Conflicts in Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' The Angel Over the Right Shoulder

In an essay by Judy Brady titled “I Want a Wife”, Brady discusses the typical gender dynamics of her time period (the 1970s) and challenges them. She essentially says that women are treated like they are inferior to men and so she says that she wishes or wants someone to fulfill her duties for her just like she does for her husband. This essay shows the struggle to gain equality in this time period and also represents the thoughts that a woman in this time period might have. Not only is the meaning behind this essay significant, but the way in which Brady presents it is also significant and it amplifies and strengthens the argument. This is proven by textual evidence found in the essay itself.

Two characters, Elisa Allen and Mary Teller, struggle with the idea of being accepted into the society of the 1930s. Women’s rights were not fully accepted in the 1930s, and these two characters were set in the common day view of men and women. In the 1930s, “[Society has] assigned to white women such roles as housewife, secretary, PTA chairman, and schoolteacher. Black women can now be schoolteachers, too, but they are most prominently assigned to such domestic roles as maid, cook, waitress, and babysitter” (Chisholm 123). These assigned roles have impacted women around the world, including the two characters in these short stories - “The Chrysanthemums” and “The White Quail”. Not being activists in women’s rights, these women conformed to society and lived their lives as any typical housewife in the 1930s. Their passions and choices during this time affected their way of living and relationships. The two stories reflect similarities of the women’s love for gardening and lonely marriages, but also reflect their different viewpoints on the world they live in.

“Look at us! We’re just like everyone else. We’ve bought into the same ridiculous delusion; this idea that you have to settle down and resign from life.” (April Wheeler, Revolutionary Road). It has become a society norm that women are meant to serve housewives; to cook, clean, garden, and nurture children, even though they are much more capable of other things. The role of women is greatly overseen, as they are not perceived to be of their full potential, rather than as societies idealistic expectation. This is because men and those who are wealthy are unable to look past gender and accept women as of equal significance.

The two publications that best contextualize gender are the Lowell Offering and the Godey’s Lady Book periodicals as the articles found in both magazines depict traditional gender roles for males and females. For the Lowell Offering, this is best seen in the article entitled, “Woman’s Proper Sphere”, which focuses on the thoughts associated with oppression like, “Is it ambitious wish to shine as man’s equal, in the same scenes in which he mingles” or “Does she wish for a more extensive influence, than that which emanates from a woman’s home?” Yet these progressive questions are met with answers like “How necessary, then, that she should understand these pursuits (of men), that she may truly sympathize with and encourage those, with whom she may be associated. In this way…her influence must and

In the late nineteenth century, the New Woman time period emerged after World War I. Women began to cast away the domestic stereotypes and they became “independent [women] who [sought] achievement and self-fulfillment beyond the realm of marriage and family” (Miller 1). Straying away from the typical image of women staying and maintaining the home, women started attending universities, receiving professional jobs, and becoming involved in politics (1). The transition of women from the domestic sphere to the public sphere is a notion Zora Neale Hurston uses in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston’s use of dominant characters in society reveals her theme that experiences and relationships are the roots of finding independence and identity despite the obscurity caused by sexism.

The United States of America gained a large reputation of equality and social democracy. This was much better at the time than Europe which had less opportunity and was much harder to rise in social status unlike the United States. Although, an entire section of the United States population was cut off from these great improvements and those were women. After the revolution, “republican Motherhood”, the vision of women passing on knowledge to the youth was put on hold in the United States society. The “Cult of Domesticity” had taken women back to their homes to just not do work outside of home. Many people embraced the “Cult of Domesticity” and Republican Motherhood” in order to be apart of a ideal American motherhood. Although, blacks or even lower class women were unable to achieve this because of either economic or public restraint. Educated women that were in the middle or high class had a hard time moving up social class and slaves were often separated from their families holding them away from all of that. A Reformer in (doc 4), Margaret Fuller, is trying to have social and economic equality but it is held back by the “Cult of Domesticity” and “Republican Motherhood”.

Masculinity didn’t do a good job of attaining the hoped-for standards, as they didn’t have other equally profound consequences for American middle-class culture at this time. It justified the exclusion of women from the world as acceptable to both women and men at this time, and it cultivated strong bonds around women as well. They in fact shared the biological experiences central to their definition as women and spoke the same language of virtue and piety, which essentially means that they instilled a awareness of a set of common goals for them and experiences present for them, which had values specific to women, and distinct from those of men. The key to this was the extensive networks of female friends that were present during this time period for these women. Since women were supposedly better than men during this time, it was feasible and easy to believe that women were obliged and privileged to work together and help other women, who were fallen, and poor, who were having some sort of trouble during this time period as a result of the society that they were present in during this time period. Southern white women during this time were aware of the ideology of domesticity during this time, and they would try to implement it and its teachings for their lives, but their expectations were frequently articulated during this time period. There was little industrialization, domestication, urbanization, immigration, and therefore, social dislocation present during

