The Role Of Women In 'The Housewife' By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Kate Chopin is known for being criticized for empowering the subject of female sexuality and independence. In Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour”, it is placed in a time where men were known as being the head of the household while women were only in charge of raising the children and caring for the home. In the 1890s, women didn’t have so much power to themselves compared to today’s society where female empowerment is frequently encouraged. Chopin’s story narrates a sequence of Mrs. Mallard’s emotions that goes within the motion of the story. As she overcomes the sudden death of her husband, her emotion of grief soon turns into the sudden feeling of freedom, later on emerging into a strong independent woman.

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.

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

1. The first essay clearly shows the impact that an ideology of domesticity on women in New England in the 1830’s. The writer at first calls this time period a “paradox in the “progress” of women’s history in the United States”. During this time apparently two contradictory views on women’s relations to society clashed, unusually, those two being domesticity, which essentially limited women, giving them a “sex-specific” role that they must abide to, this mostly being present at the home with their husbands and whatever kids they may or may not have had at that time, and feminism, which essentially tried to remove this domesticity, trying to remove sex-specific limits on women’s opportunities and

Have you ever wondered what the lifestyles of Nineteenth Century women were like? Were they independent, career women or were they typical housewives that cooked, clean, watched the children, and catered to their husbands. Did the women of this era express themselves freely or did they just do what society expected of them? Kate Chopin was a female author who wrote several stories and two novels about women. One of her renowned works of art is The Awakening. This novel created great controversy and received negative criticism from literary critics due to Chopin's portrayal of women by Edna throughout the book.

In the second half of the colonial time period in North America, ever-nearing the American Revolution in 1775, there were much fewer roles for women. While they still dealt with and controlled everything having to do with childbirth and the family, their professional lives were downgraded. Their three main jobs were to watch the children, encourage faith in the house, and be subordinate to men (Dunklee 2). As education was becoming slightly more widespread, only men were taking advantage of higher education, meaning they were the ones who would receive the jobs. Even if a lady did happen to be wealthy enough and come from a powerful enough family to get higher education, they were not socially accepted into having jobs. Women were reduced to only having what was seen as small tasks, caretaking, sewing and writing (WIC 2). All of the jobs available were chores to benefit the individual family, not be put out into society. Even the more creative exercises such as writing poetry, were done for the woman’s own benefit as a creative outlet, not as something to be put out into the world as it was for many men (Bloch). The roles available to women had evolved to include very few options, many of which weren’t even to be recognized by

The diction Gilman employs relates directly to the lasting role of women in the home to expose the historical adversities endured within the domestic sphere. The intricacy with which Gilman composes the text highlights the inherent

During the early 1800's women were stuck in the Cult of Domesticity. Women had been issued roles as the moral keepers for societies as well as the nonworking house-wives for families. Also, women were considered unequal to their male companions legally and socially. However, women’s efforts during the 1800’s were effective in challenging traditional intellectual, social, economical, and political attitudes about a women’s place in society.

In the early nineteenth century, women were expected to be, “‘angels in the house,’ loving, self-sacrificing, and chaste wives, mothers and daughters or they are… ultimately doomed” (King et al. 23). Women of this time were supposed to be domestic creatures and not tap so far into their intellectual abilities (King et al.). The role of women in the nineteenth century is described:

In the stories “The Jewelry” by Guy de Maupassant, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the female characters are unequal and less important than the men in society. The duties of women during this time period did not consist of much more than seeing to her husband’s needs and caring for the home and children. The authors show the lack of independence women were allowed in the 1800s, especially in marriage. The stories express women’s cry for equality and their feelings of entrapment in their marriage. Each story elaborates on the importance of social class in the 19th century, how women were presented in society, and how society

A Woman Far Ahead of Her Time, by Ann Bail Howard, discusses the nature of the female characters in Kate Chopin’s novel’s and short stories. Howard suggests that the women in Chopin’s stories are longing for independence and feel torn between the feminine duties of a married woman and the freedom associated with self-reliance. Howard’s view is correct to a point, but Chopin’s female characters can be viewed as more radically feminist than Howard realizes. Rather than simply being torn between independent and dependant versions of her personality, “The Story of an Hour’s” Mrs. Mallard actually rejoices in her newfound freedom, and, in the culmination of the story, the position of the woman

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.

Through their works, Kate Chopin and Virginia Woolf were able to portray a certain relationship between women and society. While some literary pieces are optimistic towards women, others are not. In this case, The Awakening, a novella written by Kate Chopin, focuses on the inner battle that the main character Edna faces throughout her life. On the other hand, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, discusses ideas related to gender inequality. Both women seem to be facing inner turmoil that correlates back to the relationship between women and society during these time periods. Ultimately, their experiences are what drives them to change how they fit into societal norms. Therefore, the texts in this essay theorize the relationship between women and society in a way that can be encouraging towards women.

At the end of 19th century, American society presented an ideology of patriarchy. Feminists struggle for the equality and discrimination against female. As feminist movement started, lots of female writers were explored. One of the most famous writers is Kate Chopin. Her works mostly present a theme of women pursue freedom and equality. “The Story Of An Hour” and “The Awakening” are her representative works. In these two works, Kate Chopin reveals how women lived under the oppression of male-dominated society, especially for women who got married. They were not financially independent and their freedom and rights were deprived. Therefore female were forced to be an “angle in the home”. Both challenge the preconception that women can only be a housekeeper and marriage is the only way out.

The literary novel The Awakening written by author Kate Chopin was groundbreaking in its time as a story following Edna Pontellier’s transformation from an obedient, traditional housewife and mother into a self-realized, sexually liberated and independent woman— all written during the Victorian era of patriarchal constraints and beliefs that a woman was fit to be only a wife and mother. Chopin introduces a multitude of feminist issues throughout the duration of the story, including the societal structures of motherhood, marital expectations and feminine liberation. The fact that Chopin’s novel addresses these issues is a testament to how radical and ahead of its time The Awakening was. Although this novel was originally published over a century ago, it is clear that the feminist topics that Chopin proposes in the novel are still relevant today in our modern day patriarchal society.