How The Gender Roles In The Age Of Innocence By Edith Wharton

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

In Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, she presents us the real New York City in late nineteenth century. Due to the rapid development of industry, the wealth gap got wider and wider. Money functions extremely important in people’s social lives. People from upper class can purchase anything they want: luxury goods, artworks, even women. As the main part of consumption, women’s consumption reflects the gender relation in American society during this time period. The protagonist Lily Bart is a representative of females in 19th century. She was born in a rich family. However later she can only marry the rich from upper class, by her perfect appearance, in order to continue her luxuries life. Things do not turn out as her wishes, her marriage doesn’t go well. Lily is just viewed as a beautiful decoration of upper class which can be taken advantage of. Women are tempted by money and controlled by vanity. They consume on the basis of men’s standards. They are more like men’s accessories. Ultimately they become goals of men’s sexual desire and victims of the society. Gender relation is clearly established in this book.

Gender roles in The Scarlet Letter can be described as both traditional and unconventional depending on which character is being observed. Characters such as Hester Prynne, Chillingworth, Dimmesdale, and Hester’s daughter Pearl are the main characters that portrayed one or the other. In this book, perhaps one of the more notable differences is that men seem to be portrayed as the weaker of the two sexes, as far as fundamental strength is concerned. It is interesting to consider that comparison when noting that the important men responsible for deciding Hester’s fate are so intent on convincing her to tell them the name of the man who was her “tempter.” At the same time, however, the men seem to be more inclined to be more lenient and somewhat tolerant of Hester and her sin than the women of the colony. The women are supposed to have the upmost ladylike persona, who follows their husbands’ wishes and provides for the family through caring for the children, cooking, and cleaning. These characters chosen almost seem to represent everything opposite, yet everything common in this

Edith Wharton is well known for her vivid descriptions of wealthy, upper class New York society and their old-fashioned mores. The Custom of the Country illustrates not only the strict values of ‘old money,' from which Wharton herself descended, but, also, the variance in customs held by those with new money, as well as those from other states and abroad. Two of the novel's main characters that attempt to join this society exemplify the conflicts they face as their imbedded small-town, yet, somewhat modern values clash with those of New York society, further demonstrating the shift of values in American society near the end of the Gilded Age. As Undine Spragg and her family move to New York in hopes of securing a fortune and social status

Newland Archer desires to be a free soul in old New York, differing from those around him. May Welland’s actions and naivety help Newland realize he wants to break away from the norm of society. Ellen Olenska arrives in New York to stay with family during her divorce with a Polish Count. Ellen and Newland are formally introduced by May, beginning Ellen and Newland’s odious relationship. Ellen offers a fresh change to Newland’s monotonous lifestyle; she shows Newland the excitement of going against the moral code. After Ellen’s arrival, Newland briefly believes he wants to be with someone who is not like women from New York, and when given the chance to be with Ellen, Newland turns it down, showing he is truly an old-fashioned man at heart.

In societies based on wealth and status, there becomes a perpetual need for refuge. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence, the fatalistic desire for an escape from the upper class sycophants of New York society became apparent in the form of affairs. In Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, the protagonist, Newland Archer, was dazzled by the spectacle of the beautiful, exotic Ellen Olenska--the ostracized cousin of his betrothed, May Welland. On the contrary, Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s protagonist, left his love, Daisy Buchanan, to pursue monetary gain and societal status in the empty lifestyle of an upper-class business tycoon. In this, creating his inner sanctuary, stuck in the times he spent with Daisy. Despite advancing in economic class, Gatsby finds himself chained to the hierarchy of the ruthless, spiteful social class of NYC without refuge. Ultimately, Newland Archer and Jay Gatsby tried to find a bright light in their lackluster lives of upper-class society, to escape from the imminent ostracism, in turn digging their own graves.