Throughout the years, women have been seen as someone to have children, someone to cook, someone to clean, and someone who does not deserve rights. In the essay "I Want A Wife," Judy Brady points out the different roles of a "wife" according to society at that time. I believe that Brady is sarcastically describing the ideal wife every man dreams of. Even though, women have been fighting for their rights for a long time now, even today women are still not equal to men in many ways. In today's society women are more respected and are acceptable for many jobs as men are, but still they are not treated equally all the times. Brady is a wife herself, and in her essay she wishes she had a wife that she described. Brady brings out all the

Over the course of many years, women have struggled to expand their roles and rights in society, hoping to one day achieve complete equality with their male counterparts. Two women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Judy (Syfers) Brady, both recognized the patriarchal society in which women had to endure. They despised the way it heaped inequality and servitude upon women, and decided to assert their opinion on the issue in order to change the perceptions and imposed limitations on women. In Stanton’s speech, “Declaration of Sentiments”, and in Brady’s article, “I Want a Wife”, both women attempt to convince their audiences that females deserve complete equality with men by stating the submissive situations and obligations women find themselves immersed in. This is done to get their female audiences to reevaluate how they have been treated and give them a second chance at attaining equality. Both women employ various rhetorical techniques in their arguments to strengthen, as well as compel other women to oppose the ‘domesticated’ image of women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Judy (Syfers) Brady expressed their views in pursuance of forging a path to a revamped lifestyle for women.

Feminism walks in tangent aiming to be equal with men and not subservient. It is not hard to see how the feminism movement was birthed with ideas such as piety being an important characteristic for a woman while men were excused as being lustful beings. One can connect this to modern day feminism with celebrities such as Amber Rose and Kim Kardashian who many may deem as impure for dressing to revealing. They are breaking conventional stereotypes, set before the antebellum period, of purity in woman. I believe that a woman should have the necessities needed to live a free nearly unbothered life such as their male counterparts. Barbara Welter’s article can be interpreted many ways. One being as a lens to see society during the antebellum period through the gaze of a women. Welter does this well by using various magazine exerts within the text to give the audience a wider sense of the antebellum era rather than just a shorty anecdote. Another to look at this text is, as a way to highlight the situations which women had to endure, which eventually led to the women’s right movement shortly after the Civil

Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered her speech “The Solitude of Self” in 1892, which presented a definition of being a human being as well as being a woman in the time when males were dominating the society. By analyzing the historical and rhetorical context that the speech was delivered at, I argue that Stanton managed to address her purpose to the targeted audiences.

When Brady classifies herself as “a wife and mother” she is automatically labeled with the responsibilities that were enforced by societal beliefs of that era (Brady 229). Women were considered inferior to men and struggled to gain equality. Husband's required too much of their wives as to their physical needs; “I want a wife to keep my house clean.” Their social needs, “When I meet people at school that I like and want to entertain, I want a wife who will have the house clean, will prepare a special meal, serve it to me and my friends, and not interrupt when I talk about things that interest me and my friends.” In addition, their sexual needs, “I want a wife who is sensitive to my sexual needs, a wife who makes love passionately and eagerly when I feel like it, a wife who makes sure that I am satisfied.” (Brady 229-230). Women did all these things everyday to please their husbands, although they received no fringe benefit in return. The cultural values that were viewed at this time emphasized the discrimination and equality that Brady desperately wants her audience to

Furthermore, the society believes that “no married woman can represent the female world, for she belongs to her husband” (747). In this passage, Fuller explains how society feels that the woman is the unequal property of the husband, as she can no longer represent females. She views this as a huge inequality because she feels in a marriage no partner should have more power over the other, much less consider them property. Ultimately, Margaret Fuller tries to stop the inequalities within society by describes the various rights that society tries to keep women from obtaining.

This need to separate the angelic qualities of women into a totally separate world might come from the desire to protect one’s mother, and plays into the idea of the eternal feminine that must be preserved. “She has no story of her own but gives ‘advice and consolation’ to others, listens, smiles, sympathizes…” (Gilbert and Gubar 815). The aunt is a perfect example of such feminine qualities and represents the untainted light of civilization.

The short story “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck tells the story of Elisa Allen, a woman living with her husband in the Salinas Valley. Elisa is unsatisfied with her role as a rancher’s wife and would like to gain more independence and importance, yet she lives in a time when women were generally not as independent as men. The singular effect of entrapment is present throughout aspects of Elisa’s life from her personal identity, to her relationship with her husband, to her interactions with the pot mender. When the travelling pot mender arrives and speaks of his lifestyle, Elisa’s desire to see and do more in life is stirred. In the end he discards Elisa’s importance, which leaves her feeling dejected. Ultimately, she becomes defeated in her pursuit for a more meaningful existence. In “The Chrysanthemums,” author John Steinbeck represents the theme of gender inequality through the development of Elisa’s primary dilemma of a lack of purpose and importance in a society that did not see men and women as equals.