Short Analyses of Some of the Best American Literature

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman written in the 1890s both reflect gender roles of this time, specifically women’s roles. In these stories both of the women are oppressed by their marriages, and by the end of the stories both wish to be rid of their husbands. Also, in both of these stories these women experience mental illnesses, mainly depression. These illnesses were looked at as something minor during this time, was it because psychologists were uneducated, or because as women their mental stability did not really matter? These stories connect so well because of their work to bring to the surface the reality of gender roles in the 1800s. Even though these stories were fictional their ideas were very real. By comparing how men and women were treated during this time, and how they are treated more equally now, it shows that with time American has come a long way.

The Portrayal of the Plight of Women by the Author, In Their Particular Period of Time

The author agrees with the idea of women as victims through the characterisation of women in the short story. The women are portrayed as helpless to the torment inflicted upon them by the boy in the story. This positions readers to feel sympathy for the women but also think of the world outside the text in which women are also seen as inferior to men. “Each season provided him new ways of frightening the little girls who sat in front of him or behind him”. This statement shows that the boy’s primary target were the girls who sat next to him. This supports the tradition idea of women as the victims and compels readers to see that the women in the text are treated more or less the same as the women in the outside world. Characterisation has been used by the author to reinforce the traditional idea of women as the helpless victims.

Women in history stood best known for a less ascendant sex in the mid-nineteen centuries. Since times have gone by women had fought for their equal rights and freedom. There had been many stereotypes, where the women were considered as a slave to the men’s because the women’s position was to be the homemakers and a mother to their children, while the men’s are out socializing with others. If they were not happy with the marriage, they cannot just walk out or complain because a women role is to endure all these pains without a word coming out of their mouths. Two out of the ordinary short stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story of An Hour,” mostly focused on a women’s dilemma that they faced near the 19th century. The two main characters in the short stories show some resemblances in some ways, but both characters portrayed them in different ways of how they dealt their sorrows in their marriages.

During the nineteenth and twentieth century there was a number of changes made in America. Woman were looked at as less than back then and to a certain degree they still are today. There was a number of women that died or went insane because of the standards that they had to meet in order to be considered good women. In this research paper I will talk about the experience of the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper and Blanche DuBois from the story A Streetcar Named Desire. It will be shown within these pages how the moral and societal standards for women were far different than they were for men, and how the standards changed over the years. Furthermore it will be shown how this effected the women of those two stories.

This seven day unit is designed to engage student thinking in preparation for reading literature from early 20th century Europe. They will be encouraged to place themselves in the position of the people of this time period to reflect on the poor conditions in which they lived to understand how literature can reflect the feeling or mood of a time period, answering the overall unit theme: How does the “feeling” of a time period affect the literature created during that time period? Other essential questions of this unit include: How can historical events, attitudes of generations, or climate of the time affect literature, specifically during 20th century Europe?, and In what ways can literature document personal feelings of its author?. Students should already be skilled in analyzing literature, as this has been a focus of the course throughout the school year. Students will be transferring this skill in analysis to evaluate the historical time period and events that could have had an effect on the literature and art created in those

It is through this story; one can feel the hurt and the struggle women have to make living in a male-controlled society where they are treated unfairly. Duong through the tale shows the domination of females basically from men’s desire for power and control. It is believable that the similar demand, which, through history, has motivated men to attempt to dominate other groups in their own society,

A critical feminist view of Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour focuses on female cruelty in the nineteenth century society and more specifically in marriages of the time. During that time period, women were owned by their husbands and had little to no control over their own lives, so in a sense women felt trapped inside of their marriages. The demonstration that is expressed in The Story of an Hour is the sense of freedom Louis Mallard experiences after she is aware of her husband’s death by a train accident. After Mrs. Mallard is told this expectantly tragic news, she goes off to her room alone, where one is predicted to believe she is going to grieve over her husband’s death.

When she arrives to the brothel, she is torn apart by tons of men, physically and emotionally. Throughout the book she tells her story of cruelty, mistreatment, and prostitution through devastating poems. This book exemplifies one of the reasons why women are said to be the “weaker gender” and are treated unfairly. Women

Women in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s had specific roles determined by the males who were dominant in their society. Women began to write stories which told their gender roles in that era. The authors of these stories lived in this time period and their stories reflect a lot of the traditional roles that were expected of them. The author’s purposes, were to tell about how marriage imprisoned women in this period of time. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s stories provide examples of the gender roles. Their reasoning of writing these stories was to call on women of this era to learn how to empower themselves in this society.

Nineteenth century women were viewed by society as possessions to their husbands and less capable than the male race. This era of women were thought to be only capable of simple tasks like house work and being a mother. This role is very evident in Ibsen’s “A Doll House”, but Ibsen shows the multiple ways his female characters could get their way even though they are oppressed. In “A Dolls House” the females may have been the underdog but they showed that they knew how to get what they wanted. Females of the era were making sacrifices because of the way society viewed them. Women have to make conscious decisions throughout their lives such as nobility, but they also had to make sacrifices because they have limited legal rights and limited influence.

Demonstrated in No.73 of The Spectator, ideal representations of female roles are closely tied in with the ‘care of their families, and love for their husbands, which [were] great qualities and achievements of womankind’ . The good female characters were those who willingly confined themselves to the concerns of their families- characteristics that came to be idealised by the spectator, thus causing the private sphere of the home and family to assume a privileged position. However, excessively worldly women whose interests and unconventional occupations ranged beyond the private household present a kind of bad femininity, which periodicals do their very best to exploit and discourage in order to subject women to domestic realms and dissuade them from entering and working in spaces of trade like the coffeehouse. It became instrumental for periodicals like The Spectator to form a female reading audience organised around the literary representations of women as writing subjects, and textual figures situated within the reformist discourse designed to instruct and influence their behaviours. This can be evidenced in The Spectator No.155 where female readers are presented with a letter from the ‘idol’ , who shares her ‘unhappy circumstances’ due to working in the coffeehouse. Whilst men gawk, and offer the

In various forms of literary works, the inequality of women can be observed over an extended period of time. From the late 19th century till the present, women have progressed in being considered equal to men; however, in the beginning, this was not always the case. The position of women in society has advanced immensely from being viewed as beneath men, regarding their actions and their intelligence, to being able to do almost anything that a man can. This progression of the equal treatment of women can be seen in Henry James’ “Daisy Miller: A Study,” Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, Sandra Cisneros’ “Woman Hollering Creek,” and Louise Erdrich’s “Fleur,” when women have to endure double standards, are treated as less intelligent, and have less freedom; however, some change occurs to bring about the equality of the genders.

In “A Jury of Her Peers” we analyze the character Minnie Wright who is the protagonist in the story as the household women, she is convicted of murder; we can see why her motive is that way. The main reason is her aggressive husband who is despised by the rest of the neighbors for his isolating acts. However, you can see the compassion that other women have for her and this shows a bond and how different genders are always different. Similarly, Mrs. Mallard in “Story of an hour” is also determined women who feels chained up by her husband who is very similar in his acts as Mr. Wright.

TWO ASPECTS OF LITERARY STUDY. Such a study of Literature as that for which the present book is designed includes two purposes, contributing to a common end. In the first place (I), the student must gain some general knowledge of the conditions out of which English literature has come into being, as a whole and during its successive periods, that is of the external facts of one sort or another without which it cannot be understood. This means chiefly (1) tracing in a general way, from period to period, the social life of the nation, and (2) getting some acquaintance with the lives of the more important authors. The principal thing, however (II), is the direct study of the literature itself. This study in turn should aim first at an