Haywood's Cautionary Tale

Fay Weldon’s ‘Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen’ (1984) through the form of an epistolic novel, serves to enrich a heightened understanding of the contemporary issues of Jane Austen’s cultural context. In doing so, the responder is inspired to adopt a more holistic appreciation of the roles of women inherent in Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1813). Due to the examination of the shift of attitudes and values between the Regency era and the 1980s, the reader comes to better understanding of the conventions of marriage for a women and the role education had in increasing one’s marriage prospects. Weldon’s critical discussion of these issues transforms a modern responder’s understanding of the role of a woman during the 19th century.

During the 19th century female authors were commonly degraded especially when books had a sexual nature. A now notable biography from this period is Charlotte Brontё’s “Jane Eyre”, a detailed account of the life of a young girl that blossoms into adulthood having to face the challenges and social norms of the time. In many works of literature a character intentionally deceives others to either hurt or offer protection. In “Jane Eyre” a character intentionally deceives a loved one with the intention to protect everyone including himself. This particular deception plays a large role in developing the characters of the narrative and the plot development, contributing to the work as a whole.

Fitting with the common theme between the two novels of the judgment of others, each heroine falls victim to a horrible misjudgment of the character of another. After discovering that the engagement between her brother and her friend Isabella has been broken, Catherine finds she has grossly misjudged her friend’s character, and thinks, “She was ashamed of Isabella, ashamed of ever having loved her” (Northanger 150). Elizabeth, on the other hand, finds her attachment the Wickham wholly inappropriate after receiving her letter from Mr. Darcy. After digesting the shocking contents of the letter, Elizabeth “grew absolutely ashamed of herself.—Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd” (Pride 156). And indeed, as suggested by Elizabeth’s mention of Darcy, this misjudgment goes on to affect each girl’s attachment to her future husband.

Richardson explains how this confusion was relevant of the historical and cultural context of Austen’s era. Both the Gothic and the sentimental genres were regularly criticised for influencing readers to project fictional elements into real life. As Richardson explains, the Gothic was singled out for condemnation through its ‘thematics of female constraint and persecution and its fictive indulgence in forbidden lusts and passions, and the sentimental novel, with its ideal or ‘romantic’ picture of life and its over-valuation of erotic love as the key to female happiness (Richardson 2005:399). This projection is reflected in Northanger Abbey when Catherine is invited to Northanger Abbey: ‘Northanger Abbey! These were thrilling words, and wound up Catherine’s feelings to the highest point of ecstasy’ ( Austen pp.99-100). The use of ‘ecstasy’ reflects Catherine’s excessive personality and self-transcendence. Catherine’s gothic idealist vision of the abbey and her pursuit of pleasure, signifies her lack of self-directedness in which she dismisses her own control of life and puts herself in the position of the gothic heroine as portrayed in her reading of Radcliffe’s ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’. The prominent role of ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ in Northanger Abbey is highly symbolic in representing Austen’s concerns of the excesses of sensibility and the gothic and how they can distort the reader’s interpretation of life. Barker-Benfield (p.111) highlights how ‘Radcliffe’s Mysteries typically hinted at its apparent dangers but continued to convey its tenets. And no one could prevent readers from identifying with figures the author intended as warnings against sensibility’s ‘excesses’.

As a woman, the narrator must be protected and controlled and kept away from harm. This seemed to be the natural mindset in the 19th century, that women need to have guidance in what they do, what decisions they make, and what they say. John calls her a “little goose”(95) and his “little girl”(236), referring her to a child, someone who needs special attention and control. His need for control over her is proven when she admits that her husband is “careful and loving and hardly lets me stir without special direction”(49). John has mentally restrained the speaker’s mind, she is forced to hide her anxieties, fears and be submissive, to preserve the happiness of their marriage. When the narrator attempts to speak up, she is bogged down and made guilty of her actions. Her husband makes her feel guilty for asking, he says, “‘I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind!’”(225-226). By making her feel guilty for her illness, John has trapped her mentally from speaking up about it, convincing her that she must be more careful about her actions. Men often impose the hardships placed upon women during this era. They are often the people reassuring them of their “womanly” duties, and guiding them

“The modest virgin, the prudent wife, and the careful matron, are much more serviceable in life than petticoated philosophers, blustering heroines, or virago queens. She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than ladies described in romances, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver, or their eyes” (Wakefield.) This quote shows how women were looked at in the nineteenth century. This goes back to the concept during that time that women can not have an urge to have sex. If they so happened to have an urge to have sex they were compared to as prostitutes. In this quote they compared a virgin to the highest of things but the next sentence goes along with making her husband and children happy. Women are always looked at as a caretaker or someone there to make their husbands happy. Never