The Age of Innocence, written by Edith Wharton, is about the upper-class society of New York City in the 1870’s. The novel follows the life of an upper-class lawyer named Newland Archer. He is going to wed May Welland, who comes from another upper-class family. As the novel progresses Newland starts to become intrigued with May’s cousin, the poor Ellen Olenska. Ellen is called “poor” because she is shameful in the eyes of the society that surrounds her. Ellen left her husband and moved back to New York City to be with her family. Divorce is not acceptable in the 1870’s high society like it is today. Newland tries at first to protect Ellen from the bad reputation that she will perceive if she divorces

The pressure of conformity affects individual expression and varies in degrees in which it impacts an individual’s life. Regardless of time period, conformity is able to force individualists to abide by the social standards inculcated into society and deemphasize the importance behind individualism. In the 1920s, New York City adopted a structure parallel to conformity in its figurative hierarchy after the grief and devastation of World War I. With fear of the unknown, a reestablishment of tradition and routine followed, including an adaptation to the use of silences. The individuals with class and power used silence as a vehicle to conform and unify but, free-willed individuals gave another purpose to silence. It became a tool to express

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton and The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot has similar recurring imagery. Both literary works portray two women in a way and compare these two women characters. Wharton’s portrayal of gender in the society of Old New York illustrates the “perfect” woman through May Welland along with the “imperfect” woman through Ellen Olenska, whereas in the poem The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, the role and sexuality of women is shown through the juxtaposition of two women in the section “A Game of Chess.”

Novelist Edith Wharton wrote her defining work, 1905's the House of Mirth, on a subject she knew all too well: the style-over-substance realm of New York's upper-crust society during the Gilded Age. Having been raised in this "fashionable" society, Wharton knew both its intricacies and cruelties firsthand. The triumphant rise and tragic fall of protagonist Lily Bart demonstrate both the "sunshine and shadow" of the Gilded Age. The House of Mirth not only exposes the reality of how "the other half live," but also satirizes and condemns their elitist existence.

Jane Austen’s novel 'Emma' and Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, as significant and satirical reflections of Regency England and postmodern America respectively, indicate how the transformation process can shape and improve literacy, intertextual and logical importance. The transformation is evident in the compositions Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ and Amy Heckerling’s ‘Clueless’ enabling us to investigate the assortment of logical subjects. Regarding ‘Emma’ the perspective throughout the Regency time frame examines the strict values of love and marriage inside the inflexible social hierarchy. Austen’s advances the significance of etiquette throughout the text. Austen reveals a neo-women’s activist perspective, shown in the female protagonist revealing the female protagonists’ scholarly capacity and social equity in an otherwise patriarchal society. However, the close resemblance of the story; ‘Clueless’, Heckerling composition conveys entirely transformed values, reflected through the actions of the current upper-working class of contemporary Los Angeles. The critical analysis of commercialism in the informal social class system of modern America reiterating social expectations of gender and social characterisation within the microcosm of the typical American educational system. The transformation in attitudes of Austen, reveals an exhaustive utilisation of setting, a close examination of dialect and various artistic procedure.

“Everything we read constructs us, makes us who we are, by presenting our image of ourselves as girls and women, as boys and men” – M. Fox

Throughout Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, there is an overlaying presence of the typical roles that men and women were supposed to play. During Elizabethan times there was a major difference between the way men and women were supposed to act. Men typically were supposed to be masculine and powerful, and defend the honor. Women, on the other hand, were supposed to be subservient to their men in their lives and do as ever they wished. In Romeo and Juliet the typical gender roles that men and women were supposed to play had an influence on the fate of their lives.

Author and civil rights activist Maya Angelou once said, “How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”. When one thinks of comic books, it is very likely that the subjects that come to mind are Marvel’s Spiderman or DC’s Batman. Although comic books are stereotypically thought to be mainly about super heroes, there are a wide variety of subject matter they could be written about, such as romance. In the 1950s – 1960s, it was common for these romance comics to exploit the social norms of that time and emphasized the subject of gender roles. While the men in comic books were usually illustrated in a brave heroic manner, the women would be portrayed to be what would now be considered a stereotypical “trophy wife”. As a young child reading these comics and taking in these images, they are slowly molding their ideals to believe that what they are reading and seeing is what is accepted and normal in their society. By coding gender norms into the texts, authors are helping mold the ideology of its readers to believe that it is acceptable for both genders to follow specific rules that accommodate to the believed social norms of the time.

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, he introduces a character known as the Wife of Bath. It is her turn to tell the stories, and her tale begins discussing her past marriages in the prologue. Married five times, the Wife of Bath tells us about her own marital issues, and the way she was able to manipulate the gender roles to her own advantage. As interesting of a character as she is, I find Chaucer created the Wife of Bath to deliberately introduce the issues gender roles play in our society. I believe that the role the of the Wife of Bath in the tale was purposely written by Chaucer to twist the traditional gender roles of the time, satirizing how gender plays in society.