Silk Stockings Stereotypes

Two characters, Elisa Allen and Mary Teller, struggle with the idea of being accepted into the society of the 1930s. Women’s rights were not fully accepted in the 1930s, and these two characters were set in the common day view of men and women. In the 1930s, “[Society has] assigned to white women such roles as housewife, secretary, PTA chairman, and schoolteacher. Black women can now be schoolteachers, too, but they are most prominently assigned to such domestic roles as maid, cook, waitress, and babysitter” (Chisholm 123). These assigned roles have impacted women around the world, including the two characters in these short stories - “The Chrysanthemums” and “The White Quail”. Not being activists in women’s rights, these women conformed to society and lived their lives as any typical housewife in the 1930s. Their passions and choices during this time affected their way of living and relationships. The two stories reflect similarities of the women’s love for gardening and lonely marriages, but also reflect their different viewpoints on the world they live in.

A Doll’s House and The Importance of Being Earnest were both written in the late nineteenth century at a period in time when gender roles in society were not only significant to the structure of society but were restrictive and oppressive to individuals. This was particularly true in the case of women who were seen as the upholders of morals in polite society and were expected to behave accordingly. A Doll’s House and The Importance of Being Earnest challenge society and its inclination to categorise and expect certain behaviour of individuals based on their gender.

Oppression has been a tactic used for thousands of years in order to conquer, enslave, and control those who are different from the social norm. But one group that has been and continues to be oppressed is women. Women make up half of the population and yet men were able to manipulate their lives and create a society that prevented them from being treated fairly and equally, a problem many still face today. The male dominated society that has been present for centuries can be seen entirely throughout the nineteenth century. The unhealthy dynamic between men and women can be seen in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and Margaret Fullers Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Not only did the oppression of women present itself in literature of the time period, but it also emerged through clothing, seen in both stories and in real life. The mistreatment and misconceptions men had and continue to have about women can be shown within the literature, clothing styles, and dynamic between men and women of the nineteenth century.

Women in society sometimes are subject to objectification, meaning they are treated as a mere object; unequal to men. In the novel, The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, this holds true, except, women are said to be equal to men, but are not treated in this exact manner. Lily is apart of the upper class society of New York and attends parties, gambles all her money, and throughout the whole book tries to marry a rich man. Wharton’s feminism is apparent in the way she treats Lily; Lily gets through society, merely by keeping up her appearances. Beauty and appearance are everything in this society, if you are beautiful you will get far in society, however, the only thing Lily is lacking is wealth. In the novel, feminism is present with the idea of appearances and the symbol of money is used to convey that men are needed to control a women’s social stability.

Slacks and Calluses reveals a lot about the social class status of the women. To start most women were not expected to work in the factories. They were expected to stay at home and take care of children or have jobs like school teachers or bank tellers while the meant worked for the war production or they participated in the war. The men were most likely annoyed by the women not knowing what they were doing. This was obvious when Constance asked how to use a tool and he looked disgustingly as if he was saying “Women!”, in his head. The men at the factory repeated how to clock in to the women. They repeated it four times. This shows that they didn’t respect the women as workers and thought they were not smart enough to be there. Talking

The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and

The life of a lady in the 19th century is painted in a romantic light. Pictured in her parlor, the lady sips tea from delicate china while writing letters with a white feathered quill. Her maid stands silently off in the background, waiting for orders to serve her mistress. What is not typically pictured, is the sadness or boredom echoed on the lady’s face. Perhaps the letter is to a dear friend, not seen in ages, pleading with the friend to visit, in hopes that the friend will fill the void in the lady’s life made from years spent in a loveless marriage; or possiblyk20 the lady isn’t writing a letter at all, but a novel or a poem, never to be read by anyone but her. Edith Warton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, are 19th Century ladies who dare to share their writing with the world. Through their works, the darker side of a woman’s life in the late 1800’s is exposed. Gender politics in the 19th dictates that a lady is dependent on her husband for her financial security and social standing; that is if she is fortunate enough to marry at all. In Edith Warton’s The House of Mirth, Lily Bart is a beautiful woman in her late 20’s, who fails to marry a wealthy man. The narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper slowly goes insane under her physician husbands misguided attempts to cure her of depression. The downfall of Lily Bart and the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is

She selfishly praised quilts as "priceless" (91) whereas she thought the same piece was old fashioned and out of style when offered to her for college. By carrying the quilts she claims to carry the heritage, however, she shuns the lifestyle of her family, which is of course a part of her heritage.

