Chose Three Stories from the Collection and Comment on How They Illustrate the Position of Women in Late Nineteenth Century Society.
Matthew Mckittrick
Highfield High School
27/09/2003
Chose Three Stories from the Collection and Comment on How They Illustrate the Position of Women in Late Nineteenth Century Society.
In this essay I am going to give a brief summary of three stories from a collection we have read and then look in detail and comment on how they portray the position of women in the nineteenth century. All the stories we read were taken from the book, 'Nineteenth Century Short Stories'.
The three I have chosen to look at in more detail and use in this essay are, 'The Unexpected' by Kate Chopin, 'The Woman's Rose' by Olive Schreiner and 'Tony Kytes, The Arch-Deceiver' by Thomas Hardy.
The first story we looked at was 'The Unexpected' by Kate Chopin. This story is about a betrothed couple who appear to be deeply in love. The two main characters in the story are the couple, Randall and Dorothea.
When Randall had to leave for a while, they sent "daily impassioned" letters to each other and seem to miss each other a great deal. They were a very passionate couple and there was obviously a great physical desire; when Randall left there were "lingering kisses and sighs" their behavior would also have been seen as inappropriate and been frowned upon during the nineteenth century.
Randall's return was "delayed by illness" and Dorothea would have travelled to visit her love if not governed by nineteenth century society and her parents, it was seen as improper for a woman to be so besotted.
When it was realised that Randall was not getting any better, the doctors decided to send him south so he may have a better chance of recovering. He was allowed to visit Dorothea for a day. When the lovers met Randall was in a terrible state and all his good looks had gone. All the desire and anticipation of the meeting had disappeared, she says how her love is "shriveling" inside her just from the "sight and touch" of him. She realizes that she never really loved him, that it was just all lust over his good looks. He was no longer the "perfect specimen of manly beauty" from the portrait she had gazed on for so many hours.
Randall asks Dorothea to marry him, because she no longer loves him she asks to wait till his return knowing full well he isn't going to come back. But Randall also knows this and he even tries bribery to get her to marry him, he says how he wants her to "have all his fortune." Still she says there will be enough time to get married when he returns. After Randall had left to head south again, Dorothea ran. Out of the house, out of the street and she carried on running until she reached the countryside didn't ...
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Randall asks Dorothea to marry him, because she no longer loves him she asks to wait till his return knowing full well he isn't going to come back. But Randall also knows this and he even tries bribery to get her to marry him, he says how he wants her to "have all his fortune." Still she says there will be enough time to get married when he returns. After Randall had left to head south again, Dorothea ran. Out of the house, out of the street and she carried on running until she reached the countryside didn't know where she was. Suddenly she stopped and repeated the words, "Never, not for all his thousands! Never, never! Not for millions!"
The author uses a lot of language to describe the passion between these two people. The greatest descriptions in the story are those of the sensuous,
romantic gestures. Whether in the form of letters or embraces the way the author depicts these is with such passion and love you can almost visualize the couple yourself.
At the time, it was considered improper for a story to talk of things like love and the passion shared between the couple. Descriptions like this would have been considered shocking and would have been frowned upon. In the nineteenth century women were expected to love honour and obey their partner they didn't think that love was an important part of marriage. Nineteenth century society saw marriage as a woman's duty and that they should marry for practical reasons but Kate Chopin believed and wrote that love and passion were very important in any marriage in the story Dorothea was expected to marry Randall but she went against what society dictates, showing her to be a mentally strong person that can make decisions for herself. And nineteenth century society, men especially would have frowned upon these views coming from a female writer.
Women were expected to love their husband's no-matter what, so the way this story talks about Dorothea falling out of love because there is no physical attraction would also have been un-acceptable.
The second story we looked at was 'The Woman's Rose' by Olive Schreiner.
In this story, none of the characters were given names but the two main characters were two young women. The first is the narrator; she opens the story by looking at a box of "trifles", memories, things that remind her of her life so far. In the box are "little squares of paper with hair inside, a picture that used to hang over her brothers bed and other small things." But she remarks on one little item in particular, a dead white rose. She talks about other flowers that were in the box but ones that she threw away and the only flower that remains in the box is this withered white rose. The narrator then starts to talk about the story behind the rose.
When she was 15 the narrator went to stay at a small "up-country town" for a period of time. The town was made up mostly of men and most of the women were married. There was one young girl in the town who was 17. Every man who was single "worshiped" her, she was beautiful and she was the only woman the men talked about. Men would bring "flowers to her door", they would offer her twenty horses", they "begged" her to marry them.
All this changed when the narrator arrived, all the men started to idolize her instead, men started to offer her things and ask her to marry them. Partly the narrator liked it but at the same time she felt sorry for the other girl who all the men had just seemed to forsake for this younger and in their eyes, better looking woman. The narrator never spoke to the other woman and thought she must have "hated her". If ever they met in the street they would always bow and walk on.
On the day the narrator was due to leave, a friend organized a party to which everyone in the village was invited. Because of the time of year there were very few flowers for people to wear to the party and there was only one rose for 200 miles and it had been promised to the older girl. At the party the narrator met the older girl said "good evening" and then she quickly turned away. The narrator felt a hand touch her hair and a voice that said "stand still". In the mirror the narrator could see the other girl attaching the white rose into the narrator's hair.
In this story we learn mostly about the feelings of the narrator, the story is not biased but we only see things from the narrator's point of view.
She talks of how she likes attention from men "I like them to ask me to marry them", but at the same time she "despises them" for it, when one of the men ridicules the older woman's walk the narrator "turned on him so fiercely that he never dared come before her again." She also liked the power she held over these men who would do anything she commanded them to "I was like a child with a new whip." Olive Schreiner was obviously a great believer in the strength of women and had a lot of hope that in the future women would have more rights in society. Women in the nineteenth century were seen as items, as objects, as a craze that would pass from one woman to the next; when one woman gets a little bit older and the men get bored of her, all the attention would pass to the younger, better looking model.
Men at this time thought that women could be bought or bribed into marrying them; they thought that the person who could buy her the most flowers or the person who could offer her the most extravagant and most expensive gifts would be the one the woman would marry.
Of all the things in the narrator's box, the item with the greatest significance to her is this white rose. This rose to her is symbolic of the special value of female friendship. It reminds her of the strength of women in a society dominated by men's rules and power.
The theme of the entire story is to highlight the importance of friendship and loyalty between women. To emphasise this theme even more the author says twice during the story, once at the beginning and again at the end she says the lines that she thinks of every time she looks at the rose, "When my eye is dim, and my heart grows faint, and my faith in woman flickers, when her present is an agony to me and her future a despair, the scent of that dead rose withered for twelve years, comes back to me. Spring cannot fail us"
