Sea Captain's Wife Essay

The Shipman’s Tale, one of the many tales in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, is exactly suited to the Shipman’s personality and profession as given in “The Prologue.” The shipman is described by Chaucer in the prologue as very sneaky, deceitful, and even pirate-like. The Shipman’s tale matches his personality and profession because The Shipman’s Tale is one of trickery and con. The monk in the tale tricks both the merchant and the merchant’s wife out of their money. He also uses his relationship with the merchant to his advantage, because he knows the merchant would never suspect him of having sex with his wife. The shipman is also portrayed in the prologue to have no sense of remorse or feelings of sorrow.

The Seafarer, The Wanderer, and The Wife’s Lament all contains faith verses fate. The three poems are very similar and very different. The three poems ranging from a lonely man, to a lost soldier, to a wife’s bedrail. The medieval poems show hurt, confusion, and loneliness.

In 1854 Fanny Fern published what was to become not only her most successful works, but one of the most popular and enduring works of English literature during the Antebellum period: Ruth Hall; A Domestic Tale of the Present Time. Though the title – especially to a modern reader – does little to convey the level of thoughtful and heady critique that Fern expounds through this book, it is actually is a strong indictment of the feminine position as the subordinate housewife, mother, and societal agent. However, despite this criticism, it does not seem that Fanny Fern is critical of the institutions of marriage or motherhood as a whole. Her critique is based on the limiting effects of the conventional roles into which wives and mothers fall, and the deleterious consequences these roles have on the personal development and self-actualization of the women who enter into them. Therefore, it is not the institution of marriage or motherhood that Fern is critical of, but rather the expectations and limitations that society assigns to the women who assume these roles.

When isolated from society, loneliness becomes a part of you. In the poems, The Wife’s Lament translated by Ann Stanford and The Seafarer translated by Burton Raffel, are two similar and different poems. The characters in these poems handle their exiles in different ways. The way the two characters reflect from their exile is based off Anglo-Saxon values and beliefs. These poems compare and contrast the exile between men and women.

There was a very different scene in the household of American families. During the early 1800s, a woman’s life consisted of many obligations and few choices. Women were pretty much controlled by the men in their life, their fathers, brothers, and husbands. The life would consist of finding a husband, reproducing, and then spending the rest of their lives helping the family in the house. In fact, when women became married, legally all of her inheritance and belongings would belong to her husband.

In the early 19th century, women were oppressed, and marriage was a social status, not a choice. Mrs. Mallard was a wife during 19th Century and her home was where she would spend most of her days. She also suffers from a heart condition. She learns of the tragic news on the first floor of her two story home. Her sister Josephine was the one to tell her “ in broken sentences, veiled hints that revealed in half concealing.”(287) The news was revealed as delicate as possible, due to Mrs. Mallard's heart condition. Mrs. Mallard heard the news, she wept, a sense of grief comes upon her. Once she removed herself from her sister Josephine's arms, she went off to her room. It reads, “ When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. No one to follow her”(287). During this time, women were looked down upon if they were not married. Most women were given away by their

Perusing once more from nineteenth century working class sexual orientation parts, which consigned ladies solidly to the private universe of the home, students of history saw the white frontier lady's cooperation in a preindustrial family unit economy as empowering. A comparative propensity to romanticize the hard existence of Native American ladies differentiated their opportunity and impact with the patriarchal structure within which European ladies lived. Despite the fact that comparisons are perhaps unavoidable, they can cloud the complexities of ladies' lives both the assorted qualities that described them and the purposes of shared belief they shared. Such examinations likewise divert consideration from the historical changes that shaped these ladies' lives: the triumph of Native American, the importation and oppression of Africans, the monstrous relocation of European, and the financial and political developing of the British settlements. This period secured by the following section, the progressive time of 1750-1800, was likewise thick with changes that capably influenced the lives of

As hardworking women living of the prairie, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters can relate to Mrs. Wright’s situation. They know personally that long days of doing laundry, cooking, and cleaning can become very tiresome (Hedges 91). They realize that living on the prairie can force a woman to be confined to her own house for weeks at a time, and because Mrs. Wright never had children, the grueling loneliness that she suffered must have been excruciating. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters both experience the constant patronization and sexual discrimination that most women in the early twentieth century lived with. They empathize with the difficulties of Mrs. Wright’s life and almost immediately a bond is formed with a woman they do not even know.

