Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Wives And Daughters'

As C. Sykes examines Victorian literature in his essay, he recognizes that many authors reveal gender issues. While some define characters by his or “her marital status,” others reveal inequality through “female capabilities” (Sykes). Victorian literature, like Bronte’s Jane Eyre, reveal gender

Women who had no claim to wealth or beauty received the harshest of realities in America’s Victorian era. Author Charlotte Bronte – from America’s Victorian era – examines and follows the life of a girl born into these conditions in her gothic novel Jane Eyre (of which the main character’s name

Although the people of a single nation share the same homeland, contradictory these people live in separate worlds. In the lives of the privileged and the unfortunate they are separated between their positions in the social ladder, which is defined by their financial stability. In Elizabeth Gaskell's, Mary Barton the different worlds of the wealthy is contrasted to those of the poor. Gaskell's attention to detail emphasizes the division among the two social classes, demonstrating the lavish and luxurious lives of the upper class as it is contrasted to those of the impoverish and disheartening lives of the lower class, while also developing characterization, illustrating the character's reactions to the

During the late 19th century, strict and confining gender roles existed for women throughout the United States. Expectations regarding these gender roles varied based upon the social class in which a woman was born. Edith Wharton in The House of Mirth, explores the lives of women who aspired to be part of New York City’s highest social class. Specifically, the author follows the life of Lily Bart and her quest for acceptance and financial security in high society. Lily Bart intrigues me as I cannot decide if I am more repelled by her, or more sympathetic to her. I expect that Edith Wharton has made Lily not wholly unlikeable on purpose. In doing so, Lily becomes a character whose struggles we care about, during an era which gave women such

The life of a lady in the 19th century is painted in a romantic light. Pictured in her parlor, the lady sips tea from delicate china while writing letters with a white feathered quill. Her maid stands silently off in the background, waiting for orders to serve her mistress. What is not typically pictured, is the sadness or boredom echoed on the lady’s face. Perhaps the letter is to a dear friend, not seen in ages, pleading with the friend to visit, in hopes that the friend will fill the void in the lady’s life made from years spent in a loveless marriage; or possiblyk20 the lady isn’t writing a letter at all, but a novel or a poem, never to be read by anyone but her. Edith Warton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, are 19th Century ladies who dare to share their writing with the world. Through their works, the darker side of a woman’s life in the late 1800’s is exposed. Gender politics in the 19th dictates that a lady is dependent on her husband for her financial security and social standing; that is if she is fortunate enough to marry at all. In Edith Warton’s The House of Mirth, Lily Bart is a beautiful woman in her late 20’s, who fails to marry a wealthy man. The narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper slowly goes insane under her physician husbands misguided attempts to cure her of depression. The downfall of Lily Bart and the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is

The Holocaust was one of the most horrific events, to ever occur in history. Hitler and the Nazi party started a genocide that killed millions of people because of their ethnicity. The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman tells the perfect story of how life was like during the Holocaust period, through a woman and her family. The main characters in the book are Antonina, the wife and mother, Jan, the husband, and Rys, the couple’s son. The Nazi’s invaded Poland, and took over the Jan and Antonina’s zoo. Throughout the whole novel, Jan and Antonina Zabinski play an active role in the underground network of both hiding Jews and taking care of animals within their Zoo. The main character, Antonina, finds herself managing various relationships during the novel, she’s a zookeeper, a wife, and a mother as well. Throughout the course of the novel, she reveals aspects of her relationship between the animals, and her husband.

The Women of the House: How A Colonial She-Merchant Built A Mansion, A Fortune, And A Dynasty written by Jean Zimmerman, was published by Harcourt, Inc. in 2006. The Women of the House has 338 pages of the actual book and 402 including the prologue, afterword, notes, sources and index. This nonfiction, hard-back, paper book portrayed women’s roles, both within and outside of the home starting in the late seventeenth century and ending in the early nineteenth century. The Women of the House follows the lives of four women throughout that time-period; all of them part of Margaret Hardenbroeck Philipse’s dynasty.

