In the nineteen-hundreds, society repressed women into an idealized depiction of a Victorian lady by imposing social restraints upon them. Sadly, women aimlessly gave into these terms and agreed to be submissive heterosexual mothers and housewives due to decades of cognitive manipulation. Mentally enslaved women led to the promotion of female oppression by psychologically conditioned matrons. If a woman diverged from the predetermined path that was set by society since her birth, she would face extreme censure from not just the opposite gender but her own gender, which led to an anti-social movement. This predicament is portrayed in Matthew Desmond’s book, Evicted, which illustrates the main female characters, such as Sherrena Tarver and Arleen, …show more content…
When Doreen decided to deduct some amount from her rent after having problems with the sink, Sherrena stated that would cause Doreen to receive an eviction notice. Upon which Doreen decided to withhold all of her rent, this portrayed that “it was a common strategy among cash-strapped renters. Because the rent took almost all of their paycheck, families sometimes had to initiate a necessary eviction that allowed them to save enough money to move to another place. One landlord’s loss was another’s gain” (Demond 74). It was seen throughout the book the core of the people struggling were women, specifically single mothers that held more than two jobs or were switching from one job to another. Many women like Arleen, who left a job due to problems like depression, suffered even more to stay out of eviction. Some women were left by their partner after they got pregnant, which created problems such as finding a bigger place to live as there were more people, hence more money going towards rent from their “income”. This is portrayed in Arleen’s case where “Arleen couldn’t find a cheaper place, at least not one fit for human habitation, and most landlords wouldn’t rent her a smaller one on account of her boys”, making her pay 88 percent of her welfare check towards …show more content…
The fear of eviction can be seen when Natasha realizes that “she was not going to bring her baby into that house. Now that she was pregnant, she worried more about the apartment and about where they would go if Sherrena decided to evict them” (Demond 77). The fear of being evicted was greater for women as they were not alone, they had their children that needed proper shelter over their head. This caused the mothers to sacrifice a lot of things for their little ones. Demond portrays all of the women as being independent, women who didn’t need a man in their life, this portrayal showed “independence” as a downfall in their lives as they struggled to get a stable job and shelter over their