Women play victims in Thomas Hardy’s short stories, roles that were

When a woman is in love, she unconsciously loses herself in the admits of invisibility. Her worth and identity is hidden behind the shadow of her lover. She is no longer known as her own individual, rather she takes on her partner’s possessive title. He becomes her name; her sense of existence. This has always been the norm of romantic love in patriarchal society. Man is the center of the relationship, she gives her all to him until there is no trace of her distinctness, only her partner. In Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Height, she expands on this one sided romanticized ideal of love as it pushes women to be indistinguishable from their male counterpart through the relationship of Catherine and Heathcliff. Despite her strong will, Catherine

In addition to this in “The Story of an Hour”, Mallard is confined to the home due to her illness as her husband, Brently, is also away on a trip. This is an indication of what Kent attempts to explain in his article. The undisputed authority that Victorian men hold against women proves to connect to gender oppression and leads to the domestication of women.

In Wolfland, the readers see a clear representation of the famous tale ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, but the two tales have very different themes because in this text the werewolf figure symbolizes a form of power and protection for women against men. For example, the tale focuses on Lisel who is a naive young girl, and her grandmother Anna who experienced a cruel and abusive relationship with her husband. It is clear to see from the beginning that all men in this text are not welcomed, and that they are all presented as sexual predators. Anna warns Lisel of the cruel acts of men and their desires, and does not want her granddaughter to experience the same abusive relationship she did with her husband. Because Anna wants to ensure that Lisel does not have the same fate as her, she gives Lisel the gift of becoming a wolf to protect her from sexual predators that represents all men in this text. This is very different then other werewolf tales because Anna wants her granddaughter Lisel to go out in the woods and become the ‘bad wolf’ to gain empowerment. The figure of the werewolf in this tale is a very important metaphor because it represents a form of protection and empowerment for female victims that suffer from abusive relationships and sexual predators in our real life society

Haywood’s cautionary tale warns lower class women to beware of sexual misconduct as their bodies are more available to men. Carrie Shanafelt explains in her essay “Vicarious Sex and the Vulnerable Eighteenth Century Reader” how specific people risk more in reading pornographic novels: “namely, young, female, and lower-class readers” in the eighteenth-century (262). For example, Celia, one persona, is a young countrywoman who works as a maid at the inn where Beauplaisir lives during his stay in Bath. Haywood creates this low class character to warn readers of the potential for sexual assault because of their class and gender. Celia notes that: “Fortune in this Exploit was extremely on her side; there were no others of the Male-Sex in the House,

Women have been the victim of unfair stereotypes and placed at different standards than men since the beginning of time. The Ruined Maid by Thomas Hardy and One Perfect Rose by Dorothy Parker take an in depth look at how women are viewed by the opposite gender. Although they take a different approach and have contrasting poetry styles, the theme that is portrayed is prominent for both. Hardy’s poem portrays a woman living in the Victorian Era where the norm was to be married and faithful. The character ‘Melia lives in an individualistic way and is not only unmarried, but has participated in sexual activities before marriage. With this liveliness comes riches and prosperity, but also social backlash. One Perfect Rose tells the story of a woman who receives a rose as a gift from her love interest. The unnamed persona is displeased with this rose because it is typical and thoughtless. The classic gift that men give to women is a rose, which is looked at as a romantic gesture. This poem’s purpose is to show the audience that not every girl’s dream gift is a “perfect rose.” The Ruined Maid by Thomas Hardy and One Perfect Rose by Dorothy Parker explore how two women break away from typical stereotypes and long for a more unconventional way of life.

Many wifes throughout the years have endured countless amounts of persecution from their husbands, but some men take it to a whole new level. Two male authors, Henrik Ibsen and Robert Browning, brought female hardships to light in the nineteenth century. Ibsen’s 1879 play, A Doll’s House, was so controversial at the time that he was forced to write a more pleasant ending in which Nora returned after having left Torvald. Browning’s poem, “My Last Duchess”, written in 1842, showed the immoral perspective of a Duke who had his wife murdered merely because she did not preserve her pleasant personality singularly for him. It was influential writers such as these who eventually gave feminism a kick start. The two husbands in these stories share a vast amount of similar characteristics. Despite the fact that Torvald loved his wife, and Duke had murdered his, both of them exhibit extreme authoritative and egoistic behaviors.

When talking about the women of the story he’ll give a brief physical description, with some sort of comparison to help the reader understand better. “I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, disconcerted face.” Now in this quote we do see

One argument that reigns supreme when considering Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is whether or not there is an element of anti-feminism within the text. One thread that goes along with this is whether or not the women of The Canterbury Tales are passive within the tales told. This essay will explore the idea that the women found within the tales told by the pilgrims (The Knight’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale to name a few) are not passive at all, but rather influence the turn of events within the stories.

