However, the novel strongly suggests that not everyone can afford Kate 's moderately progressive attitude; androgyny is not presented as a solution, but a privilege and still a goal to work towards. Janet 's false understanding of androgyny is punished with isolation from both the men she aspired to be respected by and the women she scorned. “Janet Mandelbaum […] is so consistently flayed throughout the novel – by her sexist colleagues and by Amanda Cross herself – that one can only assume she deserves it“ (Auerbach 266). Janet 's fate seems especially cruel in light of the parallels to Kate. Both pursued the same career, both must have faced the same obstacles – they even fell in love with the same man.
Despite that a single woman ruled England at the time of William Shakespeare, the Elizabethan society was still much patriarchal. Hence, it leads to the society being “Unfeminine Pursuits”. Based upon the historical context where Shakespeare had written Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth, as female characters are portrayed as subservient and unimportant as a whole while confronting the societal constraints. Since, Renaissance society did not traditionally value the freedom of women, although the ruling of this society was running by the “independent” women. As this society always portrayed the ideal woman who is beautiful and obedient while retaining her strength and independence.
In addition, it is stated that her love was like ‘fire and flame’ something that she could not control unlike Aeneas, who thought that his fate was more important than the women whom he is in love with, so he left her behind and followed his destiny as a leader and have a lot of responsibilities. Nevertheless, she could not handle his abandonment, so she committed suicide by killing herself by Aeneas’s sword. According to Virgil, “she attempted to lift her heavy eyes once again, but her body failed her” (Virgil.) It indicates that women are more emotional, and when they love they cannot take the responsibility as a leader. Consequently, this book talks about both the strength and weakness of
As a realist he needed to uncover the different impediments set on ladies by the patriarchal society to keep them in repression. Tough composed his books on the premise of his own supposition of women.He consequently enables them to act in non-conventional ways, so they are not viewed as perfect Victorian ladies. While in his time most ladies needed to manage without independence of any sort, the ladies in his books endeavor to acquire genuine social uniformity and reject the longstanding conviction that ladies are powerless and need to rely on upon men to make due in this world. In Far from the Madding Crowd Hardy rejects the conventional idea of marriage. He nearly saw the sexual orientation inclination inborn in the Victorian culture and culture.
In their book, The Mad Woman in the Attic, (1979), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar examine the relationship between female writers and literary tradition. Although their work is multi-facetted, their central argument in regard to women and tradition posits that female writers experience what Gilbert and Gubar coin the “anxiety of authorship,” a feeling of distress that stems from the lack of female authors in the literary tradition for contemporary female writers to relate to for inspiration in their writing (49). This anxiety for the female writer is rooted in a literary tradition dominated by men, a patriarchal system that conforms female characters in literature to masculine desires, such as the poets muse. Enclosing women in such stereotypes
Women and Tradition: Battling Patriarchy With a Pen In the second chapter of their book, The Mad Woman in the Attic, (1979), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar examine the relationship between female writers and literary tradition. Their central argument posits that female writers experience the “anxiety of authorship,” distress that stems from the lack of female precursors in the literary tradition for contemporary female writers to reference for inspiration and validation in their writing (Gilbert and Gubar 49). This disenfranchisement of female authorship is rooted in a literary tradition dominated by men, a patriarchal system that conforms female characters in literature to masculine desires, such as the poet 's muse or the angel. Enclosing
Mammachi endures all of these ill-treatments until her educated son rescues her, but the result was her son starts to dominate her life after that. Chacko takes the control of her factory and pushes her aside without concerning her dedication to establish and maintain the factory before his arrival. As well as the ill-treatments from her husband, the negligence of her son also is accepted by Mammachi, since that is the way that the patriarchal society functions. Roy portrays the character of Ammu as a rebel against both patriarchy and her marginalization as a woman. She never enjoys the privileges that Chacko enjoys because of her being a woman and during this period women were marginalized merely for the reason of their being women.
Even as she is aware of this appropriation, however, her interiority – her feminine self – does not allow her to evaluate her gendered role or the power differentials between male / female Mukherjee posits Dimple’s descent into insanity as a trope that in the end allows silence to he overcome by an action – that of killing her husband – that simultaneously validates Dimple’s identity even as it confirms her marginality. In Wife, Mukherjee iterates the marginalization of woman by exploring – and exploding – ways in which culture and ideology construct feminine identity. Although expatriation
This story features a female protagonist which challenges the prevailing literary tradition of her time in which females were relegated in favour of men. In this short story she demonstrates a determination to move away from narrative forms dominated by the all-wise exclusively male, writers of previous generations and to write in a way that represents the feelings and responses of her characters. She challenges the habit of presenting narrative fiction through male eyes and according to male values. By placing her female characters at the front position of her stories, as subject matter or narrator, Mansfield forces the reader to sympathize with her characters perspectives. However, although Mansfield’s female protagonists confront the conventions of patriarchal literature, she does not disagree with her contemporaries in the most obvious ways.
The three novelists belong to urban upper middle-class, English-educated society, and deal with the world of woman. They depict their women characters in all their negative and positive traits. For these women novelists, character takes precedence over plot as they depict the inner landscape of their women protagonists. We see in the women protagonists the power of women, the deviousness of women, the helplessness of women and the courage of women. These novelists shatter the myth that women find fulfillment in marriage and portray an honest picture of women who aspire, attempt and strive to be their true selves.