During the eighteenth century, marriage was a representation of not only the unity between man and women but it was also a representation of a woman taking a servile, less meaningful role in the household. Once married, women were expected to be completely submissive to their husbands. This was the norm across Europe and even in enlightened society. These relationships were hierarchical. It was not customary for women to attend schools that educated men the math and sciences. Women holding privileged positons in society traditionally allotted to men were seen as the exception. Yet these exceptions did not generally bother society because they did not lead to certain conclusion that women could do anything. In Gotthold Lessing’s novel “Nathan the Wise” and Francoise de Graffigny’s “Letters from a Peruvian Woman”, both authors upset traditional expectations about what constitutes a novel’s happy ending by refusing to end either of their novels with weddings. In Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise”, the rejection of marriage plot reflects a larger symbolic representation of religious tolerance. While in Graffigny’s novel “Letters from a Peruvian Woman”, the rejection of marriage plots illustrates a woman whose circumstances would make her the exception. Zilia, Graffigny’s main character, was an enlightened woman who chose sovereignty over servitude. Therefore, I would argue that the intentions behind both Lessing and Graffigny’s rejection of the marriage plot was not to serve the same

In Haywood v. Drown (2008), an inmate (Haywood) is suing a correctional officer (Drown). This civil liability issue is one that is reasonably recent in the field of corrections. Throughout my career thus far, I have been employed as a corrections officer and have heard inmates threatening to sue the department and individual officers. I have also seen countless letters go out to individuals asking for help getting a lawyer for cases against the department and officers, yet I have never seen any suits come through. I acknowledge that often inmates are often blowing steam, but I am curious as to what happens when and if they get council and a suit does arise.

The narrator is portraying a woman who is looked down upon because of her mental illness, but women at the time were often seen as childish or too emotional. “Then he took me in his arms called me a blessed little goose,” (Gilman 5). The narrator’s husband, John, treats her almost like a father would treat a daughter. The narrator is belittled because of her inability to act like women at the time were expected to. “Victorian values stressed that women were to behave demurely and remain with in the domestic sphere,” (Wilson 6). During the 19th century, women were expected to simply care for the children and clean the house. Most of the time, women who aspired to do more than that were not considered respectable wives. “Because the narrator is completely dependent on her husband and is allowed no other role than to be a wife and a mother, she represents the secondary status of women during the 19th century,” (Wilson 5).

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

       As the tale begins we immediately can sympathize with the repressive plight of the protagonist.  Her romantic imagination is obvious as she describes the "hereditary estate" (Gilman, Wallpaper 170) or the "haunted house" (170) as she would like it to be.  She tells us of her husband, John, who "scoffs" (170) at her romantic sentiments and is "practical to the extreme" (170).  However, in a time

Picture this: You are a woman living in late 1700s. You are expected to be presentable at all times, petticoats and all. Though you are still quite young, your search for a husband is not a task to be taken lightly. Swirling in your mind are the opinions of annoying sisters, overbearing mothers, and rude old women. Although you are by no means poor, your family’s connections are not the best, making you a somewhat unsuitable bride. Just when you are about to write off the idea of love altogether, you meet a man who is rude to you yet gentlemanly toward his family and close friends. Neither one of you admit that you find the other interesting because you can hardly admit it to yourselves. His affections grow more rapidly than yours, but you reject him because This is what the life of Elizabeth Bennet was like. Though her culture and geographical surroundings played a big part in Lizzy’s character, she is very unlike the ordinary woman of her time.

In Otranto, Walpole challenges his societies views of modernity and transgresses social laws by introducing the theme of incest into his novel with Manfred preying of his deceased son’s betrothed, Isabella. This brings into play three defining features which became prevalent within gothic novels of the late eighteenth century: women in distress; women being threatened by powerful males; and the major theme of fear and in this example, specifically female fear. Isabella, a young, virginal woman becomes “half dead with fright” when faced with potential rape and becoming a spoiled woman at the hands of the powerful and threatening Manfred. Such suggestions, by Walpole’s age were seen as scandalous and caused moral outrage, a thread that was carried through the gothic genre. This new genre may have provided for many, an escape from the rigid world of enlightenment. It brought to them a world of imagination and allowed them to immerse themselves in a world which had been morally forbidden and they could do it from the privacy of their own homes, allowing their indulgence, and perhaps, immoral thoughts to go unnoticed, providing a way for the darkness and immoral thoughts to come alive outside of the novel. At the end of the novel however, society’s moral ideals surface as Manfred retires to a convent after the realisation of his sins and order is restored. In this way, although Walpole is exposing his readers to these ideas, he would

This develops the idea that her future with this man as a married woman provided a stable lifestyle where she would not have to live by the rigid patterns of society, reinforcing a modern day feminist reader’s view of the expectations and restrictions placed on unmarried women during the Victorian era.

In Graham’s Magazine, another anonymous reviewer suggested that Rochester’s character was dangerous and immoral, saying, “No woman who had ever truly loved could have mistaken so completely the Rochester type, or could have made her heroine love a man of proud, selfish, ungovernable appetites, which no sophistry can lift out of lust.” Thus, he intimated that any author who would contrive to have her heroine fall in love with such a total rake would be immoral herself and unknowing of what true love is. He went one step further to say, “We accordingly think that if the innocent young ladies of our land lay a premium on profligacy, by marrying dissolute rakes for the honor of reforming them, à la Jane Eyre, their benevolence will be of questionable utility to the world.” In this, he suggested that the depiction of Jane and Rochester’s relationship would cause young women of the time to emulate Jane’s “romantic wickedness.”