Family in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa Essay

Johnson provides a brief account of the novella 's plot, together with his own perspective on the fact that so much of literature and literary analysis concentrates on the relationships that the characters have. In this case, the author examines the family as composed of children of ineffectual parents. While this writer does not know this with certainty, it is possible that many cases requiring family therapy are due to this very cause. The author then goes on to discuss the family in the context of the greater social system.

Creating a haven from the cruel outside world, families ideally provide protection and support for each of their members. In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, however, bitterness grows between the Earnshaws and the Lintons. Within these two families, siblings rival for power and parents fail to fulfill their roles as caregivers. The intertwining relationships of the Earnshaws and the Lintons are marked by physical abuse, degradation, and emotional negligence. These reduce each of the family members’ life to a lonely and meaningless journey though the cold and misty moors.

Thus, Mrs. Dashwood clearly fails as an authority figure for her children. She does not discourage them from acting recklessly (such as Marianne's trip to Miss Smith's home with Willoughby without a chaperone), nor does she provide the sort of structure or discipline that would prevent such situations from arising in the first place. She does, however, possess the nurturing and affectionate disposition that allows us to see her as, if not always a good mother, at least a loving and well-intentioned one. When Marianne becomes ill, it is only her mother's presence that can put her at ease: "Marianne's ideas were still, at intervals, fixed incoherently on her mother" (264).

What is a family? As a young child, Kingsolver played in her room with a toy set called “The Family of Dolls”, which served as the perfect example of what a “real” family is: “four in number, who came with the factory-assigned names of Dad, Mom, Sis, and Junior.” She always ended up comparing her family to this perfect idea of a family that she played with. As a grown-up Kingsolver went through divorce herself, creating a “broken” home for her child. Kingsolver experienced the abnormalness and society’s ideals pushed through her head. But although her family was

Throughout her life, novelist Virginia Woolf suffered with mental illness, and she ultimately ended her life at age 59. As art often imitates life, it is not surprising that characters in Woolf’s works also struggle with mental illness. One of her novels, Mrs. Dalloway, recounts a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a high society woman living in London, and those who run in her circle. As the novel progresses the reader sees one of the characters, Septimus, struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by serving in war. At the end of the story, he commits suicide. While there is no explicit articulation of any other character suffering from mental illness in the novel, Septimus is not alone. Through her thoughts and actions, we can deduce that Clarissa also endures mental and emotional suffering. Though Clarissa does not actually attempt to end her life in the novel, her mental and emotional suffering lead her to exhibit suicidal tendencies. To prove this, I will examine Clarissa’s thoughts and actions from a psychological perspective.

Additionally, in “A Jury of Her Peers,” women and men have distinctly different gender roles and the story demonstrates the different opportunities available to both men and women in terms of the division of labor and in society. The men control this world because social rules restrict women’s ability to move about, to choose their own interests, or to exist as separate beings from their husbands. Minnie Wright and Martha Hale are continuously defined as housekeepers. The responsibilities of caring for a house, and a kitchen, are in line with women. Martha Hale still thinks of Minnie Wright as Minnie Foster, underlining the identity change each woman experiences when she marries and takes her husband’s name as her own, when she becomes distinct from her husband’s identity and her own separate personality is lost. One aspect of this social subjugation of women in the story is the loneliness that results from being stuck in their homes. Men have each other’s company, but women must remain at the house by themselves. The women don’t often get out much. “Women are used to worrying over trifles.” (572) A childless woman, like Minnie Wright, would’ve felt this loneliness even more emotionally. The subjugation of women in the story is not confining to the economic and the social. The male characters contribute to these social rules and expectations with a more personal form of oppression: by belittling

Another small but important window scene takes place after Clarissa returns home to discover that her husband has been invited to Millicent Bruton’s lunch party but she has not. After reading the message about the party on a notepad, she begins to retreat upstairs to her private room, “a single figure against the appalling night.” As she lingers before the “open staircase window,” she feels her own aging, “suddenly shriveled, aged, breastless… out of doors, out of the window, out of her body and brain which now failed…” Again, there is a hint of danger as death is portrayed as a somewhat alluring transcendental experience,