Her Kind, a short poem written by Anne Sexton in 1960, invites readers on a dismal walk down memory lane. Sexton recalls three roles she has portrayed that seem to differ from society’s view of the average female role. Displaying abnormal qualities shoved her into living a difficult life as an outcast. Anne Sexton uses imagery, a metaphor, and symbolism to justify that women suffer from the effects of societal stereotypes.

In the novel The Wives of Henry VIII, by Antonia Fraser, the lives of six women that were all betrothed to King Henry VIII are discussed and picked apart. As Fraser says “the six women have become defined in a popular sense not so much by their lives as by the way these lives ended.”1 The Six biographies of the women discuss their background heritage and how they grew up, then go into what they had to deal with while being the wife of Henry. Fraser makes it clear that she intended to look behind each of the women’s stereotypes.

In her graphic memoir Fun Home, Alison Bechdel tells the interweaving stories of her upbringing, her father’s life and death, and her own journey to come to terms with her sexuality. Bechdel tells these stories in a largely nonlinear fashion, arranging scenes by common theme rather than chronologicity. The only exception to this rule is chapter six, “The Ideal Husband”. This chapter recounts the summer of Bechdel’s fourteenth birthday, during which a number of milestones occur. By abandoning her preferred method of story-telling, Bechdel exposes the similarities between these events and also demonstrates the profound impact these events had on the course of her life.

Jane Eyre, often interpreted as a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age story, goes further than the traditional “happy ending,” commonly represented by getting married. Instead, the novel continues beyond this romantic expectation to tell full the story of Jane’s life, revealing her continual dissatisfaction with conventional expectations of her social era; as a result, many literary critics have taken it upon themselves to interpret this novel as a critique of the rigid class system present in 19th century Victorian society. One literary critic in particular, Chris R. Vanden Bossche, analyzes Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre through a Marxist lens, asserting the importance of class structure and social ideology as historical context and attributing this to the shaping of the novel as a whole. This approach of analysis properly addresses Brontë’s purposeful contrast of submission and rebellion used to emphasize Jane’s determined will for recognition as an equal individual.

  In her novel, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen portrays Elizabeth Bennet as "strong and intelligent, yet bewitching in a completely feminine way". Elizabeth's possession of these attributes: strength of character and moral integrity, great intelligence, and an attractive personality, make her an admirable person. Yet Elizabeth has faults, which makes her more human. Austen's portrayal of Elizabeth is realistic and masterful, often juxtaposing her with characters lacking her attributes to heighten our appreciation of her.

Gaskell wrote her first novel, Mary Barton, in 1848 at a time that was full of changes and controversies, and that was reflected in it. Those who read Mary Barton for the first time can see the changes in the novel and how it echoes the age that the novel was written in. Gaskell wrote Mary Barton as a representation of society at that time which was characterized by a change in people's life because of the Industrial Revolution. The Revolution brought not only class division but also gender division. This life is the life that Gaskell lived and can be seen in her works.

North and south is considered as the significant piece of Victorian literature, written by Elizabeth Gaskell. Elizabeth Gaskell was a novelist and short story writer. Her stories usually have a contemporary attitude she emphasized more on the women’s role, complex and realistic female characters. North and south is considered as her best known work .It features a strong lead female ,a mature love story and relevant social and political explanation about industrialization and class conflict present in mid-19th century in England. Through, North and south, Elizabeth Gaskell challenges the limiting gender roles of the Victorian era , by giving her heroin , Margaret both the feminine qualities of virtue and selflessness and Masculine qualities of independence and action . Gaskell perfectly balances her heroin between feminine and the masculine world as to not to appear “unwomanly” and subtly influence the readers and call for changing gender norms.

Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte explore social class in a number of different ways throughout their novels Pride and the Prejudice and Jane Eyre. They do this through the use of stylistic devices which in turn appeals to their different audiences. Both Jane and Charlotte are notable writers for their remarkable texts. Jane Austen is known for playing a revolutionary role in the generation of English female literature, which was counteracted by this piece- and Charlotte Bronte also developed her feminist thoughts, which have been displayed throughout her novels. By analysing social class in Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre this essay will compare these two women writers’ texts and display how social class is presented