Significance of Women in the Chrysalids

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The Significance of Women in The Chrysalids Women in the novel The Chrysalids play a vast amount of roles; from being one of the telepaths like Petra or being suicidal like Aunt Harriet when in chapter 7 of the work it is stated that she could not live with herself a giving birth to a third deviant child, and in turn resulted in her taking her own life. John Wyndham does not stereotype women in this novel like other authors do in different works of fiction because the women in the novel play strong and weak characters too. Through this essay, I strongly feel that Aunt Harriet and Petra each play significant roles in the novel The Chrysalids. The first character that will be discussed in regards to the aforementioned thesis statement is Aunt Harriet: The aunt of David that commits suicide along with her baby. Firstly, the part of the novel where Aunt Harriet travels to the house of her sister Emily to ask her to watch her newborn deviant child because she is the only one that she is able to turn to. Aunt Harriet says this quotation to her sister Emily while she is asking her to look after her newborn deviant and to prevent her husband Henry from leaving her. “This is the third time. They’ll take my baby away again like they took the others… Henry will turn me out, I think. He’ll find another wife, one who can give him proper children there’ll be nothing in the world for me – nothing. I came here hoping against hope for sympathy. Emily is the only person who can help me…” (Wyndham 71-72). This quotation helps to illustrate the first argument because it shows that Aunt Harriet had only one person to turn to: Emily. Her husband (Henry) was about to leave her because after one has had three mutant children, their spouse is allowed to leave their significant other. Thus explaining why Aunt Harriet went to her sister hoping against hope for sympathy. This is

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