The Importance Of Romantic Literature

H. Bertens describes female stereotypes to come under four labels “an immoral and dangerous seductress, the woman as the eternally dissatisfied shrew, the woman as cute but essentially helpless, the woman as unworldly, self-sacrificing angel and so on.” These labels were commonly found in both androtexts and gynotexts as feminist criticism’s attention drew towards female writers by giving them more prominence and esteem, yet they were found to both reject the traditional female form and “succumbed to the lure of stereotypical representations.” Christina Rossetti was one who was found to come under such scrutiny with her poems ‘Maude Clare’, ‘No, Thank You John’, and ‘In an Artist’s Studio’ to convey differing constructions of women.

Ever since the days of World War I, women have been seen as second rate to men. They had to live up to many social standards that men didn’t have to and had strict guidelines on how to live their lives. This all changed when modernism deliberately tried to break away from Victorian Era standards in which women were subjugated to a lot more scrutiny. Ezra Pound, who was a large figure in the modernist movement, captured the spirit of the era in his famous line “Make it new!” Consequently, many writers started to experiment with many different and wild writing styles, which led to the short stories and poems we have today. The stories The Wife of His Youth and Mrs. Spring Fragrance were all written in this era of modernism. While they are written in a more traditional style of writing, both these stories have strong implications on feminism from the viewpoints of both male and female writers.

Two-hundred years is a sizeable gap of time that allows plenty of room for change. American society had been rapidly changing from the early seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century, but despite this, the roles and rights of women have remained locked in place. There were many factors to consider as to why women were not allowed to flourish in their time and exceed these boundaries, and while some accepted it, there were many that opposed and faced these difficulties head on. Two female authors, one from colonial times, and one from nineteenth century America, have written about the obstacles and misogyny they’ve overcome in a male dominated literary career. Despite the two-hundred-year gap between the lives of Margaret Fuller and Anne Bradstreet, they both face issues regarding the static stereotype that women are literarily inferior and subservient handmaids to men.

In the nineteenth century women were mostly left out when it came to writing. A lot of women felt that they were not capable of writing or that their job was just to focus on the domestic aspects of life and that didn’t include writing. There are two women who stood out and up against the prejudices of the women in the nineteenth century. Both, Anne Bradstreet and Mary Rowlandson, were the first published female writers in America at the time. Both women faced the hardships of that time.

Woolf demonstrates how women writers have often failed in this because of our frustration and bitterness with a world that presented to us and our writing not welcome, or even indifference, but hostility (41). She makes it clear that if there is ever going to be a “Shakespeare’s sister,” we must---at least while we are writing---swallow that sense of having been wronged, for it stands as an impediment to our creativity. This is the mental freedom that women writers must attain.

The Romantic Period of literature took place roughly 200 years ago, but examples of Romanticism can still be seen today. The Romantic authors most certainly had an impact on many artists to come. Edgar Allan Poe is often a name that comes to mind when discussing Romanticism and especially Dark Romanticism and for good reason. Poe exemplifies Romanticism and many examples can be seen in his work, such as the House of Usher. Some traits of Romanticism include high drama, pathetic fallacy, and shocking climax, which are a few pillars of the Romanticism style. These pillars still hold up in modern day art, with many filmmakers, such as M. Night Shyamalan who also exemplifies traits such as high drama, pathetic fallacy, and black and white characters.

Women authors from British Romanticism like Charlotte Smith and Mary Shelley led the way for female American Romantics like Margaret Fuller and Harriet Beecher Stowe. These strong confident women were prominent figures in literary society and may have affected Hawthorne’s view on where women stood on the social scale. While there were still many years to come before feminism fully realized it’s potential, change was afoot. Women began to look for fulfillment outside of the home. They wanted to become writers, activists, and to have a voice outside of their husbands or fathers.

