...Male Dominance in Tess of the D’urbervilles The Victorian era, as described by Professor of History and Women's & Gender Studies Nancy Reagin in her essay “Victorian Women: the Gender of Oppression”, witnessed the ideology of separate spheres in which society viewed men as independent and reasonable while viewing women as passive, dependent on men, emotional, and submissive. Men were given the governing role in which they would dominate society due to their ability to make rational decisions while women were expected to unquestionably fill the social roles that men decided for them, and those roles usually revolved around a woman’s duties as a mother and a wife. In marriage, a woman was expected to abide by the orders and views of her husband, and man and wife became one in terms of a woman’s rights, property, and identity. In Tess of the D’urbervilles, a book written in the Victorian Era, Hardy conveys this ideology of separate spheres in his portrayal of men and their dominance over women in society, primarily Tess. Their dominance is shown in how the men act as the masters of society, but it is also seen in how the women in Tess unquestionably view the men as the dominant gender. Often, the women are blindly influenced and act passively when interacting with male characters such as Alec and Angel. They are also seen to be very dependent on the men, and the men acknowledge that, for that is expected of a woman in that age to not be able to make a living for herself. The...
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...In: English and Literature Tess of the D'Urbervilles Male Dominance Male Dominance in Tess of the D’urbervilles The Victorian era, as described by Professor of History and Women's & Gender Studies Nancy Reagin in her essay “Victorian Women: the Gender of Oppression”, witnessed the ideology of separate spheres in which society viewed men as independent and reasonable while viewing women as passive, dependent on men, emotional, and submissive. Men were given the governing role in which they would dominate society due to their ability to make rational decisions while women were expected to unquestionably fill the social roles that men decided for them, and those roles usually revolved around a woman’s duties as a mother and a wife. In marriage, a woman was expected to abide by the orders and views of her husband, and man and wife became one in terms of a woman’s rights, property, and identity. In Tess of the D’urbervilles, a book written in the Victorian Era, Hardy conveys this ideology of separate spheres in his portrayal of men and their dominance over women in society, primarily Tess. Their dominance is shown in how the men act as the masters of society, but it is also seen in how the women in Tess unquestionably view the men as the dominant gender. Often, the women are blindly influenced and act passively when interacting with male characters such as Alec and Angel. They are also seen to be very dependent on the men, and the men acknowledge that, for that is expected of...
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...and held back from societal norms and your identity is only defined by your role and not your character. (Pause) Like a mirror, these poets reflect on their isolating experiences from these expectations. As esteemed by both Browning and Owen, we explore the power of poetry to affirm or challenge these concerns of their time. The first poem, Porphyria's Lover, is a Victorian-era monologue where Browning affirms the contextual concerns of gender inequality between men and women and stringent societal norms of men objectifying women to be a certain way. During the Victorian era, domesticity was a woman’s primary role and the man was the “breadwinner.” Women's rights were extremely...
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...Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: How does it represent Feminism in the Victorian Culture? "Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not"(Feminist). The book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written by Lewis Carroll in 1865, otherwise known as the Victorian Era. Feminism at the time was not something that was spoken about, nor was that a phrase at that time. Women were expected to serve their roles in the home. Victorian feminism was subtle, but it slowly became the potent political force it is today. In the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the novel discusses some of the gender issues at...
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...character Mina Murray appears in several storylines, including Dracula and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that take place during and after the Victorian Era. This era contained debates at the time regarding women’s suffrage. Mina’s character signifies the transition and change in women’s roles in society. She has qualities that can relate to multiple controversial ideas at that time regarding women. Those include women’s intellect, their qualities of thought, and the importance of their roles in their families and the community. Throughout her appearances in the stories, she always has character foils alongside her that emphasize her qualities as a leader and a traditional but also modernized woman. Mina’s character is a depiction of the idealized feminine figure, which is subordinate to all men and maintains the identity of a housewife. Simultaneously, she is a figure that foreshadows the women of the twentieth century, when women are independent and active members of the society. These are supported through the actions she takes and the decisions she makes throughout her journey across multiple stories. Mina Murray’s character contains significant attributes that allow her to be contrasted with other characters in her stories and to stand between the definitions of the idealized Victorian women and women of the modern era. Mina’s character qualities in Dracula are highlighted by those around her. Mina and Lucy are placed under similar circumstances early in the novel...
