Summary Of A Cross Line By Egerton

As far many New Woman writers, Egerton conceptualized marriage as a social institution which forcefully repressed and reshaped female desire and their social conditions. According to Laura Christman “Egerton’s analysis of European woman’s oppression attends mostly to the sphere of ideology and in particular, to what she sees as the artificial social convention which prohibit women’s natural expression of sexual and maternal desire” (Christman,46). In her short stories, the protagonists have tried to break this institutional bondage and emphasized the identity of the female protagonists who experience their desire, free from any confinement. In the story “A Cross Line” the protagonist does not find the husband spiritually and intellectually equal to her and desires him only on a physical level. Despite knowing the fact that she is married, she falls in a extra-marital affair with a stranger. She finds the stranger her intellectual and spiritual equal and her lover is more like herself, who has the ability to understand her mixed nature. He says “you are more like me, ---you can stand alone” (Egerton1893, 33). The sense of their togetherness is evident as they “ both feel as if the earth between them is laid with infinitesimal electric threads vibrating with a common pain” (Egerton1893, 33). In the story “Under Northern Sky”, Egerton represented the virtue of a wife’s desire to get rid of her husband. The power relation between male and female is evident in married life