Love In A Maze

Within ‘A Doll’s House’ Nora Helmer has a strong appetite for knowledge. This is particularly evident in her voracious longing for independence: “But it was great fun, though, sitting there working and earning money. It was almost like being a man”. This knowledge of “being a man”, and what that entails, would be unknown to many women during the Victorian era due to the fiercely patriarchal society that was perpetuated. The desire for knowledge and its inaccessible nature is particularly evident in the lack of further education for women. In fact, in the United Kingdom the first widespread report of female further education was the Edinburgh Seven in 1869. Whilst that instance of knowledge was not destructive, in the case of Nora and ‘A Doll’s House’ her appetite for knowledge is ultimately catastrophic for the Victorian female ideal due to the secrecy she creates around it: “My husband must never know of this”. As a result of this concealment and Nora’s appetite for knowledge, the Victorian ideal unravels and ultimately becomes destructive. Likewise, in Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’ an appetite for knowledge is ultimately destructive for the characters within the poem. After tasting the “fruit” of the “Goblin Men” and becoming knowledgeable of the taste and effects of it Laura “knew not was it night or day”. This confusion of time and geographical

I think at the time the author may of tried to target an audience of young girls. Instead of writing a story the author cuts right to the case and explains and goes into detail about how a woman should act. The writer of this piece most likely wants you to take something from this and either learn from it or apply it to your life. An audience that lived in that time period may read this with a different mindset than someone of this era.

In Hopkinson's story, experience is central as it leads to potential complications the grandmother tries to avoid for her granddaughter by telling her personal story. The mother opposes her mother's urges for protection and tells her it is not necessary to frighten her daughter because “girlie's too young yet, there's plenty of time.” (2). The mother sees her mother's personal story as a “ghastly old wi[fe's] tale[s].” (1-2) therefore there is no rush to inform her child on dangers, but also because she believes her girl is too young. This opposition between both characters links to a broader opposition between two different ways to report events: on the one hand this story could be based on realistic facts when on the other hand it contains allegories and a moral which are features of fairy tales. This text mixes both types which revels Hopkinson's style, designated by herself in a 1999 interview with Gregory E. Rutledge, as "speculative fiction” and defined by Jewelle Gomez in her article “Speculative Fiction and Black Lesbians”: “I conflate the terms science fiction and fantasy fiction under this rubric [Speculative Fiction] because each in its own way addresses human concern with the future, with magic, and with the preternatural.” (949). The story borrows its

The narrator is given a sense of oppression from the beginning of the story by keeping a hidden diary from her husband as “a relief to her mind.” Throughout the story her true thoughts are hidden from the readers and her husband, which gives the story a symbolic perspective.

Haywood’s cautionary tale warns lower class women to beware of sexual misconduct as their bodies are more available to men. Carrie Shanafelt explains in her essay “Vicarious Sex and the Vulnerable Eighteenth Century Reader” how specific people risk more in reading pornographic novels: “namely, young, female, and lower-class readers” in the eighteenth-century (262). For example, Celia, one persona, is a young countrywoman who works as a maid at the inn where Beauplaisir lives during his stay in Bath. Haywood creates this low class character to warn readers of the potential for sexual assault because of their class and gender. Celia notes that: “Fortune in this Exploit was extremely on her side; there were no others of the Male-Sex in the House,

She validates her own story by pointing to similar experiences in others. Her point that she is considered delusional and “in a nutshell female” when she contradicts a man is authenticated when she retells a story her then boyfriend’s uncle had told her. He says one of his neighbor’s wife had run out into the street in the middle of the night exclaiming that her husband was trying to kill her. When Solnit ask why the uncle thinks this is impossible he explains that they were a respectable middle-class family. To him, it was far more likely that the women was crazy then that her husband was trying to kill her. This argument is farther disproven by Solnit when she explains that three women a day are murdered by spouses or ex-spouses in America. So, it is far more likely that her husband was trying to kill her than that she was crazy. The use of this story and other artistic proof, like the FBI agent Coleen Rowley’s story and Marine Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach’s death, throughout the essay proves that this is not only a personal problem, but a larger issue effecting women every day. She shows us that a women’s word, therefore her very existence, is often taken to be less credible than a man’s. That “they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives.” Solnit also proves the cogency of her essay

Presenting literature to the public that is meant to be a commentary on social or political issues, masked under the guise of entertaining and fictional, is a tool implemented by authors and activists for centuries. While not all satire is as overt as Jonathan Swift’s suggestion that we eat the babies, it does not diminish the eyebrow raising suggestions that are conveyed once the meaning has been discovered. In Aphra Behn’s The History of the Nun and Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina, the established expectations of the female role within society are brought into question then directly rejected. These expectations establish that women should be deferential to men, morally unblemished, and virtuous at all times. Men, however, are not held to these expectations in the same way. The masculine roles assumed by Isabella and Fantomina demonstrate a private rebellion against the established patriarchal society as it warns against the under-estimation of women and proves that women exist independently.