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...Gender, sexuality and visual representation Introduction Artist Mary Stevenson Cassatt, who shared the revolutionary ideas of artists such as Degas and Monet, was born on 22 May 1844 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although women were not encouraged to pursue a career, Mary enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts at the age of sixteen. She quickly felt frustrated by the male faculty and students who were patronising and resentful of her attendance. Regardless of these obstacles and her father’s disapproval of her career choice, she continued to pursue art and painting. Cassatt, an impressionist painter, did not conform to standard male images of women and therefore her paintings differ from the more general male representations, especially of women readers during the Victorian period. Cassatt expresses her world through women and therefore “…offers a new vision of the unconsidered facts of everyday bourgeois life…” (Yeh, 1976:359). Cassatt’s work is regarded by Yeh (1976:359) as women-centred art as she regards women as complete within themselves. In her work she represents women as independent, pursuing interests which are not necessarily directed toward the need of her family. Reading women, portraying the reader’s inner strength often occur as a theme in her paintings. Femininity in the Victorian era In the latter Victorian period women artists and their work were considered inferior. In an attempt to overcome the stereotypical female image their...
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...While Queen Victoria was in power England saw rapid change in medical, scientific and technological fields. Throughout the mid Victorian era, (1850-1870), Britain was in its golden years. While growth in textiles, trade and machinery put twice as much money in British Merchants pockets a new order began to form. The first World’s Fair in 1851 marked the first stepping stone for modern technologies and the middle class. Families began to fall into a cultural norm, the idea that an individual, through hard work, could achieve economic success was in the front of men and women's minds. Gender roles established by a hard scrabble life in the past made a separation between men and women where men were superior to most women, women could work in...
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...To what extent do male and female literary characters accurately reflect the role of men and women in society? A lasting piece of literature is a work that accurately reflects the role of the people during certain time period eloquently. This is best perpetuated in the short novel Kitchen written by Banana Yoshimoto and the play The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde. While the main characters Mikage in the novella and Gwendolyn in the play reflect the shifting role of women in the Japanese society and Victorian era respectively, Yuichi and Algernon, on the other hand, however reflects the role of men through unconventional means. Through subtle use of symbolism, Banana Yoshimoto and Oscar Wilde highlights to what extent these two characters accurately reflect the role of men and women in Japan during the 1980s. Mikage in the novella and Gwendolyn in the plays both follow the philosophy of women in the Japanese society in 1980s and British upper class in Victorian era respectively. The main character in Kitchen, Mikage, a young student living in Tokyo, is trapped between the traditional role of women in the Japanese culture and her desire for independence. To comprehend the context of the literature and the character portrayed, one should possess a thorough knowledge of the author, Banana Yoshimoto. The novel is written in 1988, in which Japan was in the midst of the longest economic boom it experienced since the World War II. Yoshimoto, who was in her early twenties...
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...What is the role and significance of women in Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess of the D’Urbevilles’ and George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’? Candidate Name: Jaee Sherlekar Candidate Number: 002279-104 Session: May 2011 Subject: English A1 Level: Higher Level Word Count: 4000 Supervisor: Ms. Jyoti Ahuja Abstract: In this essay, I have attempted to bring out the reality of the “glorious” Victorian Era. An era which is said to be the time when the world took its first steps towards reform in terms of technology, medicine, entertainment - every section of the society was touched with the reform but women were still shackled in the society’s ideals. “What is the role and significance of women in Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess of the D’Urbevilles’ and George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’?” ‘Tess of the D’Urbevilles’ is a book which mocked at the norms about the purity of a woman. I have tried to analyse the struggle of a woman through the seven stages of her life whereby man is not punished for his sins but the woman has to suffer the brutality of life. It is about the doomed life of Tess Durbeyfield, who at every stage of life, struggled for her identity. ‘Middlemarch’ again a book defining the lives in the Victorian Era where some sky-castles are built and with a change of fate, they shatter on the ground like glass pieces. They take decisions which define their lives and yet at the end they are bound in the walls of the society. This research is attempted in bringing out the real role which a woman...
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...The role of women in Canadian society has changed dramatically over the past two centuries. These roles, which had been defined in various cultures for centuries, were based both on natural instinct and on necessity. When Canada was first settled, it was natural for immigrants to maintain traditional roles for men and women. By the eighteenth century, these distinct roles were strongly established in Canadian society. During the nineteenth century, views on women’s role began to change, as urbanization and industrialization progressed. These changes reflected the many social, political, economic and technological changes that were occurring at that time. Aware of the many inequalities in society, some women began to challenge the existing conditions and questioned the definition of a “proper woman”. In “The Cult of True Womanhood”, Barbara Welter explains that the virtues by which a woman judged herself and was judged by society were piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. These were the standards of True Womanhood in Victorian Canada.1 Fortunately, social reformers eventually challenged the alleged status quo of Canadian women. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Church, the medical profession and the arts all tried desperately to maintain women’s sexual passivity in Canadian society. During the Victorian era, sexual passivity was seen as both natural and necessary for women. In fact, the Canadian society was based on the ideology that it was natural...
