Motherhood In Herland

Her father left the family after she was born, her mother restricted Gilman from reading fiction. But there was a light at the end of a tunnel, her family had a financial problems had to move in with her relations. With the help of her aunts, Gilman started to become more independent. Being a women of the 19th century, women injustice

Toni Morrison’s Sula revolves around the relationship of her two main characters, Sula and Nel. The childhood friends grow apart with age. Although it is indicated that their friendship is the most important relationship they participate in, they eventually betray each other and lead dishonest lives. Throughout the novel, we see their constantly deteriorating relationship as a result of absence of a family life. Sula is a novel about the influence family may have on the make up of someone’s personality. In particular, the novel examines the effect parents can have on their children and the conscious effort the main characters make to be unlike their mothers.

A voice is given to the mother in this poem, who is representative of all women who have suffered under the churches morals and values and still hold a high regard for religion, in this case, Christianity. It is clear from Heaney’s depiction of suffering that the mother does share a maternal bond with

The first hurdle in comparing the works of Dickinson and Gilman is examining the superficial features of womanhood in their pieces. In Emily Dickinson’s “764” or, as it is also known: “My Life had stood- a Loaded Gun”, the main superficial features of womanhood are somewhat rudimentary and predictable. Women are merely tools, to be used by men but destined to remain useless otherwise. They are left and forgotten “In Corners-“ (Dickinson 1211) without a man to take them up and “identif[y]”

The story is scattered with metaphors and allegories pertaining to the issue of female oppression and can be seen in the actions of the narrator and her husband in the story. During the story, the narrator is pressured by her husband and the doctors about her nervous condition, and agreed to the treatment, because that is what her husband would want. Gilman uses many typical characteristics of a woman in her story; innocent, loyal and obedient to her husband. Like many historical disputes of women writing, her husband bans her from writing, and even diagnoses her as ill to stop the writing. Phrases in the story also link

Many people describe the role as a mother and a wife as something that is to be welcomed, a natural stage for women. However for the narrator, it changed from something seemingly beautiful to “old foul, bad...” Motherhood to her is then what creative women were to other people during the 19th century. Creativity was natural for the narrator, unlike motherhood; it was part of her being. Motherhood however, was a prison of domestic

Gilman's female narrator, who either chose not to fight this tradition or was unable to do so, loses her sanity at the hands of an oppressive male-dominated American society. The narrator feels certain that the

For Gilman, the conventional nineteenth-century middle-class marriage, with its rigid distinction between the “domestic” functions of the female and the “active” work of the male, ensured that women remained second-class citizens. The story reveals that this gender division had the effect of keeping women in a childish state of ignorance and preventing their full development. John’s assumption of his own superior wisdom and maturity leads him to misjudge, patronize, and dominate his

Though Mary Daly’s work touch on many aspects of life where women are oppressed while offering supporting content from other theorists who ironically happen to all be males while shutting down the hyper-rationalist who makes reason absolute treating it as a God-like manner. Daly’s message for writing this piece is fairly simple. This idea that God the father

The diction Gilman employs relates directly to the lasting role of women in the home to expose the historical adversities endured within the domestic sphere. The intricacy with which Gilman composes the text highlights the inherent

Ideals of American womanhood between the time of the American Revolution and the start of the Civil War were constantly shifting. The country was founded with the everlasting ideals of economic opportunity, equality, and liberty for all, and compared to Great Britain after independence, America had greater religious freedom and social mobility. In spite of this, numerous groups were excluded from the full extent of these rights and privileges- especially women. After the American Revolution a belief regarding the roles of women emerged and came to be known as republican motherhood, which centered around the belief that women had the primary responsibility of raising their children to uphold the values of republicanism so they could be valuable members of the newly formed American republic. A complementing set of beliefs were instilled into American society between the period of 1820 to 1860, the cult of domesticity, which asserted that women were solely to serve as wives, mothers, and housekeepers who were concerned with only domestic affairs. While the principles brought forth by the cult of domesticity and the ideas of republican motherhood were accepted by many, much of what they embodied was unachievable for women of lower economic standing due to social oppression that handicapped their opportunities, especially blacks who were often separated from their families due to the institution

As women continue to struggle for equality in today's society, there is an ever growing notion born out of patriarchal ideology, that a mother has the sole responsibility of caring for and nurturing her children. In the somewhat jocular but pragmatic story “Bad Mother” by Ayelet Waldman (2010) she points to the imbalance between societal expectations of mothers and fathers when she comments:

The women of Herland do not only facilitate motherhood through a religious frame, it also shapes the social organisation within their society. Every woman is allowed to have one child but it’s expected to raise the child herself. The reason each woman is only allowed to pro-create once is a method of population control, as they found that without sanctions on childbirth they were outgrowing the country. In addition to that method, in rare exceptions, a woman isn’t allowed to procreate due to the evidence of what the Herlandians perceive to be bad traits. The child is taken care of by their biological mother for the first two years of their life for purposes of nursing etc., whilst being submerged in the love and affection of the whole community.

Maya Angelou said, “To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow” (Wanderlust 1). The relationship a mother has with her child transcends all other relationships in complexity. Maternity largely contributes to the female identity in part because the ability to sexually reproduce is uniquely female. With this ability often comes an unparalleled feeling of responsibility. That is, mothers experience an inherent desire to protect their children from the world and guide them through life. Serving as a child’s protector then transforms a woman’s perspective, or the female gaze. While these protective instincts often arise naturally, they are also reinforced by the ideas society’s perpetuates about motherhood. Globally, women are expected to assume the roles of wives and mothers. The belief that motherhood is somewhat of a requirement assists in the subjugation of women and reinforces a plethora of gendered stereotypes. While some women enjoy the process of childrearing, others feel that having a family comes at an irreparable cost: losing sight of oneself. In response to the polarized views surrounding maternity, several authors have employed different writing techniques to illustrate the mother-child dynamic. Through the examination of three narratives, spanning fiction and non-fiction, one is able to better define maternity and the corresponding female gaze in both symbolic and universal terms.

The books I’ve chosen to review are set on two different continents. This makes the comparison of the lives of women across the world more efficient and broader. What makes the comparison more practical, realistic and interesting is the fact that the characters in the two books 'The Woman Warrior ' and 'Wild ', lived in the same century. The authors specifically bring out the duties and the expectation that mothers were held to in the upbringing of their daughters as at that time and place. The authors, however, present the picture of motherhood in a fairly narrow view. They ignore the role of mothers in the upbringing of their sons and instead dwell on their duties and responsibilities in the bringing up of their daughters (Kingston & Gordon 2005). Therefore, I chose to compare how the theme of motherhood has been portrayed in the two ethnically diverse texts.