Elizabeth Gaskell is unfairly biased against men and blindly prejudiced against women in The Half-Brothers and The Manchester Marriage. Do you agree?

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Elizabeth Gaskell is unfairly biased against men and blindly prejudiced against women in The Half-Brothers and The Manchester Marriage. Do you agree?

The Half-Brothers and The Manchester Marriage were written a long time ago in Elizabeth Gaskell’s lifetime – which was in the mid-nineteenth century. Roles of men and women were different to what they are right now – they were (as you can expect) a bit more backwards to roles of men and women today.

In order to elaborate whether Gaskell was prejudiced and biased against men and women, we need to see what the stereotypes of males and females were in that era. The Industrial Revolution had just started, so women had started to work (out of the house), but only just. Most women were expected to stay at home, do household chores, look after the children and be dutiful wives. Women of this role were probably stereotyped as being very ‘feminine’- in a sense that they were shy, gentle, dutiful and possibly secondary to men. In some cases, they were seen as to being ‘owned’ by their husbands or fathers, and so were expected to be obedient creatures- at least towards men – and the image of men?

Well, men were the ‘breadwinners’ of the family – house-husbands were unheard of. They were rulers of the house, in charge of all affairs (except the dishes), and thought themselves to be very practical, which also led to the general characteristic of men being quite unemotional – and therefore efficient.

In the two stories, Gaskell has created two main female roles – Alice and Helen. They are both shy – Helen in The Half-Brothers was “very silent by nature” and Alice from The Manchester Marriage is described as a “quiet, grave little creature.” It is probably no coincidence that BOTH the females have this personality trait – this could be Gaskell’s idea of how all women are.

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The women in Gaskell’s stories are also very submissive – another commonplace of women at that time. Alice shows her obedience in the story when she obeys her husband’s order without enquiring as to why: “she knew better than to oppose him.” She shows this meekness a number of times – like when asked to be silent on a matter by her husband, she was “implicitly obedient”. The word ‘implicitly’ how it is in her nature to obey, and so here we get another prejudiced characteristic of women.

The emotional aspect of women’s stamp has also been shown. ...

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