Elizabeth Fuller And Anne Bradstreet

During the late 19th and early 20th century in America, the rise of Feminism challenged the traditional gender roles. The female authors of this time period represented realistic aspects of women’s struggles, which often reflected limitations from society and their own lives. The three female authors who advocated women’s struggles in their writings were Sojourner Truth, Willa Cather, and Edith Wharton. In the speech to the American Equal Rights Association, Truth reveals that women do not have rights to present their voices in the court. Cather addresses women’s devastating labor life after the marriage in “A Wagner Matinee.” Likewise, in “April Shower”, Wharton portrays men’s criticism upon economically successful women. American female authors of the late 19th and early 20th century demonstrates the ideas of Feminism by men objecting to representation in politics, prohibiting career over marriage, and criticizing economic self-sufficiency.

In this essay I will discuss and analyze the social forces that influenced American women writers of the period of 1865 to 1912. I will describe the specific roles female authors played in this period and explain how the perspectives of female authors differed from their male contemporaries.

After studying women and gender history in early America for the past semester, my views about American history have changed tremendously. Having very little prior experience with history, I had many assumptions and preconceived notions from high school history classes. Women were never even mentioned in my previous learning about U.S. history, so I assumed they took on unimportant roles and had little, if any, impact on shaping our country’s history. However, after this semester of delving deeply into the women of early America, I could not have been more incorrect. Although they were not typically in the public realm, we cannot fully understand history without studying women. The following readings uncovered the roles of women in the private sphere and were crucial to my new understanding of the importance of women in American history by bringing women to the forefront.

In the 21st century, many women, myself included, take for granted that we can wear whatever we desire and say what we want, in public, without the fear of being thrown in jail. However, that was not always the case. While the fight for the continued advance of women’s rights rages on, women of the 19th century lived a very different life than the one, us women, lead today. The feminist agenda was just emerging on the horizon. One particular woman was preparing to do her part to further the cause of women’s rights: Sarah Willis Parker. Parker was better known by her pen name, Fanny Fern. After facing and overcoming extreme adversity, she made the decision to start writing. To understand how truly ground breaking Fanny Fern was, we need to understand that in a 1997 edition of an anthology of American satire from colonial times to present, Fern was the only woman writer from the 19th century in that text. Her satiric style and controversial subject matter was just what the oppressed needed to gain some support and give them a voice.

During the 1630’s, there was a group known as, the Puritans. The Puritans immigrated from England to America, for the sole purpose of religious freedom and their belief that the church of England needed reform. Puritan author’s, Anne Bradstreet and Jonathan Edwards, conveyed their messages and beliefs in their writing . For these two authors, they were working around the same foundation, Puritanism, for the intended messages. Admittedly, there is a disconnection in belief between the two. Edward’s writings take Puritanism to the extreme whilst Bradstreet’s works show a more traditional view in the religion while staying true to it.

In early America, women were expected to take care of the household and of the children. However, writers such as Anne Bradstreet and Judith Sargent Murray wanted to emphasize the importance of education for women. The two texts by these authors that will be discussed are the poem, “The Prologue” by Anne Bradstreet and the essay, “Desultory Thoughts upon the Utility of Encouraging a Degree of Self-Contemplacency, especially in Female Bosoms,” By Judith Sargent Murray. A theme seen prominently throughout both texts is fairer treatment of women through education. Although both women do believe in opportunity for women in education, Bradstreet focuses more on the idea that women should have more acceptance in the intellectual world by men while Murray however, emphasizes the importance of women to be raised properly which resulted in them understanding their self-worth.

In her 1945 article, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Margaret Fuller illustrates a world in which “there exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves”, and where men hold “the belief that Woman was made for Man”. Two books, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Woman in the Nineteenth Century, provide male and female perspective in the 19th century. These separate texts exemplify two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, Woman in the Nineteenth Century provides perspective of the feminine experience in a male dominated world while Moby Dick portrays a society from a male point of view and experiences woman as subservient to himself.