But due to the way the Duke talks about her and the way he describes it suggests that there is something wrong with not her, but him! The fact that her “smile” is neither different nor intimate when it is cast on him, or so he thinks, shows readers that the duke’s love towards his wife borders towards more obsessive then anything. Even readers can see that he views himself highly, claiming that he did his wife a favor by marrying her and gifting her with “a nine-hundred-years-old name” so she should be grateful and adore only him. But because her “smiles” were the same for everything, he “gave commands; /Then all smiles stopped together” (line45-46); he had taken matters in his own hands and ordered her to be executed. The duke’s possessiveness and jealousy over the fact that he could not control even the simplest things such as who she smiles at, which is why he had her killed, clearly shows readers the darker truth about the Duke and his need to be the one in

Role of Women in The Canterbury Tales The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late fourteenth century, consists of 24 tales of a pilgrimage journey. Throughout all of his stories, women have a very valuable role in every tale. Whether it is negative or positive, women are portrayed as a strong impact on the way each story is told. The following two examples clearly show two diverse ways that Chaucer felt the need to express how women might rule over men.

Living almost a century apart, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy each explore similar themes of love through strong female characters. While society strove to keep women’s value directly tied to their marital status, Austen and Hardy wrote the stories of characters who defied these expectations. Bathsheba Everdene of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd is a fiery young woman who inherits a farm, and Elizabeth Bennet of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is an educated woman who prides herself on speaking her mind regardless of the consequences. Both women are of marrying age, and both novels feature their romantic exploits. Besides their differing socio-economic and temporal settings, Bathsheba’s and Elizabeth’s behaviors indicate that they are facing similar feelings and conflicts when it comes to issues of love and marriage. Bathsheba goes to greater lengths to defy societal pressures than Elizabeth does, but Bathsheba’s circumstances warrant the effort. The real difference between these characters is the way in which they are written. One could not know how similar Bathsheba’s thoughts and feelings are to Elizabeth’s, because the reader rarely sees through Ms. Everdene’s eyes. Bathsheba Everdene is the greater feminist heroine when taken alongside Elizabeth Bennet; however, Hardy writes her story almost exclusively from the perspective of his male characters, leaving her represented as two-dimensional in comparison to

The victim is fragile and vulnerable, acting as the damsel of the story and is often a reward for male success. However, within the chosen texts the arrangement of the female characters

Melia’s ostracized life is demonstrated through the depiction of language and Victorian morality views; the relationship between labelling and Melia’s ‘ruined’ self is established within the time that the poem was published. Thomas Hardy being a late Victorian poet furthers this ideology of ostracized women in the Victorian era with the use of his inscription. In the Victorian era, it was considered socially acceptable to have women who had premarital sex publically shamed by wearing certain garments and acting a certain way on the streets (Prostitution of Young Females in London). People who behaved toward the act and semblance of prostitution were then scorned because it was a symbol of impurity and tainted life (Prostitution of Young Females in London). Premarital sex was one of the worst things that a woman could do because they would ‘ruin’ their chances of achieving a normal life.

Often, their ability to lie or to deceive was viewed as a necessary escape mechanism to obtain freedom. Woolf uses the image of “The Angel in the House” and tells her audience, “You cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel of the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must--to put it bluntly--tell lies if they are to succeed. Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her. She died hard” (Woolf 2). The Angel is the representation of the ideal woman who exists to please men and to sacrifice her own desires. According to Woolf, the Angel must be “killed,” in order for women to be free to speak their truths. This image of Woolf actually killing the Angel is shocking in its candor and clarity, as Woolf acknowledges that this purest of images is not at all comforting or protective, but a burden to all women. Woolf also admits that killing the Angel was no easy feat, because it is extraordinarily difficult to “kill” an image of women that has been used so effectively and so well to define and limit them for centuries. Likewise, Chaucer does not portray the Wife

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is a Bildungsroman, a coming of age story that focuses on the psychological development, of the protagonist Catherine Morland. This essay will analyse the language, and narrative techniques of the extract, and discuss how this excerpt suggests vicissitude in Catherine’s personal perspectives, and relationships. In addition, it will discuss the ‘domestic gothic’ and real life abuse ubiquitous in ordinary situations. Furthermore, it will argue how Austen’s rhetorical techniques work to encourage reader interest, and to exercise perception, when distinguishing between appearance, and reality. Finally, it will conclude by briefly discussing the significance of the extract within the novel’s wider themes.