Critics of highbrow literature consider chick lit to be trivial and “trashy fiction” characterized by “connect-the-dot plots” and “identikit covers” (Ferris & Young 2006, 1, Harzewski 2011, 230). Furthermore establish women writers have publicly decried the genre. Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing questions why women would want to write such “instantly forgettable” books adding that it would be better “if they wrote books about their lives as they really saw them and not these helpless girls, drunken, worrying about their weight […]" (Ezard, 2001). Dame Beryl Bainbridge, a five time Booker Prize nominee, dismissed chick lit as being a waste of time and “a froth sort of thing”. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd claimed the novels were “all chick and no lit” and lamented that the novel “once said to be a looking glass of its time [has been] reduced to a makeup mirror” (qtd.
However, it is evident from many of the novels published during this period, that such harmonious assimilation, even in fiction was not available to them. Thus, in many novels of this phase, the feminine heroine was seen as growing up in a world without female solidarity, where women in fact police each other on behalf of patriarchal tyranny. Also, the deficiencies of feminine novelists were seen in male portraiture which were attempts to conceal these deficiencies. The model heroes were thus the product of female fantasies about how they would act and feel if they were men. Furthermore, the use of male pseudonyms by women writers is another significant marker of this phase.
During the romantic period, society judges women on their beauty, something that they have no control over. This idea of beauty was pushed on young girls and this made them feel as if beauty was the only thing that’s important, but the romantic period literature was going to change that. Beauty, shown as the single most important thing for women in Northanger Abbey and A Vindication of the Rights of Women, which is wrong because it’s degrading for women to be judged on something that they can’t control, this then affects how women are depicted in literature, changing the work’s tone to be satirical, making fun of this idea, or rebellious, in going away from these beauty standards. Instead of degrading women based on their beauty, women should instead get compliments on their beauty. But most women had no way to change these standards, the only thing they could do was make them into a joke, which is exactly what Austen did in Northanger Abbey.
When women achieved a progress in calling for their rights and began to emerge as great writers, they wrote poetry according a male 's point of view like Virginia Wolf. There is no one moment when the feminist poetry movement began; rather, women wrote about their experiences and entered into a dialogue with society over many years before the 1960s. Feminist poetry was influenced by social change, but also by poets such as Emily
During the romantic period, women were judged on their beauty, something that they have no control over. This idea of beauty was pushed on young girls and this made them feel as if beauty was the only thing that’s important, but the romantic period literature was going to change that. Beauty is shown as the single most important thing for a women in Northanger Abbey and A Vindication of the Rights of Women, which is wrong because it’s degrading for women to be judged on something that they can’t control, this then affects how women are depicted in literature, changing the work’s tone to be satirical, making fun of this idea, or rebellious, in going away from these beauty standards. Instead of degrading women based on their beauty, women should
Aphra Behn’s play “The Rover”, was performed in 1677, it talks of double standard treatment which disadvantaged her female colleagues’ sexual desires towards the realm of the convent, home or brothel. Her characters express a complicated, active game needed out of women to secure personal happiness. In the play, the writer suggests the manner in which women should either astray or not astray to the masculine tasks of the wooer and possessor. Behn seems to cry over the Late Stuart society, for not giving women an opportunity to be libertine or sexually free. Behn points out the way the Commonwealth did little to suspend the religious and political tensions that impacted the conception of womanhood in modern Britain.
This dogma idolized as well as infantilized women, culminating in Coventry Patmore’s “The Angel of the House.” Patmore’s poem, written in 1854, depicts a woman so wholly defined by her relationship to her male significant other, implying that femininity is but the absence of masculinity. Femininity was elevated to such a degree that the ‘ideal woman’ was unattainable to both men and women. Victorian culture was unable, or rather, unwilling, to recognize the complexities of gender identity and expression. This vehement heteronormativity and appropriation of the female voice led to detrimental repression of femininity as Ellen J. Stockstill argues in her essay “Gender Politics in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s THE LADY OF SHALOTT.” In “The Lady of Shalott,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson appropriates a female perspective to convey his frustration with heteronormative constraints during the Victorian Era and, in doing so, reinforces the notion of the “angel in the
Firstly, her perspective seems sincere and hopeful; she believes that “justice reigns” in heaven. • The verbal approaches that Montagu uses serve as an attempt to influence both sexes to overthrow the constricting, immoral standards and hierarchies of their society –those that oppress women. Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to her Husband • Nearing the end of the poem, her hopeful tone which she uses in her attempts to persuade her addressees turns to one of bitter sarcasm. • Unable to find any remedy for the hypocrisy and injustices which plague married life, the speaker desperately addresses heaven to plea for justice. the speaker of Montagu’s poem remains ambiguous about whether justice toward women exists in any sphere, even
Lust and Distrust A tale of passion, the Shakespearean play Othello discusses consequences of patriarchy that surface within romantic relationships. Conflicts of jealousy are sprouted from the seed of assumption, which both Desdemona falls victim to once planted in Othello’s mind. The short lived joy of marriage is overpowered by doubt and manipulation, resulting in fatality. Less dynamic in comparison, Emilia and Bianca’s partners mistreat the women regularly; signifying faults formerly present in each relationship. Each female character possesses a flaw as seen by their male counterparts, who attempt to restrict their sexuality, further undermining their power in a male-dominated society.
Interestingly, the female gender is not only referred as girls but also implied as women and mother who are generally caring and loving but are instead rejecting and deprive him from his pleasures. possibly, this is how the soldier perceived women in his life, the lovely young girls of his adolescence, to the. When these nouns appear in the poem, it shows the change and how they went from appealing and charming, to monsters who reject him and take away from him what he loves. In addition, something unusual that appears in the second stanza is the unrhymed word ‘gay’; isolating it from the rest of the poem. An emphasis of this one word suggesting happiness can lead to conclusions of an importance the writer wants to bring to it.