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The Silver Fox Edith Somerville And Martin Ross

Decent Essays

Female solidarity is the coming together of woman from different social, cultural and political backgrounds, with shared life experience, in order to make a stand against gender oppression. In The Silver Fox Edith Somerville and Martin Ross explore the nineteenth century political and cultural tensions between the English imperial ambition and the rural, social traditions of the native Irish. This essay will explore the coming together of three women Lady Susan, Slaney Morris and Maria Quin in friendship which is brought with complexities of class, race, culture and politics, set amidst the public debate of the New Woman figure. The solidarity amongst these women is essential in achieving gender equality, escape patriarchal conventions and …show more content…

Likewise these women are living in a society where it is expected that they will not like each other not just because of their class or race, but because of something much more engrained. Although these women are greatly divided by social status patriarchy holds greater significance as the thing which sets them apart in many ways, due to the role it assigns them in terms of gender. When we are first introduced to Lady Susan she carries a conceited, selfish manner and inclination to label other women as either competition or “non-combatants” in the battle for male attention, “it was against all theories of womankind, yet the fact remained that Slaney liked Lady Susan.” Slaney attempts to safeguard Lady Susan’s reputation and marriage from the flirtation she entered in with Wilfred Glasgow. Even though Lady Susan looks at Slaney as an enemy, Slaney thinks it’s more important to overcome their differences demonstrating “both an indication of her care” and “her sense of female solidarity against the predatory attentions of men like Glasgow.” Somerville and Ross suggest that competition is the greatest barrier of woman’s progression, making it harder to achieve gender equality when women are divided amongst their sex. Competition between women was expected living in a society were a woman's only duty was to get

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