Feminism 19th and Early 20th Century America

¶ … Feminism 19th and Early 20th Century America

Writing and women's roles were unavoidably mixed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was a time in which many women protested their restrictions through novels, poetry, pamphlets, and speeches. By analyzing those creations, readings can begin to understand the lives of those forward-looking women. In their own time, people dismissed them as inconsequential complainers. Minority authors, like blacks and lesbians were even more ignored. However, by learning about their work, we can learn about the daily life of the social classes to which they belonged.

Many people feel that our socioeconomic status limits our understanding of others (McClish and Bacon). Because our understanding is limited by our own viewpoint from our socioeconomic status, patriarchal societies tend to limit self-expression to that which is compatible with the patriarchy. As a result, it's important to remember to ask questions based one's own experience, instead of the patriarchy (McClish and Bacon, 28). For example, minorities tend to be good at this because if they don't conform to the mainstream society, they won't last very long (McClish and Bacon, 28). This makes them less of a subjective observer.

When reading works by women in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it's important to consider that the common reader of the time was the upper-class white male, since they had all the money (McClish and Bacon, 32). At that time, the short story and novel were often used by women writers because instead of belaboring their points, the writers could sneak in their perspective. Good art allows the viewer (or reader, in this class) to understand someone else's outlook (McClish and Bacon, 34).

Along those lines, Ross says that increasingly refined readers revered the upper-class white male's view, which in turn made those upper-class white men all the more powerful, as least in writing (Ross). Ross summarizes Baron in pointing out that because of that same power, published writing turned towards gender bias in reaction to those new feminist writers (Ross). Ross gives an example of British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. In her work, she would not submit to the Victorian ideal of a woman, and became a public advocate for prohibition of alcohol, the abolition of slavery, the rights of manual workers, and suffragists.

One author that is commonly known for rejecting the Victorian feminist ideal was Kate Chopin, author of The Story of an Hour. Chopin smoked, walked alone (which women of that time simply did not do), and was a zealous intellectual. Despite this, she was a married mother of six children, who only took up writing after her husband died. Her first novel wasn't published until she was 40. The Story of an Hour was published five years later, in 1894. At the time, her readers assumed that the characters in her novels were simply fantastical, instead of embodying Chopin's political and social viewpoints. Now, of course, readers understand that Chopin's writing was very progressive for its era.

In the short story The Story of an Hour, the heroine, Louise, learns that her husband died in a train wreck. She worries her sister when she starts sobbing, because she has heart trouble. Unbeknownst to her sister who told her the news, Louise is happy that she is free of marriage. Louise knows that she could not tell her sister about being happy, because her sister would not understand her feelings -- women are supposed to be happy when they're married. However, Louise was happily married to Brently.

Instead, Chopin proposes that all marriage is oppressive, no matter how happy the participants are. Louise spends the hour looking out the window and thinking about all the happy times she has to look forward to, instead of crying -- and her heart is just fine. However, when she goes downstairs, she looks away from the window and sees her husband walk in the door. Looking away from the window that symbolizes her happy future, Louise falls down dead from a heart attack. Even though the doctors say she died of joy, the readers know that she died of shock and disappointment. The implication is that her heart trouble was actually brought on by marriage.

Like the short hour of freedom that Louise enjoyed, The Story of an Hour is short. Each paragraph is small, and made up of small sentences, as we carve up hours, minutes, and seconds. Unlike most writing of the time, Chopin had to be concise with her writing in this story, so she tried to make every word do as much work as possible, not unlike a poem. One way to do that is to repeat a word in different places, to give it emphasis, like Louise and the word "free." Another thing that she repeated was sentence parts, which gave a kind of alliteration, or internal rhyme.

An author who wasn't always famous for being feminist was Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley's liberal political philosopher father, William Godwin, raised her after her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died. Unlike Chopin's sedate marriage, Mary Shelley had an affair with Percy Bysshe Shelley before his then-wife committed suicide. Before they married, Mary Shelley lost a premature term infant, and after marrying, lost two more. Only her last child, born shortly before his father's death, survived. From then on, she focused on her writing career and her son, writing The Mortal Immortal in 1833, for hire.

The Mortal Immortal is known as being one of the earliest pieces of science fiction, even though it begins in the 1500s. The Mortal Immortal uses a genuine historical figure, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, as the chemist who accidentally prepares the elixir of life. His assistant drinks the elixir, believing it will cure him of love, though it only makes it immortal, though he did not know it at the time. Only when his wife ages and dies does he realize that he is immortal. The tragedy is that he outlives everyone he knows and loves, and still seeking death.