from her father has deteriorated her character further in the eyes of the readers when she says to Torvald, “… but you could just as well dismiss some other clerk instead of Krogstad.” In her attempt to stop Torvald from dismissing Krogstad, Nora even shows how mean, cunning, ruthless and obstinate she can be by persuading Torvald to discharge someone else instead of
Among the similarities between Calixta and Mrs. Mallard are the conditions of their marriages around the time of the stories: Calixta to Bobinot and Mrs. Mallard with Brently Mallard. From the text given in both short stories and the subtext in between the lines, Calixta and Mrs. Mallard were not satisfied with their marriages. The latter, Mrs. Mallard, did not have a fondness for her husband and this was evident in her quick realization that she was finally free, free to live out the rest of her days how she wanted. Despite her heart condition, the story mentioned that Mrs. Mallard breathed that she would get to live a long life ahead of herself. It would be a life that was hers and hers alone.
I believe that when they first got married there was some kind of love in their relationship, but when they realized they could not conceive a child Don Elias blamed his wife. Even though it was most likely he was the infertile one, he treated her as if all she was good for was to take care of him like a maid. This is what made her a hard, bitter old woman. Dona Matilida believes it was her fault, and feels guilty about not being able to provide him with a child he so greatly desired. This caused her to turn a blind eye to what he was doing around town with other women.
On the oppose side of the marital spectrum, Zeena regularly professes her hypochondria to her husband. However, in response to the sledding accident, she “seemed to be raised right up just when the call came to her” (Wharton 131). This ironic “miracle” proves Zeena’s addiction to martyrdom, emotionally dependent on first her illnesses, then to her vocational role. Although professedly unhappy, she relies on her marriage for a sense of purpose. In an examination of the constancies, it seems as though both wife and husband, woman and man, are reliant upon both one another and their marriage to function
In both Shakespeare’s, Taming of the Shrew, and Wolfe’s, A Room of One’s own, the writers’ illustrate the deviously suffocating repercussions of sexism on liberty and the human spirit. Judith and Katherine are both intelligent and free-spirited characters with the brightest of futures, yet society and its rules perniciously choke their existence from them. The slow destruction of each woman is made more tragic by the promise and potential stolen from them and the world. An example of Judith’s untapped intelligence is in Wolfe’s description of her ability to read, write, and think for herself despite the restrictions placed on her by her family, “She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil (Wolfe 1021).” Katherine’s self-confidence and pride are seen in her world-wise response to Petruchio’s advances in Act II, “Too light for such a swain to catch, And yet heavy as my weight should be (2.1 .204-205).” Moreover, her true nature, that of a caring and loving person not a mean and spiteful shrew, is displayed in the first thirty lines of Act II when Katherine in genuinely concerned about her sister’s predicament and the hurt she suffers when her flippant sister merely taunts while metaphorically and literally hiding behind their father. As both authors continue to develop their characters, they begin to describe the shackles that their families and society place on them and their eventual downfall.
She lives a stagnant life and does not move forward in finding the fulfillment she needs. Although she tried to make conversation that would please her husband by asking him, “Henry, could we have wine at dinner?” and, “Henry, at those prized fights, do the men hurt each other very much?” (p. 636), this is a conversation that would only interest Elisa’s husband and not herself. Elisa seems to have accepted the societal norms of living by the man’s rules. Women in this era had their housewife duties and took care of their husbands regardless of what their needs or wants were. Gender inequality was normal during the time this story was written.
I think that before Mrs. Forrester’s husband dies, Neil Herbert did not realize that she had no existence without a man in her life, and her value is derived from his values. It seems to me that Mrs. Forrester is actually like an empty box that the Captain fills to create her personality. When Mr. Forrester dies, I think this is the turning point in Neil’s perspective of Mrs. Forrester. It is also a turning point in Mrs. Forrester life, and greatly affects who she is and how she will act from now on. First of all, Neil Herbert finally realizes that Mrs. Forrester was actually no one without her husband; and that it was her husband that made her valuable, by what he said about her to people.
It has been stated that Nora Helmer of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is an ignorant, manipulative, and selfish woman who cares only about spending money and having “stacks and stacks” of it (Ibsen, 798). One can argue though, that Nora is a victim of the time in which she lived, and not simply an insensitive being. It was expected of women from Nora’s time and wealth to live with their fathers until they were married and moved in with their husbands, so it is only natural that Nora would have been shielded from important monetary decisions throughout her life. Women of the 1800’s were expected to marry, be housewives and mothers with the aid of servants, and do little else with their life, and many societies would chastise any woman who tried to stray from this ideal. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is a modern, well-made play that uses realism to convey the damages done to women and their relationships by these societal expectations of women in the late 1870’s.