It is not a secret that women in the seventeenth century were oppressed. Puritan society deemed women to be useful mainly within the household. It was very uncommon for women to be respected as authors or even be educated enough to do so. Anne Bradstreet’s “The Prologue” was a controversial work for a woman in Puritan society, as it challenged men to share the literary world with women. Through heavy sarcasm and self-deprecation, Bradstreet defends women writers from the criticism of men.

Egnal’s essay provides great information about how the Women’s Rights Movement reshaped the consciousness of authors and their literary works. The essay uses examples from historical novels like “The Scarlet Letter” written in 1850 as one of the first novels to portray an outspoken women protagonist. The essay also examines feminism from a political standpoint and how novels throughout the 19th and 20th century have been shaped by the Women’s Rights Movement. This essay argues how the women’s movement transformed how domesticity is portrayed. As a whole, the essay’s examination of the women’s movement and its impact on literature will help me to make the correlation between the female character’s actions in the book compared to the modernist view of feminism displayed on

Prior the 19th Century, men dominated the literary writings of the day, while women published few influential works. However, in the 19th Century, women began to publish their works more freely, even if anonymously, and included some real masterpieces, such as Francis Burney’s Evelina and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. While some at the time may have considered such books to be just another frivolous read, in reality, these works actually proved to be an enlightening window of the era. They portray the life,

During Victorian era novelist had to develop ways to avoid posing as threats to the order of the society . Something which even make the look anti-feminist, but still many of female writers of that period are known today for their early feminist agendas embedded in their works. Elizabeth Gaskell was one of Britain’s best known female writers, She was a conservative women. Although she was not the part of “the women question” a movement started in mid nineteenth century and gave rise to what we today called feminism, But still

The Romantic Period in English literature began in the late 1700s. Romanticism focuses on the emotional side of human nature, individualism, and the beauty of the natural world. Romantic literature explores the intense beauty of nature and Romantic poets invest natural events with a divine presence. In nature, the Romantics find inspiration for their poetry, wisdom and happiness. They were living and writing at the time of the Industrial Revolution so the Romantics wanted to remind everyone the importance of nature. Romantic movement was against industrialization and mechanization. The Romantic period included the work of two generations of writers. The chief writers of the first generation were Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake. Shelley belonged to the second generation. He was influenced by the work of the writers of the first generation. The Romantics did not actually identify themselves as such. It was later Victorian critics who first used the term to describe the previous

Through the late 1700s and early 1800s, the period of Romanticism blossomed. “Romanticism” very loosely describes the era in which modern culture began to take shape. During the Romantic era, many advancements were made in all aspects of people’s lives and cultures. One aspect in particular has held great value even to this day. That aspect being the expansive amount of literature created during the era. The era of Romanticism had its name for a reason. It can be greatly attributed to the romantic style or genre of literature that defined the period. Romantic writers wove many tales of admiration, longing, and aspirations. They were fantastical, in a sense, and almost the antithesis of realism, even. Amidst the great breadth of literature

Romanticism came to be in the 18th and 19th centuries which emphasized the imagination and emotions of romanticism. Many people viewed this type of literature as the quality or state of being impractical or unrealistic meaning romantic feelings or ideas. During this time many poets were encouraged to express their true colors and individual uniqueness. The Romantic Era expanded all throughout the world, and reached poets such as Keats, Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth.

From Enheduanna to Jane Austen to Charlotte Bronte to J.K. Rowling. Woman have proved over and over again that the role of author and/or writer can suit females just as much as any man. Mansfield encouraged women to write and used herself as an example with her own writing to try to attract more female authors. Often, women are pictures as just people who birth babies, cook, clean, shopped and stayed around as house wives. Sometimes, they did not have a wide span of education. Even in the early 1900’s women didn’t often go to college, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that women began to attend college in equal numbers to men. Poet laureate Robert Southey said “Literature cannot be the business of a women’s life.” One of the key assumptions that Mansfield and other women modernists faced was the habit of presenting narrative fiction through male eyes and according to male values. Mansfield herself strived for everyone (not limited to just women) to do whatever they wanted. She encouraged people to break rules and branch out.