“I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced when need be, and who will see to it that my personal things are kept in their proper place so that I can find what I need the minute I need it.” (para. 4). Most of the essay shows how husbands are demanding when it comes to taking care of the family. The writer is trying to get a point across that wives are expected to a whole lot of things perfectly but are not giving the due appreciation. The writer makes her readers aware that she knows what she is talking about in the early parts of the essay because she has experienced it herself.
From the home front to the work place, women had power, influence, and respect. Throughout the Revolutionary era and beyond, the women’s role was always to be the “homemaker”. They were expected to bear the children, clean the house, make household goods, and keep their husbands happy, while the men managed the farm and the financial matters. When the Revolution began and the men were sent away to fight for their freedom, women had to start taking on some new responsibilities to keep their home a float. Women became “deputy husbands”.
Whereas the wife’s role was called expressive, this is when the wife is expected to look after the house and to raise the children emotionally and cook. However with increasing numbers of married women working in paid employment sociologists have looked more carefully at the division of labour and weather the increasing numbers of women working has caused the renegotiation of the traditional domestic roles. Whether a family live in a symmetrical family or not will have an effect on the divisions of labour. Theorists such as Young and Willmott argue that family life is gradually improving for all its members, becoming more equal and democratic. For example, women now go out to work and become wage earners, just as men now help with housework and childcare.
Housework was a very important task and women were supposed to take great joy in it. Upper and middle class girls were taught from a young age the skills they would need in order to keep a happy, healthy, peaceful home. While the outside world and working force were definitively male, the home was considered to be a feminine place. The outside world was evil and full of sin and wrongdoing, but the home was a moral haven (MacKethan). Husbands went to work in the corrupt world of industry, so they were meant to come home, decompress, and once again become attuned with their compassionate side.
In “Revolt against the socially imposed domination of women,” author Robert Puchalik stated that her economic freedom comes from her ownership of the house, Delia makes it clear to Skyes that she has worked hard to have the house she has now. It is her job, washing white people’s laundry which gives her a source to be independent. Delia acknowledges that she has been a provider for them: “mah sweat is done paid for this house and ah reckon ah kin keep on sweatin’ in it” (Hurston 531). She builds a strength inside that takes pride in how hard she works to live in her home and that nobody can take that away. This is a self esteem booster for her being an independent woman.
Her main positions are the living room, bedroom, and kitchen. Linda lives with her husband Willy. Happy, their son lives at their house also, while Biff came back home to visit. Linda was focused in becoming the best "housewife" she could be. She took accountability and care for her family and was concerned both with how their family managed themselves as well as how they appeared to their neighbors and other peers.
Monica Mills Mrs. Gibson English 1101 3 December 2010 Learned Helplessness and Abused Women The Color Purple has several scenes where the women in the movie are showing exactly what learned helplessness is(1985). Anybody who is in a situation and will not stand up for their self, because of previous situations or what they have been taught from their parents, is learned helplessness. Spielberg down played a lot of what Alice Walker, the author, wrote in her book. Walker speaks directly to the audience by using very powerful literary elements such as attitude, detail, and point of view. Alice Walker, being an abused child herself, brings to the table a whole different aspect to the novel.
A widespread attitude was that women’s roles and men’s roles did not overlap. This idea of “separate spheres” held that women should concern themselves with home, children, and religion, while men took care of business and politics. A little before the 1920s women were strictly home ridden. They were to focus on the house. For instance they had to maintain dinner, cleaning, and maintaining of the children.
In early American culture it was common for a women’s job to be an obedient housewife in clear contrast to the male’s duty to be a job holder. From the time of birth males and females are beginning to learn their gender roles. Society begins teaching them certain values and creating in them certain behavior patterns acceptable to their social roles. These roles have been in the American society ever since the European colonized in America in 1492. Now-a-days men and women can be seen as having expanded their roles in society, with women entering male roles and men finding new ways to relate to and function in the family house.
Oscar Cruz EN 102 Prof. Helm March 17, 2013 Domination of Women in the Yellow Wallpaper “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tells the story of a woman’s fall into madness as a result of the rest an ignore the problem cure that is frequently prescribed to cure hysteria and nervous conditions in women. More importantly, the story is about control and attacks the role of women in society. The narrator of the story is symbolic for all women in the late 1800s, a prisoner of a confining society. Women are expected to bear children, keep house and do only as they are told.