The idea of the desire of freedom but inability to control it, and eventually yield in front of the societal expectations. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, the main character Edna chose to confront herself and developing her own desire that resembles through her convenient clothing, but her child, the product of the natural motherhood made her struggle with her decision. At the beginning of The Awakening, the elegant clothes that Edna wears illustrates Edna’s distinct from the rest of the mother women through the pressure of societal expectations that placed on her but not yet have the control over her own action completely. As Mrs. Pontellier is crying for her husband’s accusation for not meeting the societal expectation of being a classic mother women, she used her sleeves of the “peignoir” (6) to wipe out the tears. Peignoir often implies to the clothing of wealthy women, but are also simple clothes, which demonstrates Edna’s
For black women, however, the institution of slavery affected their psychological states, their marriages, and their family life. Slaves were frequently beaten, often without reason or cause. Their husbands were often sold to neighboring plantations, and female slaves were often terrorized by their male masters, ruining the sanctity of marriage amongst slave households (Brinkley 261). The children of female slaves were also often sold to other plantations, ripping apart the last remaining family that a female slave possessed (Northup, 12 Years a Slave). The constant auctioning of slaves and their children disturbed a female slaves ability to care for her children, and the sanctity of the family was ruined by the institution.
Mrs. Wright, once known for her cheerfulness and beautiful singing, she stopped singing when she encountered Mr. Wright. Just like he did with the bird, Mr. Wright choked the life out of his wife until, finally, Mrs. Wright literally choked the life out of her husband. Like the bird, she had to break her own cage before she found freedom. Like Chopin and Gilman before her, Glaspell uses an irrational character to illustrate the way men often rejected and looked down upon women, especially in the 19th and 20th
Thomas Hardy, who was born in 1840, spent most of his life and composed his novels in the century which saw the social position and inequality among the woman. The so- called woman question and the beginnings of the women’s movement were soon seen in fiction, “Over and over again in the 19th century novels, fictional women act out the conflict between their ideological preparation for inclusion in social project, and their actual experience”. This contributed to the creation of extraordinary woman characters in Hardy’s fiction among the others. Hardy’s woman characters found to be strong and unconventional and spend much of their lives struggling against the restrictions imposed on them by society. The struggle for liberation brought the solid response from the individuals who has been in power thus far.
As shown through “You caught Senhor’s eye”. Her mother had experienced of suffering from sexual abuse. Because how she is treated by Senhor as a sex slave, she does not want her daughter to suffer like her. On the other hand, she sees Jacob as a chance for protecting her daughter from sexual abuse like her, hoping Jacob would give her
A streetcar named desire was written by Tennessee Williams in 1947, in purpose to show the “declining of the upper class and the domination of the bourgeois middle class in the U.S.A. where the south agriculture class could not compete with the industrialization.” Blanche Dubois the protagonist of our story, a southern beauty that is trapped by the restrictive laws of her society. But she broke them, and eventually put herself in a state, where she had no job and no house. So she had to go to her sister, Stella and live with her and her sister’s husband, Stanley. While staying there, she created a façade for her to hide her flaws and kept acting as a lady, where she is anything but that.
These show the societal roles of women at the time and that she experienced feminist oppression. Ultimately Desiree feels as if she has no value in her life. Armand fell out of love with her, so he didn’t see any value in her either. Her child is biracial, so she disgraced her family without trying. She is adopted and does not know who she came from.
Symbolism and authors style and its effect on the plot In literature, authors will often utilize symbolism in order to develop characters and plot. In The Bluest Eye, the author, Toni Morrison portrays an African American girl named Pecola, who is stricken with longing for a better life. As she muddles through her difficult childhood, her once innocent interpretation of race and beauty are deformed by the beauty standards that dominated the mid-20th century society. She believes that beauty is dependent upon love, and her self-image, in particular, her eyes, plays a big role in the novel. She consistently attributes her struggles and failures to her lack of blue eyes, and believes that by having blue eyes, her struggle will go away.
Sources of Edna’s suicide It is unarguable that during the 19th century women were restricted from freedom and having a mind of their own. Women were always expected to live according to society’s rules. An author, who some may consider a feminist, named Kate Chopin wrote a novel titled The awakening that capture the struggle of women and expectations put on them by society. The novel features a married woman named Edna who is in search of selfhood, independence, empowerment, and freedom but would soon realize that self-happiness would not come easy when you depend on others and your expectations of life. Kate Chopin chose an ambiguous ending for her novel which was Edna committing suicide lead many to create theories as to why she committed
Her writings portray women characters who struggle with cultural shackles to carve out an identity of their own in their home land and in the land they immigrate. The struggle and the hardships, the author underwent, when she came to America is vividly recreated in her novels. The American feminism, which greatly emphasis women’s independence, equality and personal freedom contrast very much with the selfless and subservient women of India. American women have fundamental rights to enjoy their freedom, but Indian women have only fundamental duties to do for their family. The two novels Sister of My Heart and its sequel The Vine of Desire deal with the lives of two distant cousins Anju and Sudha, it shows how they adapt themselves to the culture of a foreign land.