Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Examples of Women
and Femininity in
Victorian Literature
- Dramas
- 'A Doll's House' - Henrik Ibsen
- Nora has often been painted as one of
modern drama's first feminist heroines.
- She breaks away from the domination of her husband.
- 'Surely you can see that being with Torvald is like being with Papa'.
- Nora has been under the thumb
of a man her whole life.
- Nora: 'What do you consider my most sacred duties?'
Torvald: '...Your duties to your husband and your children.'
Nora: 'I have other duties just as sacred. (...) Duties to myself.'
- This idea of completely scandalous during Ibsen's
time. The thought that a woman might have a value
besides homemaking and being a mother was
outrageous.
- Ibsen intended for the
play to be humanist
rather than feminist.
- Yet there's constant talk of
women, their roles and the price
they pay for breaking them.
- Prose
- 'Jane Eyre' - Charlotte Bronte
- Jane has a strong moral sense between what is right and wrong.
- Jane stuggles continually to overcome suppression and achieve inequality. She has to fight patriarchal domination- against those who
believe women to be inferior to men.
- Mr Brocklehurst, Mr Rochester and St. John Rivers all try to keep
her in a submissive position, where she is unable to express her
own thoughts and opinions.
- 'it is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than what custom has pronounced necessary for their sex'.
- Poetry
- 'The Ruined Maid' - Thomas Hardy
- A dialogue between two women who bump into each in the street. The first speaker (an
unnamed woman) comments on Amelia's new clothes and look. Amelia responds with a short,
semi-snobby retort - usually ending in 'Well, I'm ruined'. It ends with the other woman wishing
she to had all the nice things that Amelia has.
- 'I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown'.
- Women knew what femininity was.
- Hardy never really had a good thing to say about the role of women.
- He's opening up the question: should women just
be content with their lot in life?