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How The Portrayal Of Women As The Weaker Sex Throughout Literary Works

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The portrayal of Women as the Weaker Sex Throughout Literary Works

The portrayal of the female gender in literary works has changed considerably over the years. Nowadays, it is unacceptable to talk about women as if they were secondary citizens, it is such a touchy subject that if you make a wrong comment you could get into deep trouble. However, portraying women as a weaker sex has been a normative thing for books written before the 21st century. Being books from past centuries, the 20th and 19th respectively, 5th business and Pride and Prejudice give us a good idea on how society had set standards and expectations for women. Although, these novels were written almost a hundred years apart, both share similarities in their women characters being treated as objects. Robertson Davies and Jane Austen, through characters such as Leola in 5th Business and the bennett sisters in Pride and Prejudice, depict how women were wrongfully treated back in the day. …show more content…

As a matter of fact in England at that time it was almost impossible to do so. Women were no more than objects, who after marrying a successful man, they would become nothing more than an item added to the collection. Jane Austen lived in an era in which women had to be nice, submissive, good looking. All of these characteristics just to be able to marry a wealthy man and be able to form a family and take care of the children as well as the house. Without a doubt, this was the stereotype of what the perfect woman was back then and no one ever questioned this way of

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This show of misogynistic ideas and practices is in correlation with Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Elizabeth bennet’s her sisters are undervalued and ticketed of as victims of misogyny and male dominance. The novel was published in 1850 around the same time of the suffrage movement. The first wave of feminism took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, emerging out of an environment of urban industrialism and liberal, socialist politics.

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