In the start of the story, Haywood places Fantomina in an unusual place for a woman of her standard to be, a playhouse. She is seen observing the actions of those around her in her box seat. By purposefully placing Fantomina above the men in her location at the playhouse, this represents her power over men who are in the pit seats below her. Men are casted as “depraved” and deeply judged by the eye of Fantomina. (227). By allowing us to see the story from her perspective, Haywood furthers the division between men and women by showing the power that Fantomina currently holds while also foreshadowing the power she will gain by observing others and learning different mannerisms, such as those of a prostitute.

Throughout history, female artists have not been strangers to harsh criticism regarding their artistic works. Some female artists are fortunate to even receive such criticism; many have not achieved success in sharing their works with the world. In Virgina Woolf’s third chapter of her essay “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf addresses the plight of the woman writer, specifically during the Elizabethan time period of England. Woolf helps the reader appreciate her view on how stifling and difficult this time period was for women and how what little creativity emerged would have been distorted in some way. Through a number of claims, examples and other literary techniques, Woolf is able to

Fantomina was a novel written in 1725 by Eliza Haywood. It was not the norm during this time period for women to have successful careers as an author. Contrary to writers before her, Eliza Haywood was one of the first women to publish a successful novel (Eliza Haywood Biography 1). Haywood typically published her stories using an anonymous name (1).

This shows how influential her writing has become throughout the years. Austen’s writing opened the door for other writers to explore romantic literature. “J.K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, grew up reading Austen, who she described as ‘the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire’” (Redman). She inspires others, not only to write romance, but science fiction like Rowling has done. Her influence on the literature work is is astonishing considering she lived in the 1700’s. Many writers of that time are forgotten by most, but she has lived on way past her death. Austen is taught in high school and college English classes. She has been a huge inspiration for female writers as well. “Jane Austen is now thought of as one of the greatest English authors and considered by many as the first great woman novelist” (Jane Austen [b.1775-d. 1817]). Being considered as one of the first female novelist is a great accomplishment and a huge honor, it is a great shame the “creator” of romance did not get the recognition until after her death. She could have helped develop most extraordinary writers in her

In Eliza Haywood's Fantomina, we are introduced to a female protagonist with no name who come across Beauplaisir at a play. She is instantly intrigued by his demeanor and discovers that she has sexual desires for him. However, her role as a lady prevents her from approaching him and expressing such desires.

Naomi Hetherington is currently a university tutor for he Department of Lifelong Learning. Prior to this position, she taught for five years in the Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London. Her educational background consist of a Bachelors in Theology and Religious Studies (Newnham College, Cambridge). A masters degree studying Victorian Literature (Manchester) concluding with a PhD (Southampton). She also taught at the University of Hertfordshire, Roehampton University, and London Metropolitan University. Hetherington is a member of the British Association for Victorian Studies, the Women’s History Network, the Victorian Population Fiction Association and the Sheffield Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies. She is also a founding member of the History of Feminism Network.

From Enheduanna to Jane Austen to Charlotte Bronte to J.K. Rowling. Woman have proved over and over again that the role of author and/or writer can suit females just as much as any man. Mansfield encouraged women to write and used herself as an example with her own writing to try to attract more female authors. Often, women are pictures as just people who birth babies, cook, clean, shopped and stayed around as house wives. Sometimes, they did not have a wide span of education. Even in the early 1900’s women didn’t often go to college, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that women began to attend college in equal numbers to men. Poet laureate Robert Southey said “Literature cannot be the business of a women’s life.” One of the key assumptions that Mansfield and other women modernists faced was the habit of presenting narrative fiction through male eyes and according to male values. Mansfield herself strived for everyone (not limited to just women) to do whatever they wanted. She encouraged people to break rules and branch out.

The narrator returns home disappointed that she hasn't found some piece of truth to explain the poverty that women don’t share with men. Woolf thinks she needs a historian to describe the conditions of women through history. Compared to men, woman’s lives seem non-existent. She describes fiction as being connected to life but as careful as a spider-web and, in