Romantic Vitalism In D. H. Lawrence's The White Stocking

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.

Jane Austen was a Georgian era author who was best known for her novels that commented on social issues and class, and Northanger Abbey is no exception. Austen’s social commentary is apparent in this novel’s plot, as the reader follows a seventeen-year-old protagonist, Catherine Morland, as she matures and forms intimate relationships with fellow characters in an England town called Bath. Marriage between characters in the novel is heavily based on wealth, and because of England’s unstable economy at the time, marrying into wealth meant maintaining a high social class and economic stability for the characters. The importance of economic prosperity and social rank heavily influenced marriage in 19th century England, and this idea bourgeoisie classism and marrying for wealth is contradicted by Austen in her novel, Northanger Abbey.

From my point of view, Jane Austen should be seen as a ‘feminist’ writer. As she wrote in one of her novel Persuasion, she considers that ‘Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything’ (Anne Elliot, in Jane Austen’s Persuasion). Such feminist ideas are expressed in many of her literary works. In her another novel Northanger Abbey, there are various issues discussed, which include not only marriage, social criticism and Gothic, but also feminism as well. The essay is to discuss Jane Austen and her feminist thoughts by analyzing Northanger Abbey.

Mrs Spicer is a ‘gaunt’ and ‘flat-chested’ woman whose face has been ‘burnt to a brick’. She is ‘a little wild-looking at times ’ and when working she wears clothes like “an old coat of her husband’s”, to do what would have traditionally been considered male tasks such as fixing a leak in the roof. When she helps Mary lay the table, the way she handles the crockery and napkins convinces Mary that she had been ‘fairly well brought up’.

Female characters are influential in John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids. In the novel, three women are of paramount importance in comparison to all others in shaping David’s views and opinions: Sophie, the Sealand woman, and Aunt Harriet. In the society of Waknuk, individuals exhibit prejudice repeatedly throughout the novel through their own blinkered treatment of deviations. David Strorm’s, a twelve-year-old boy whose parents brought him up in such lifestyle, interactions with those three women throughout the novel sways him to have second thoughts about it. Their dealings with David each have a particular impact on his life. Sophie allows for doubt to enter David’s life for the first time; the Sealand woman expands his views and prompts him to consider other beliefs different from those of his society; and Aunt Harriet makes him more conscious of his society’s despicable activities and more attentive to it. In John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids, Sophie, the Sealand woman, and Aunt Harriet are instrumental in influencing David’s outlook on society.

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is a bildungsroman, a coming of age story that focuses on the psychological development, and maturity of the protagonist Catherine Morland. This essay will analyse the language, and narrative techniques of the set extract, and discuss how this excerpt suggests vicissitude in Catherine’s priorities, within her role as Austen’s female bildungsroman. In addition, it will discuss the ‘domestic gothic’ and real life abuse that prevails in ordinary situations. Furthermore, it will argue how Austen’s rhetorical techniques work to encourage reader interest, and to exercise perception, when distinguishing between appearance, and reality. Finally, it will conclude by briefly discussing the significance of the extract within

Examine Austen’s presentation of what is called in the novel, ‘women’s usual occupations of eye, and hand, and mind’. In Jane Austen’s society, the role of women was controlled by what was expected of them. In most cases, marriage was not for love, and was considered as a business arrangement, in which both partners could gain status and financial reassurance. Though Austen opposed the idea of none affectionate marriage, many

However, despite changes, the literary world remained predominantly male, and women writers not encouraged, or taken seriously. Consequently, to counteract this Emily Bronte published her novel Wuthering Heights, under the male pseudonym of Ellis Bell. Wuthering Heights is the story of domesticity, obsession, and elemental divided passion between the intertwined homes of the Earnshaw’s residing at the rural farmhouse Wuthering Heights, and the Linton family of the more genteel Thrushcross Grange. This essay will discuss how the language and narrative voices established a structural pattern of the novel, and how these differing voices had a dramatic effect on the interpretation of the overall story.

