Most Influential Women: Angelic Figures In Literature

Throughout the years, different forms of literature  have generally shown women as weaker than men. They have played archetypes such as the mother archetype or the lover which have traits less desirable than the roles that men would take. These archetypes tend to limit their personalities and they become characters that are solely there for inconveniencing the hero. Stereotypes for women have affected these archetypes, but throughout history many people have made efforts to change these archetypes and make them more desirable. Even though archetypes for women have been shown as weak, it has changed throughout the years.

The role of women in works of literature as well as in life has changed significantly. Previously, women were seen as needy and dependent on the men in their lives. Women were only important for raising children and doing work around the house, while men were off

As a result of the abuse female characters have faced, it has become an objective for authors to prevent this. There have been clear strides recently, putting women as the protagonists, and not in a manner that has them dealing with persecution. The amount of strong, female characters is a large stride in the right direction to end the conflict regarding women’s roles in literature. However, this sudden influx of women in literature may lead to the reversal of the issue; the absence or abuse of men. While certainly literary equality is the end goal, to flip the issue would be just as bad and lead to sexism on the opposite spectrum. To truly mend the rift between genders, there must be no discrimination, the idea that an author is trying to use sexist undertones by not writing the lead as a female should not have to be an idea that readers think about when analyzing modern books. While even still there are issues of gender inequality in literature, there must be moderation from both ends for a resolution to be possible. The only way for equality to be achieved is with the absence of sexist ideals from all

In many literary examples women are in pushed to change themselves in order to be the person society expects them to be. This change was the result of constant ridicule revolving around the idea that men, in fact, are superior to women in many ways. Overtime these judgements against women have become less of an issue, however are still relevant. Women are as capable as men of being independent and valuable, but because they are subjected they still fall vulnerable to oppression by society which changes their view of themselves so they act in different ways in order to please society.

Throughout history, it has generally been accepted that women are of a lesser standard than that of their male counterparts. There has always been an opposition to this theory that believes that the reverse is true, or at the very least, that the sexes are equal. While some authors place women within their works solely as a filler character, or as support of their male lead, there are some that have written with the intent of the females offering a distinctive viewpoint than that of what the readers might be used to. The roles of women in literature have never been forced to be monotonous, yet that’s how they’ve been perceived. However, there are examples of female characters who have been written with the express purpose of breaking that

As long as sexism exists within our society, it will exist within our literature. Depicting women as the submissive and therefore passive gender has been an age old occurrence within cultures. This is reflected in many aspects of societies from pop culture to history. A key contributor to the continuation of this is the unreliable, biased and sometimes outright manipulative narrative of these texts. This narrative, subjective in it’s art, not only affects how female roles play out in a plot but also heavily influence how the audience views the power dynamic between genders. Throughout Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, James K. Baxter’s He Waiata Mo Te Kare, and Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer all female characters have been passive victims or objects to their circumstance.

Throughout the history of storytelling, there have always been storybook characters that inspire and motivate young readers to become more engaged and knowledgeable about the struggles that some people go through. Reading has always been a pastime of mine; while reading I collect new friends in wonderful places that otherwise I could only dream of. Each of these characters that I have befriended and connected with over the years, has shaped my personality in some way or another, and choosing just one seems an impossible task. Although women’s rights have skyrocketed in the past century, overall the world is still predominately male-orientated, but the world of books has no bounds for inspirational women. Countless authors have written

“The woman who fights against the constrictions that society places upon her is a common figure in texts with female protagonists”

By the late 1800s, sexual expression and experimentation in literature was fully underway. During that period, several women became professional writers and achieved commercial success, for example Sarah Grand’s The Heavenly Twins and the works of authors such as Oliver Schreiner, Meredith Moore or Emma Frances Brooke, all of whom created heroines who rejected aspects of the traditional feminine role. Novelists both male and female were broadening the range of fiction to include a woman’s point of view. Ultimately, it led to the figure of the polarizing “New Woman” who is not just “a wife and a mother” but is also a career woman, capable of intelligence and input and is sexually expressive.

In the nineteenth century, the idea of an accomplished woman is described with very specific aspects. Through Pride and Prejudice, the author Jane Austen points out that an

The wicked witch, the stepmother, the damsel in distress, the fair maiden, the prince. All these stock characters are well known. Flat and shallow, they are only either evil, repressive, distressed, fair, or kind. They are known because they are seen everywhere. But what do they teach or show about human nature. Do these “people” make provoke thought or do they fill a role for a plot? Emphasizing who they are, not what they do, “literary fiction writers are more concerned with complex characters then the mechanics of plot” (Arp 161). Characterization in a literary fiction book explores human nature and psychology, allowing not only the analysis of the characters in the book but the people in real life.

Women make up approximately half of the population of the world, yet throughout literature approximately half the works written are nowhere close to how many were written by women. Even with such population, most works do not even focus on women. Few works dealt with the role of women in society throughout the history of literature but it has become more and more of a recurring theme as time past. Works like The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and Hamlet by William Shakespeare were rare for their time for how they portray women characters. Works like The Education of Women by Daniel Defoe and A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen were wrote in a time of change and were not as rare as the other works published in the same time period.

In early literature, men dominated the writers’ circuit. As literature began, it was used as an easily digestible way to promote social norms and moral code. In these texts, the role of women changes vastly depending on the culture, although there is a common theme: women exist to belong to a man. Women were not only oppressed in life, but their struggle is weaved into all of these texts, where in hindsight we can read them and see how belittled women were. These stories, written by men, all seem to have the same theme that a woman’s only value lays in her loyalty to her husband. Women in these times did not have a chance to speak out or think for themselves because they were not allowed. I looked specifically at three women from three stories, across culturally different times and societies. I chose Sita, from the Ramayana, Penelope, from Homer’s Odyssey, and the Wife of Bath from the Canterbury Tales. Looking at the qualities of these different women, they are essential pieces to the success of the “hero”, a sidekick, almost. It was interesting to me, that across these different cultures, I found a lot of similarities between them.

“A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view” (Isben). In literature, two prominent stories involving women stand out and these are the stories of Eve and Medea. Both of these women went through a conflict within their society where they were judged by their peers. Their judgments were in a situation where they were ruled by a masculine overtone. Throughout history, women have always been viewed differently than men. In today’s society, there are examples in films and in the way women are represented within the workplace. To illustrate this point, the documentation in literature and relations to modern society will lend proof. Even though within literature and today's society women are often viewed as inferior to men, women can fight back against the prejudices facing them.

Shakespeare and Steinbeck present their female characters in a misogynistic light. To compare the respective pieces we must consider several factors, which acted as a driving force towards the portrayal of the female characters in their respective texts.