Despite being looked at in a certain way, Women are being portrayed as “going exactly where their mothers and grandmothers have already ‘been’: into sexual bondage at the hands of a male ‘Friend’” (Christle 1). This is showing how even though women are changing the way society works, some people still want it to be the same. In the story Connie’s mom wanted Connie to be like her and her sister, just the average, not overly pretty looking lady. Some people think that “women have been silenced,” (Spelman and Lugones 574) but Connie had other ideas, she wanted to be different from them. She was constantly looking at herself in the mirror and thinking about what others were thinking about her. When she went out, she would always wear nice clothes that would get her noticed. Looking through a feminist lens one can conclude that Connie’s family sees women now as they always were.

These women did something that most women do not have the courage to do – they started up a business, in which they had a desire to work hard and wanted to achieve something more then they received at other jobs. In a movie that we watched in class there was a lady, a teacher of needlework. This lady held classes that taught embroidery and sewing, in order to give the girls a skill. This trade school for women taught them essential techniques in order to make a living or add to their husbands incomes to increase their impoverish lives.

Kelley names articles of clothing she knows the audience is wearing at that particular time. No matter what social hierarchy the women are categorized in each of them own a pair of socks, stockings, and/or underwear. This makes a vital realization in the hearts of the women. Now the women feel guilty. All of their life they have been wearing “little beast” clothing. This creates a sense of guilt that will make the women want to rally together and abolish child labor.

Later on Rich believed that women who were starting to make a difference towards society were switching their gender roles by surpassing the male. In the essay she claimed that “…middle-class women were making careers of domestic perfection, working to send their husbands through professional school, then retiring to raise large families” (Rich 9). She argued how women are supporting their spouses when the men are dependent and how women later put their dreams on hold when they start a family. But men don’t have the same sympathy towards the women’s careers, when they have children they don’t let them continue ‘their careers of domestic perfection’, instead they make the women become dependent on them. This is ironic towards the male and female roles because now the male is portrayed

Short stories, Mrs. Sommers has problems with making ends meet every month. While running her hands through an expensive pair of silk stockings she decides she wants to spoil herself for the day. She buys the stockings even though this is usually something she would never do. The way she decided to buy the silk stockings seem like it was just done out of pure instinct. She feels very relaxed and at ease for the entire day. She does not want to have to return to the tight budget she was on before. They came for Elizabeth today. She was accused of witchery, and they took her. They would not even take her quietly, they chained her and brought her through the town like some murderous traitor. Why must she suffer for the mistake I made? Why do you do this to her God? I am the one who

In the poem “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” written by Jonathan Swift, one may say he portrays himself to be a chauvinist by ridiculing women and their cryptic habits. However, others may say he wants to help women from the ideals placed upon them by society and prove to be an early feminist. This poem written in the 18th century represented women to be fake and sleazy at first. Then during the 20th century, the feminist movement used it as an attack against women, depicting the poem’s meaning as not valuing their rights and freedoms. The truth far hidden from these points of views became uncovered recently. This essay will explain both sides of the views and using critical thinking will uncover the real message the author intended to portray.

In Victorian England, “the bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation” (Engels). This upper middle class, the bourgeois, was divided into separate spheres determined by their “natural characteristics” such as being male or female (Gender 1). The bourgeois society’s main concern was their outward appearance and materialism while gaining respectability among their social class. A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, criticizes Victorian bourgeois society and their strict adherence to gender roles. As Nora Helmer walked away from her family, she generated a “door slam heard around the world” (“A Doll’s House” 1).