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...The Victorian era, the period of the nineteenth century when Queen Victoria ruled England, was a time in which there were many advances and changes that occurred in English society. Robert Browning was one of the leading poets of this time, and many of his poems contain the theme of violence, focusing especially on violence against women. Browning’s use of violence in his poetry is symbolic of the oppression of women during this time period by their husbands and society. This oppression is seen through the examination of two of Browning’s most well-known poems, “My Last Duchess” and “Porphyria’s Lover”. Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is a poem written in dramatic monologue in which a Duke in Renaissance Italy shows the servant of his future wife a painting of his former wife, and recounts the circumstances which lead to her death. Duke...
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...To what extent is the vampire representative of the context it was created in? Gothic literature originated in response to a period of rapid societal, cultural, and theological change in nineteenth Europe. Works written in this time focused on the representation of fear in the face of dissolution of traditional structures, gender roles and religion. The resurgence of vampire fiction in the late twentieth century presents a different image of the vampire figure, appropriate to the changing societal values and nature of our world. Bram Stokers novel “Dracula” (1897) is compared to the Catherine Hardwicke’s film “Twilight” (2008) to display the development of conventional archetypes and tropes of the vampire into a more contemporary context....
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...Socio-Cultural Influences on Sexuality There is nothing that sparks a debate more than the topic of sexuality. The multitude of opinions in societies displays an attempt to define, promote, or control sexuality. Sexuality is a part of our humanity in which defines sex, gender identities, gender roles, sexual orientation, pleasure, intimacy, and instigates procreation. Though, sexuality is experienced and expressed through thoughts, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, roles, behaviours, and relationships; it is greatly influenced by societies, cultures, historical perspectives, religious perspectives, biological forces, psychological theories, ethics, morals, and legal factors. In the United States, known as the “melting pot” because of the mass amounts of cultural influences brought in by immigrants worldwide that now reside on its land; one of the biggest concerns in regards to sexuality are the social and public health challenges that influence sexual behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs. Sexual behavior in not just a personal matter between two people, but rather a theme that can affect society in terms of social expectations for sexual behaviors, gender identity, roles, stereotypes, and bias. Social Expectations on Sexual Behaviors “Sexuality is an important part of our lives” (King, 2012, p.1), currently and amongst the generations before us. Throughout history, sexual behaviours have been largely influenced by culture, religion, and historical perspectives...
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...Megan Naylor Dr. DiCicco English 3664 March 29, 2011 Gender Roles in The Scarlet Letter and The Awakening During the Victorian era, the life a woman was immensely difficult. They were considered the property of their husband, and treated as such. Women were forbidden from owning their own property, even if they were given the property from their father. In such a case, the land would be transferred in ownership to her husband. A woman’s place was in the home, to dutifully care for her husband and children. Her job was to cook, clean, and bear children. Interestingly, a wife was treated similarly to her children. Obedience toward the man of the home was necessary from both the children and the mother. In contradiction to all of the restriction and repression, the nineteenth century produced two of literatures strongest women. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Kate Chopin gave American society two women who actively defied their husbands and who possessed their own strong moral codes. With The Scarlet Letter published in 1850 and set in the seventeenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne was taking a large risk in creating a novel detailing a woman’s adultery with the town’s minister and producing an illegitimate child in the process. Despite the treatment she receives, Hester does not waver in her promise to keep her lover secret, proving that she is a strong willful woman. As the century is coming to a close, Kate Chopin produced a work that sent shock waves through American society. The...
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...Gender Roles: Still affecting us Today Even though gender roles have significantly changed and improved throughout history, women still face discrimination today. Gender roles are mainly focused in the aspects of femininity and masculinity. Women are required, since an early age, to view and portrait themselves as objects to be admired; while men are expected to possess physical strength and make a life for themselves. During the process of growing up, the world opens to males, and closes for females. According to said Kristin Mari, associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health "Adolescent health risks are shaped by behaviors rooted in gender roles that can be well-established in kids by the time they are 10 or...
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