In her essay, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Margaret Fuller discusses the state of marriage in America during the 1800‘s. She is a victim of her own knowledge, and is literally considered ugly because of her wisdom. She feels that if certain stereotypes can be broken down, women can have the respect of men intellectually, physically, and emotionally. She explains why some of the inequalities exist in marriages around her. Fuller feels that once women are accepted as equals, men and women will be able achieve a true love not yet known to the people of the world.

In her story, “Old Woman Magoun” she delivered a feminist message more directly than ever. It’s based in turn-of-the-century New England, patriarchy still defined relationships even though the men themselves had degenerated. The story reflects the realities of Freeman’s own life, as her father’s business failed and her mother became the support of the family. However, Freeman’s life was not unique; rural New England is

Over the course of many years, women have struggled to expand their roles and rights in society, hoping to one day achieve complete equality with their male counterparts. Two women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Judy (Syfers) Brady, both recognized the patriarchal society in which women had to endure. They despised the way it heaped inequality and servitude upon women, and decided to assert their opinion on the issue in order to change the perceptions and imposed limitations on women. In Stanton’s speech, “Declaration of Sentiments”, and in Brady’s article, “I Want a Wife”, both women attempt to convince their audiences that females deserve complete equality with men by stating the submissive situations and obligations women find themselves immersed in. This is done to get their female audiences to reevaluate how they have been treated and give them a second chance at attaining equality. Both women employ various rhetorical techniques in their arguments to strengthen, as well as compel other women to oppose the ‘domesticated’ image of women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Judy (Syfers) Brady expressed their views in pursuance of forging a path to a revamped lifestyle for women.

and Susie E. Perkins were blessed with a baby girl, who they named Fannie Coralie Perkins or as her parents spelled it, Fanny. Several years after Fannie was born, Mr. and Mrs. Perkins moved their family to Worcester Massachusetts, where their next child Ethel Perkins was born (Martin, 1976 p. 41). Fanny named after her mother’s older sister (Martin, 1976 p. 42) was always a curious and questioning child with big dreams and ideas. Growing up in the post-Civil War era into the peak of the Second Industrial Revolution, Perkins became exposed to the many social ills of her time. Due to this, the road to the Secretary of Labor for Frances became a long one.

The motherly aspects stands out in her letters as she includes Miss Virginia in all her writings as if she was a child of her own. She is careful to send kind words of uplift to her Miss Virginia and never displays an ill tone when speaking about her masters. She is always protecting those leading those around her to compliant to the conditions in which they under. In an example of keeping things in the best of conditions as possible, she writes and tell her son to “be genteel as possible and to be kind to her masters and to take care of them (they are the best friends they have in the world) (Valentine 1837 #1). Many of these women were used as a means to keep the slavery institution alive for their masters. To these men, slave women were a necessity to the reproduction of lives and their labor which meant stability of livelihood for them.

“There is no protection. To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below” (Morrison 163). Toni Morrison, in her novel A Mercy, suggests that women in 17th century American society were constantly subjugated as inferiors no matter their class or privilege. Although Rebekka and Widow Ealing were both privileged, white women, they still faced the societal pressures that harmed the mother-child relationships among the slaves – Lina, Florens, and Sorrow. Each chapter of A Mercy is told from a different character’s perspective, allowing readers to understand the similarities among the female characters’ standpoints during this time period. By depicting the tribulations of motherhood that extend beyond society’s narrow stereotype, Morrison exposes how societal pressures of the late 17th century America influenced the complexities of motherhood.

The Regency Period in England was an extravagant era often associated with prominent social, political, economic, and artistic advancements. It took place in the early 1800’s and was a time of much elegance and aristocracy. Movies and books set in this time period all seem to highlight the elegance and romance that was prevalent at the time. Famous Regency Era literary works, such as Pride and Prejudice, portray young English women getting their happily-ever-after endings with their true loves. Unfortunately, such endings did not actually happen to real women of the era because they lived very austere and vapid lives. They hardly had a choice in many of their lives’ decisions and had little to no career options. These women were raised