While both the “Invisible Man” and “The House of Mirth” were written near the same time frame, they were written in differing perspectives, reflecting not only social classes but also gender roles of the time period. At the time these books were written, men and women had very different roles in society. Women were in the midst of a long arduous battle of the women suffrage movement and as they gained ground in this fight the gender roles started to change along with the country: “Westward expansion also demanded that many women step outside prescribed gender roles and perform “men’s” work on the frontier” (Jolliffe 1). Men, on the other hand, had a battle of their own trying to defend their masculinity during the movement of women into new social ranks, “masculinity in the United States is certain only in its uncertainty; its stability and sense of well-being depend on a frantic drive to control its environment.” (Stryffeler 4) The struggles of this dynamic time period are expressed through the eyes of these two authors giving readers an idea of how women were viewed differently from men surrounding the gender and social issues that dominated history.

The advancement of women in society is a remarkable achievement, and the first step to true equality in the world. Despite the tremendous progress, oppression faced in the past should not be forgotten, largely because it is present modern society as well. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, both female relationships and identities are explored to determine the purpose of women. Society's historic tendency to undervalue women is seen more in The Handmaid's Tale than in The Color Purple.

Throughout this class we have read different types of literature from many different authors. Some of the material I truly enjoyed and some of it not so much. I really enjoyed the Native American literature that we started out with in the beginning of the semester. I think the Native Americans are beautiful people who appreciated the land more than most. The Native Americans were smart people who used short stories such as The Chief’s Daughters and Coyote and Bear to warn their readers of dangers or teach them moral lessons. I also enjoyed authors such as Edward Taylor, Anne Bradstreet, and Thomas Paine. I did not like reading William Byrd’s material, chiefly because he was rude and spoke nastily of the Native Americans. It personally offended me that he thought their belief of afterlife to be “gross and sensual”.

Sexuality has an inherent connection to human nature. Yet, even in regards to something so natural, societies throughout times have imposed expectations and gender roles upon it. Ultimately, these come to oppress women, and confine them within the limits that the world has set for them. However, society is constantly evolving, and within the past 200 years, the role of women has changed. These changes in society can be seen within the intricacies of literature in each era. Specifically, through analyzing The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, one can observe the dynamics of society in regards to the role of women through the lens of the theme of sexuality. In both novels, the confinement and oppression of women can be visibly seen as a result of these gender roles. Yet, from the time The Scarlet Letter was published to the time The Bell Jar was written, the place of women in society ultimately changed as well. Hence when evaluating the gender roles that are derived from sexuality, the difference between the portrayals of women’s oppression in each novel becomes apparent, and shows how the subjugation of women has evolved. The guiding question of this investigation is to what extent does the theme of sexuality reflect the expectations for women in society at the time each novel was written. The essay will explore how the literary elements that form each novel demonstrate each author’s independent vision which questions the

Woman and family roles are considerably different today than they were back in Puritan times. Puritans thought that the public’s foundation rested on the “little commonwealth”, and not merely on the individual. The “little commonwealth” meant that a father’s rule over his family mirrored God’s rule over creation or a king over his subjects. John Winthrop believed that a “true wife” thought of herself “in [weakness] to her husband’s authority.” As ludicrous as this idea may appeal to women and others in today’s society, this idea was truly necessary for colonies to be able to thrive and maintain social order.

During the early 1900s till now, women have been discriminated against and have been battling for equal rights in the United States. In 1960s America, the feminist movement was growing rapidly, bringing out influential women and protesters who were starting to get noticed by the majority of the population. One of those influential women, author Adrienne Rich, published an essay that talks about how women are treated differently. In the essay, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as a Re-vision”, Rich argues that a stereotypical and prejudiced male society represses women. She demonstrates these views through the use of literary history, her personal experience towards women’s discrimination, and the potential women have to

American Literature has always been about men and for men. In this essay, we are going to analyze the women’s role in the book, as inferior and weaker gender.

In the 1600’s, Puritans living in both England and New England held their views on God rather tightly and lived their lives as good Christians. Puritans were selfless individuals who had escaped and came to America in search of religious freedom and peace. In literature during that time period, it is made very clear that everything the Puritans had accomplished or acquired was a result of God, and that they were forever in his debt. One of the great poets from this time era was Anne Bradstreet who wrote about her children, husband, and parents. Anne Bradstreet blended her domestic life with theological imagery in every poem she did, explaining that her grandchildren were merely lent to her but