Living almost a century apart, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy each explore similar themes of love through strong female characters. While society strove to keep women’s value directly tied to their marital status, Austen and Hardy wrote the stories of characters who defied these expectations. Bathsheba Everdene of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd is a fiery young woman who inherits a farm, and Elizabeth Bennet of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is an educated woman who prides herself on speaking her mind regardless of the consequences. Both women are of marrying age, and both novels feature their romantic exploits. Besides their differing socio-economic and temporal settings, Bathsheba’s and Elizabeth’s behaviors indicate that they are facing similar feelings and conflicts when it comes to issues of love and marriage. Bathsheba goes to greater lengths to defy societal pressures than Elizabeth does, but Bathsheba’s circumstances warrant the effort. The real difference between these characters is the way in which they are written. One could not know how similar Bathsheba’s thoughts and feelings are to Elizabeth’s, because the reader rarely sees through Ms. Everdene’s eyes. Bathsheba Everdene is the greater feminist heroine when taken alongside Elizabeth Bennet; however, Hardy writes her story almost exclusively from the perspective of his male characters, leaving her represented as two-dimensional in comparison to

Martha Nussbaum describes the romantic ascent of various characters in Wuthering Heights through a philosophical Christian view. She begins by describing Catherine as a lost soul searching for heaven, while in reality she longs for the love of Heathcliff. Nussbaum continues by comparing Heathcliff as the opposition of the ascent from which the Linton’s hold sacred within their Christian beliefs. Nussbaum makes use of the notion that the Christian belief in Wuthering Heights is both degenerate and way to exclude social classes.

Mrs. Ramsay thrives in this role of wife and mother, and men support this role by loving and adoring her for it. In watching her fit the stocking to James' leg and at another time, read James a fairy tale, Mr. Bankes can not help but contemplate the wonders of Mrs. Ramsay. He sees her is the best of light, as childlike and beautiful from within. "If one thought of her simply as a woman", one who wished to be admired, they were mistaken. In his opinion, she was beyond all of that. Her self sacrificing nature brought her to a higher level, where although she was strikingly beautiful, she wanted only to be like everyone else, "insignificant", so as to serve those around her.(p. 30) The simple acts which she

The failings of not marrying for love are again made apparent by Austen through the account of Lydia and Wickham and their shortfalls. Lydia and Wickham’s relationship was built on a mixture of youthful attraction and naivety. In the letter she sends to Harriet,

The novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ (1847) by Emily Brontë and the film adaptation ‘Wuthering Heights’ (2011) by Andrea Arnold each convey respective values and perspectives reflective of the contrasting contexts and forms of each text. The novel, set in the Romantic period, is centred around two families living on the isolated, Yorkshire moors, and the explosive interactions between them. The concept of confinement contrasts against the freedom of nature throughout the novel. Nature is another key theme and a fundamental aspect of the Romantic period, used to present ideas such as rebellion and freedom. Finally, passion within human relationships is thoroughly explored through Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship within the novel. However, as the film adaptation is a product of a contemporary post-feminist, post-colonial time period, these themes can now be explored through lenses such as racial discrimination, feminism, and human connection.

The woman that achieves all of this is the perfect lady. The perfect lady is representative of the times, and Jane Austen exploits this socalled perfection to show that her society was quite the opposite when it came to the lives of women. The perfect lady was a categorization. It made the women have to be a certain person. They had to conform. ?A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, all the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner or walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved (35).? A woman herself, Miss Bingley, made this statement. Not only did women have no free will, but they were the ones that supported conformity. This did not apply to all women, but to the perfect ladies, one of which Miss Bingley is implied to be. Jane Austen juxtaposes the perfect lady and Miss Bingley in order to show that the perfect lady is really a shallow-minded conformist. With characters like Miss Bingley, Austen creates a resentment for the accomplished lady generalization in the reader?s head. This makes the reader dislike the highlight of English society, realize it?s sexism in restricting women?s free will, and favor characters that are vessels for feminist notions, such as

The very first paragraph of the story describes the wife looking at her husband through “half-closed eyes” and being only “half-aware of the movements of his body” (Rifaat, 1996, p. 256). While it seems as if the wife is simply depicting waking up from sleep and noticing her husband, immediately upon reading the second paragraph the reader is