In Search for Independence and Self-Fulfillment
In Search for Independence and self-fulfillmentIn the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorian ideals still held sway in American society, at least among members of the middle and upper classes. Thus the cult of True Womanhood was still promoted which preached four cardinal virtues for women: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Women were considered far more religious than men and, therefore, they had to be pure in heart, mind, and, of course, body, not engaging in sex until marriage, and even then not finding any pleasure in it. They were also supposed to be passive responders to men's decisions, actions, and needs. The true woman's place was her home; "females were uniquely suited to raise children,care for the needs of their menfolk, and devote their lives to creating a nurturing home environment." (Norton, 108). However, the tensions between old and new, traditional and untraditional , were great during the last years of nineteenth century and there was a debate among male and female writers and social thinkers as to what the role of women should be. Among the female writers who devoted their work to defying their views about the woman's place in society were Charlotte Perkins Gilm
" She spends most of her time in a room with yellow wallpaper and very little to occupy her mind with. Charlotte Perkins Gilman suggested that women in dependent relationships are always removed from their physical environment( Dyer, 55) Could it be that Edna and the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper responded to the environment that surrounded them because they started doubting their own place in the dependent/ submissive relationship? Excessive physicality of Grand Isle are irresistible to Edna, and her sexuality awakens under the influence of nature, sea, Creole women and men, and her longing for love and passion. The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper doesn't talk a lot about her baby, but every time she does, she speaks of her baby with love, "There's one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and doesn't have to occupy this nursery with this horrid wall-paper. " Although the narrator feels desperate, John tells her that there is no reason for how she feels. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" She achieved her independence and doesn't need anybody to rely on for survival. It isn't a coincidence that last pages of the book's final chapter are dominated with the issue of motherhood. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is best known for her short story The Yellow Wallpaper, (1892) which is based on her own experience. John is the man of the house and he expects the narrator to trust him completely, just as small children trust in their parents. To us, modern readers, sexual descriptions in The Awakening may seem hardly explicit, however, contemporary readers would have founds them inappropriate. However, The Yellow Wallpaper is more than a case study in mental illness or a horror story, it is a story of a dominant/submissive relationship between husband and wife. The narrator is taken to a summer house to recover form her condition where she is not allowed to do anything but rest and sleep. Gilman spoke out strongly against eroticism in women's life while Kate Chopin concentrated mainly on the biological aspects of women's situation and was the first writer in her country " to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction. He treats her like a child and makes her doubt herself.
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