Clarissa and Septimus both feel trapped in their lives and oppressed by the people around them, which leads to them find ways in which they can escape the negative world around them. Clarissa is described to the reader as having “a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very dangerous to live even one day” (Woolf, 17). Even as Clarissa walks down a crowded street the sense of loneliness controls her mind. Societal oppression of loneliness makes her feel distant from the rest of society. She describes herself as, “no longer being Clarissa, but simply Mrs. Dalloway” (Woolf, 11). Clarissa has lost a sense of herself and feels as though she no longer fits in. However, her parties serve as an escape from the outside world, which helps to explain why she loves

Mothers are often missing in Victorian fiction of the mid-nineteenth century (McKnight 18). A large part of this is due to the very real threat of death through childbirth or from other incurable illnesses, but also because novelists like Bronte were capturing the life-threatening reality of motherhood in the century by showing how often mothers simply were not on hand to watch their children mature (McKnight 18). In similar regards to Bronte mimicking her own life with her characters, it is said: "While Jane’s orphaned and outcast condition represented a spiritual truth about the Victorian state of existence, it also signified an artistic truth for Bronte, who explained to Wordsworth the joy she felt in creating characters with ‘no father nor mother but your own imagination’" (Berg 4). He also states that without any family to tie her down, Jane is able to float freely and be in any situation she chooses, after an age where that is accepted (Berg 5). Clearly, this is an error because Jane is in constant battle with her lack of options. The reason that she ended up at Thornfield at all is because Mrs. Fairfax is the only person who replied to her ad.

From the beginning of Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf establishes that Clarissa’s bright and hopeful spirit has become dulled and burdened when subjected to the oppressive nature of marriage. During a glimpse into her younger years, the reader is able to see Clarissa. With each flashback into Clarissa’s youth, the reader is provided another image of Clarissa before marriage, one that highlights her passion and curiosity for life. While Clarissa felt a passion and connection with Peter, she could not bear to live in a marriage where her freedom was something she had to sacrifice. The decision she makes is logical in some ways, but her choice also brings into question the fault of her marriage in the first place. In Clarissa’s world, the option for passion and the security of her freedom was not available nor would it ever be; therefore, she was forced to choose between the two. Men, however, were not forced to make such decisions and were given the liberty to wait well into their later years to find a spouse suitable to their liking. By choosing to marry Richard over Peter, Clarissa forsook the option of passion in

The effect of Sally on Clarissa's life runs deep, as she is a close friend as well as a physical attraction. In fact, in

Family structure in the United States has undergone a dramatic change since the 1960's. The percentage of female-headed households increased while the percentage of married couple households declined. This paper uses data from the Urban Underclass Database to explain the roles the transforming economy (from manufacturing to service) and the subsequent employment dislocation play in the family structure change. Results for the largest 100 cities in the United States find support for a relationship between changes in the economy, subsequent male unemployment, and family

Throughout the novel, there are flashbacks of Clarissa spending her summer at Bourton and her living in the present of wartime Britain. This is significant because most of the time Clarissa reflects on the past and she connects it to her current life while all of these events are happening in a single day. In the beginning of the novel Clarissa buy flowers for the party she is hosting later on in the evening, the flowers being symbolic in the novel representing her love and joy for them. “How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did,

Clarissa Vaughan lives in present-day New York and enjoys a less restricted existence. A book publisher in her early 50's, she is in a long-term, committed lesbian relationship, has a loving, if complex, relationship with her daughter, and is good friends with her college friend and former lover, Richard, a poet who is dying of AIDS and whose affectionate nickname for her is Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa's life is

The reader doesn’t even get a full chapter into the book before they are introduced to the theme of death within Clarissa’s thoughts. The novel is back and forth between the reality of the characters and their thoughts, and a majority of their