ipl-logo

The Pleasure Pilgrim

592 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Gender's role in literature

The texts that will be analysed and discussed within this essay are The Pleasure Pilgrim (1895) by Amy D’Arcy and The Yellow Drawing Room (1892) by Mona Caird. Both of the texts centre the modern New Woman figure as their protagonist which creates juxtaposition with the traditionally patriarchal male character. D’Arcy and Caird write from the perspective of a masculine narrative voice; Caird in the first person and D’Arcy in the third person. However, both characters are speaking reflectively and the impression is gained that the events depicted haunt their minds due to the cognitive dissonance occurring; as their traditional ideas about gender roles are challenged by the unusually and uncharacteristically unique women that they meet. During the course of this essay the form with which the New Women …show more content…

One of the main challenges New Women writers experienced was escaping the ‘Victorian construction of female sexual desire’ that formed the predominant image that the ‘ideal woman’ (22) should be similar to Coventry Patmore’s ‘Angel in the House,’ or almost identical to Campbell’s ‘retiring, unobtrusive and indistinguishable ’ vision. (22). Rebellion against these then created the ‘image of innate female depravity’ and ‘woman’s strength as a sexual being [was] a constant threat’ for societal and moral dissolution. This gives the impression that the boundaries were polar and definite, however the New Woman ‘cannot be characterised by a single set of ideas’ and the texts exemplify this when comparing The Yellow Drawing Room, The Pleasure Pilgrim and The Buddhist Priest’s Wife (1892) by Olive Schriener.

Show More
Related

Comparing Women In The Yellow Wallpaper And The Birthmark

801 Words | 4 Pages

In the nineteenth century, woman had no power over men in society. They were limited in their freedom, as their lives were controlled by their husbands. Some women did not mind this lifestyle, and remained obedient, while some rebelled and demanded their rights. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, are short stories that exposes the lifestyle women lived in the nineteenth century. The protagonists from both stories, Jane and Georgiana, similarly lived a male dominated lifestyle.

Read More

The Consumptions Of Women In The Chaser By John Collier

1172 Words | 5 Pages

For many centuries in our society women have been confined into a stereotypical idea of a patriarchal society. In today 's society the idea isn’t as much viewed upon with all the rights women have been given, but the concept still lingers in some of men 's minds. More so, than today, in the 19th century women were obligated to abide to the principle of gender roles and a male dominated culture. Women were seen as to be a slave and to act a certain way towards men as well as be able to gratify man 's lust of expectations of a perfect woman. These presumptions of women had been very much portrayed in short story , The Chaser by John Collier, in which a boy name Alan Austen seeks for a love potion from an old man, for a girl he likes name Diana.

Read More

Comparing William Dean Howells's Editha And Henry James Daisy Miller

607 Words | 3 Pages

They show the harsh and cruel reality of the surrounding environment that women live in without framing that reality in beautiful frame. This is obvious in William Dean Howells’s “Editha” and Henry James’s “Daisy Miller”. Both Editha and Daisy share the same characteristic of the New Woman. These two women redefine the feminine ideology of women who suffer from following the social norms of their culture. They believe that women should have freedom as well as men, and they are responsible for making decisions in their lives without under

Read More

Feminism In Louise Halfe's Body Politics

459 Words | 2 Pages

Judith Butler’s Gender Troubles emphasizes gender as the constant repetition of non-existent ideals to uphold a masculine-dominant culture. Likewise, “Body Politics” highlights this belief within the overtly feminine qualities of city women. As a whole, the poem contrasts idealized feminine “city women” with a “real woman” who possesses both feminine and masculine qualities. The mother figure challenges both the gender binary and the patriarchal order by rejecting the feminine gender norms of the society. This feminist reading of the poem makes many valuable and probable claims, however the feminist approach contains some weaknesses.

Read More

Edna Pontellier's Role In The Awakening

567 Words | 3 Pages

Patriarchal societies have existed as long as there have been humans. From the beginning when men would hunt and women would gather, to the present day wage gap, men’s demonstration of superiority is evident throughout history. Women, historically, serve as accessories to men, seen not heard. However, some brave women question their role in society. Edna Pontellier, in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, conforms outwardly to the societal role of women existing only as mothers and wives but questions inwardly through exploration of her individuality and sexuality, as demonstrated through her relationships with her husband Leonce Pontellier and Robert Lebrun, yet her realization that her growth will not be accepted by others ultimately causes her death.

Read More

Mary Shelly's Frankenstein: Towards A Feminist Figure Of Humanity?

