The woman on the other hand was expected to play the loyal role to the husband, supporting him in the decisions made and the accomplishments the man made that ensured prosperity in the home. One can say that during this period of time women were somewhat controlled by their spouses. It was just the way things were before women’s right movements came about and women started speaking up for equality. These two pieces of literature selected are fitting in demonstrating the role of the characters in relation to the gender and marriage roles. ‘The Story of an Hour’ by Kate Chopin is a short story that was written in 1894, a time when women were repressed with no rights.
I didn’t get into Stanford. I dropped out of college” (464). This shows us that even after the argument Jing-mei continued to limit and doubt herself. The climax of the story is when Jing-mei opens the piano after her mother’s dies and starts to play again. This shows a change in the protagonist because before Jing-mei wasn’t any good at playing the piano because she never desired to put forth the effort into practicing, but in the end of the story she tries to play a song called “Perfectly Contented”, and after years of not practicing she finds that the piece comes effortlessly to her.
We notice how of much less importance women are to men, when Lord Henry’s wife first meets Dorian. He’s expecting to see Henry, and when she comes in, she addresses herself as “only his wife”, [45] by calling herself ‘only’ his wife, we can tell that there isn’t really much else to her. She doesn’t address herself by her name which furthermore gives the reader the idea that she’s merely an object belonging to her husband. It seems that she has accepted her lower rank in society. In this novel marriage only seems to be a social status.
As a woman in the Victorian era, it was the accepted reasoning that marriage was the career choice you made. This increased the difficulty of independence both financially and socially. In ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Helen Stoner is followed to Holmes’ house by her stepfather: “I traced her”. This portrays how little freedom Victorian women were granted and Also from this Sherlock Holmes tale is an example of how financial independence was rarely an option for a women of the Victorian Era. Miss Stoner states “At present it is out of my power to reward you for your services”.
Lahiri writes about how his marriage isn’t harmonious and how Mr. Kapasi longs to establish a relationship with Mrs. Das. Mr Kapasi is also seen as modest when he fails to see how important his job is (pg 51). Towards the beginning of the story, Mrs. Das is interpreted as a lady who has distanced herself from her family and acts more as a “sister” to her children than the parent she is. This is evidential when on page 48, Mrs. Das declines her daughter’s wish for painted nails by telling her, “Leave me alone… You’re making me mess up.” While it is expected for an older sibling to nonchalantly wave away a younger one, the same attitude is not usually likely with parents. On page 49, Lahiri lets it be known that Mr. Kapasi acknowledges that the Das’ acted as older siblings to the children rather than parents.
Grandma represents the past with her strong “southern hospitality” heritage. Later on she even states, “In my time…children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then.” The grandchildren, however, are a product of where this gap between social courtesy and lack of discipline apply. In the beginning of the story June Star rudely comments to her grandmother, “She wouldn’t’ stay home for a million bucks, afraid she’d miss something. She has to go everywhere we go.” When John Wesley was asked by the grandmother what he would do if confronted by the Misfit his reply was, “I’d smack his face.” But in the end we find this to be very untrue.
Critic Carley Rees Bogard contends that Edna gets pulled into a “web of romantic illusion” and that too much focus is put on the sexual encounters and not her efforts to become herself. On the other hand, for Edna, sexuality is how true freedom presents itself. With complete disregard to the stereotype of “mother-woman,” Edna fights against the demands of 1899 that regulate her to be a controlled and dutiful housewife (Chopin 8). In The Awakening, Kate Chopin symbolically traces a 19th century woman’s steps toward enlightenment to an ultimate choice. Chopin created one of the most memorable feminist icons of the feminist movements before we knew what being a feminist really entailed.
In the fifties, women were supposed to stay home and society gave them no choice about working. A woman’s family structure while growing up helps her make a decision because of the role their mothers played in the household. If the mother works, then the daughter will work, too. On the other hand, if the mother stays home, the woman may be influenced to do the same, even if she went to an elite college. A father has a major role in a girl’s life because, if he wants his wife to stay home and not work, he may want his daughter to stay home, too.
Theme According to Chapter seven it states a theme is “in a story is the representation of the idea behind the story. (Clugston, 2010) “The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin, the theme is about freedom and individuality. A woman that is looking for identity, selfhood, or self- discovery. Based off of the quote “She is young with a calm and strong face, but she stares dully into the sky while she waits nervously for a revelation.” (Clugston, 2010) She is saddened by her husband’s death but also feels a sense of freedom. She begins to plan her future, in which, she will live without the burden of another person.
Women of the time were not allowed to think for themselves, and while many were treated like angels of the house, others were married to unfaithful husbands or men who thought it was their job to “punish” their wives. It is easy to see how this could lead to depression- and because depression was not discovered as an illness back then, men thought women were just silly for letting themselves get down all the time. This was the case in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and the lack of true help from her doctor husband lead the narrator to mental illness, it made her crazy. The theme is also reinforced by the hallucinations the narrator has- the lady trapped in the wallpaper. This is he subconscious showing through.