1075 Words | 5 Pages

It may skew her thinking and at times be subjective. The intended audience is someone who is studying literature and interested in how women are portrayed in novels in the 19th century. The organization of the article allows anyone to be capable of reading it.

Read More

Describe Gender Roles In Ww1

1302 Words | 6 Pages

The first gender role to be explored is that of the Lover. This role is one played by a beautiful young woman, a person who every girl wants to be and every man wants to have. This beautiful women is seen in propaganda within appendices A and B. These propaganda postcards differ in intended message and style of art, however they both hold depictions of this same gender role. Appendix A it is clearly a call to arms for the men of Britain, yet it holds within a strong archetype for women to conform to. This is portrayed, firstly, and most obvious is through the writing, reading “Women of Britain say ‘GO!’”.

Read More

Summary Of Homosexuality In Bram Stoker's Dracula

901 Words | 4 Pages

Craft examines the usual roles of the Victorian men and women, passive women especially, requiring them to “suffer and be still”. The men of this time were higher up on the important ladder of that era. Craft believes the men are the “doers” or active ones in

Read More

Women's Roles Changed From The 1600s

319 Words | 2 Pages

The purpose of reading is to educate audiences. Each one of these pieces of literature reflects the women’s role in society of that time through their characters, plot, and descriptions, and show how it changed so much throughout the years. From the 1600s where Hamlet took place, the woman’s role morphed through different periods of time in The Lady of Shalott, The Great Gatsby, and finally Coma in 1973. Women began by not having a say in the majority of decisions and were expected to stay at home and do housework. From the 1600s to the 1800s, the role changed to give women the right to work, although their jobs did not require an education and were not generally respectable.

Read More

Feminism In Dracula

723 Words | 3 Pages

The “budding influence of the turn-of-the-19th-century feminism” resonates throughout the novel. Victorian society’s rigid boundaries and high principles suppressed the value of women and forced upon them expectations to follow. The socially correct portrayal of women were to be innocent, pure, and submissive and ascribe to men. Women who had subdued their expression of sexual desire were commended, and society scorned the promiscuous and flirtatious women. Sex was as a taboo topic and was only brought up for means of procreation.

Read More

The Role Of Sexuality In Dracula By Brahm Stoker

114 Words | 1 Pages

As a woman in the Victorian era, you have three options. You are either a pure blessed virgin, a married wife and mother, or a ravenous harlot. This seemingly repressed period of history was dominated by the idea that one’s sexuality formed their identity, social standing, and respectability. Ironically, the modern person would think of the common Victorian as extremely repressed and didactic, when in fact sexuality became a private focus in the public through literature and arts. These ideas of glorifying sexuality are very prevalent in Brahm Stoker’s

Read More

Men And Women In Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband

1285 Words | 6 Pages

The New Woman represented independent women who were generally unmarried and strove towards social and economic emancipation. They lay emphasis on criticising society’s assertion that marriage is the only end to which all women should strive to. Mrs Cheveley reflects the New Woman as she fearlessly enters London society unaccompanied and prepared to partake in politics, more particularly the blackmail of Sir Robert Chiltern. This kind of venture is singular for a woman at the time where their roles were relegated to catering to the needs of their husbands and their children, not rivalling men in the intellectual realm or threatening the stability of spousal love as Mrs Cheveley did. However despite the singularity of her courageous venture outside the delineated role of a women it is more stigmatised as opposed to the

Read More

Representation Of Women In Goblin Market

1587 Words | 7 Pages

“The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity 's Creation of the Sex War in the West” New York: Anchor, 1987. Arseneau, Mary. “Incarnation and Interpretation: Christina Rossetti, the Oxford Movement, and ‘Goblin Market.’” Victorian Poetry, vol. 31, no. 1, 1993, pp. 79–93.

Read More

Ouida In Jane Austen's The New Woman

1575 Words | 7 Pages

The term “New Woman” was coined by the writer and speaker Sarah Grand in 1894 it was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late nineteenth century a time where women were subdued and were not given desirable status and rights . It soon became a popular and a catchy-phrase in newspapers and books and journals. The New Woman, a significant cultural icon of the of the time, originated from the stereotypical Victorian woman who was exactly an opposite of the women which was being portrayed from centuries. She was intelligent, educated, emancipated, independent and self-supporting and a one who could take stand for herself. The New Women were not only middle-class female radicals, but also factory and office workers.

Read More

Social Issues In Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse

826 Words | 4 Pages

This novel is also autobiographical. Throughout history, women have been locked in a struggle to free themselves from the borderline that separates and differentiate themselves from men. In many circles, it is agreed that the battleground for this struggle and fight exists in literature. In a

Read More

More about The Pleasure Pilgrim

Related Topics

Open Document