Charles Dickens handles the theme of men and women’s relationships differently compared to other writers of the period because he handles it in a comical way and has a woman as the stronger character, this is so surprising because no one had ever done this before and the man was always seen to be stronger than the woman. A section of the story that shows this is,
“Mrs. Corny…… had great experience in martial tactics …… she had tried the tears because it was less troublesome than manual assault.”
Mr. Bumble also disagrees that you should be looked down upon for getting divorced instead he says,
“That men who ran away from there wives leaving them chargeable to the parish, aught in justice to be visited with no punishment at all but rather rewarded as meritorious individuals who suffered much.”
Dickens is trying to say to his readers about relationships not to get trapped in to a marriage because they are not as they always seem.
Tony Kytes
Tony Kytes was written by Thomas Hardy in 1895, Hardy also looked at relationships and marriage in a comical way using the character Tony. Hardy often wrote about the relationships and lives of ordinary people, there life and work.
Tony is a shallow man I can tell this from this quote,
“He was quite the women’s favorite, and in return, for there likings he loved em in shoals.”
Tony judges women by there looks, he is described as,
“So very serious looking and unsmiling it was that it really seemed as if he couldn’t laugh at all without great pain to his conscience.”
This is an example of hardy using irony because Tony takes him self as very serious yet he is a stupid character.
In the story Tony is engaged to a woman called Milly but he soon decides not to marry her because there are more beautiful women are interested in him, a quote that shows how shallow he is and that he just likes women for there looks is,
“The more he looked at her the more he liked he.”
Towards the end of the story he decides to ask Hannah to marry him (The prettiest woman) but she turns him down because her father tells her not to marry him, then he asks Unity (The second prettiest woman) and she says no because she is too proud, and finally he asks Milly accepts even though she has been treated disrespectfully because she is so desperate. This shows us that love in that period was not a priority and marriage was not always for the right reasons, it shows that women were desperate to get married for financial security.
Hardy deals with the concept of love and marriage by laughing at it, showing that people were so desperate to get married that they would make fools of themselves, for example even though Tony flirts with other women Milly is still willing to marry him and says,
“But what Tony says to me is all mere wind and of no concern to me!”
The difference between Hardy and Dickens is Hardy has the man as the stronger character. This shows that Hardy sees women as the weaker sex but accepts that men and women can be equally ridiculous.
I think Hardy and Dickens both dealt with it in a humorous way because if they did not people would not agree with there ideas. An example of this is that if Dickens had of written about men and women being equal people would have looked down on him and refuse to by his books.
The Half Brothers
The Half Brothers was written by Elizabeth Gaskell in 1810. Gaskell treats marriage sensitively unlike Dickens and Hardy. The Half Brothers is a sad story about a woman called Helen who has had a terrible life.
In the relationship between Helen and William they both feel totally different. Helen does not love William, a quote to show this is,
“While for, him who had given her so much, she had only gentle words as cold as ice.”
When William proposed to marry her she cried in her room, a quote to show this is,
“Aunt Fanny heard her cry as if her heart was breaking.”
Helen only married William because she needed the money and could not support, Gregory, her son on her own anymore because she was blind and could not work. A quote to show that she married William for financial security is,
“William Preston had asked her to marry him and had promised to take good charge of the boy and make him want for nothing.”
William does not carry out his promise though because he soon becomes jealous of Gregory because Helen shows him so much love but shows no love to William. A quote that shows William did not like Gregory is,
“He took a positive dislike to Gregory he was so jealous of the ready love that always gushed out like a spring of fresh water when he came near”
In comparison to Hardy and Dickens, Gaskell treats the subject of love and marriage in the period seriously she shows that marriage was not always for love and you can be forced into it by the circumstances around you. On the other hand Hardy and Dickens treat it in a comical way. Helen has a bad life, her husband and daughter die, she starts to go blind, she eventually gives up on life and dies. A quote to show how miserable her life was is,
“Aunt Fanny used to say sometimes, that she thought that Helen did not wish to live, and so just let herself die away without trying to hold on.”
Gaskell wants her readers to feel sympathy for Helen and like Dickens is also showing marriage to be a trap.
News of the Engagement
News of the engagement was written by Arnold Bennet in 1907 and shows that parental relationships were not as close as they are today.
Philip and his mother do not have a very close relationship. I can tell the
Is because he does not feel like he can write to his mother and say he is getting engaged and loves Agnes, he says,
“But you can’t write and say to your mother in cold blood: I think I’m beginning to fall in love with Agnes.”
We learn from the story that parental relationships in the period are not as close as they are now, I can tell this because he is scared to tell his mother because of what she might say, also all of the way through the story he procrastinates about why he can’t tell his mother that he is getting engaged and he is also scared to break her news because he has never thought of someone that could be seen as desirable, he thought of her as just a housewife.
Towards the end of the story Philip’s mother tells him that she is getting engaged this makes him realize that his mother is not just a housewife with no life but a woman with a future. Before she tells him that she is getting engaged Philip says things like
“My mother was so clever in social matters in social matters.”
But after he hears of her engagement he realizes that his mother could be desirable and would not just have a lonely existence. Philip then realizes how stupid and selfish he had been, quotes to show this are,
“I had never thought of my mother as a woman with a future. I had never realized that she was desirable…… and her lonely existence was not all that she had the right to demand from life.”
And,
“I was ashamed of my characteristic filial selfish egotism.”
This moment reflects a change in thinking for the period because it shows a male writer realizing that women are more than just housewives, they are women with futures (This was one of the first times a writer of that period had shown this in a story.)
Adventures of the Speckled Band
Adventures of the Speckled Band was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1892.
In the story Helen Stoner is scared of her stepfather, Dr Roylott. Dr Roylott moved to India and opened a medical practice but then moved back to England and lived of his ex-wife’s wealth, but when he moves back he starts to turn mad. Helen stoner is a typical woman of the period who is scared of her stepfather, and looked down upon by him. A quote that shows she was abused by her stepfather is,
“You have been cruelly used said Holmes. The lady colored deeply and covered her injured wrist. “He is a hard man” she said and perhaps he hardily knows his own strength.”
Holmes solves the mystery; Dr Roylott was trying to kill his stepdaughters by using a deadly snake. He does this because he wants to prevent his step daughters from marrying, because Helen’s mother promised each of them a large sum of her inheritance when they got married.
In comparison to Bennet, Conan Doyle deals with the parent child relationship differently by having the typical strong male character and weak female but Bennet showed Philip’s mother as the stronger character like Charles Dickens did in Oliver Twist.
Conclusion
From the selection of relationships stories I have read about, I have concluded that in the period were not equal, men were always the stronger character and controlled the women. Women were forced to marry because they could not support themselves as they were not allowed to work so they had to rely on there husbands income. Some writers such as Bennet were revolutionary in there thinking were they had men and women equal. Also from the stories I can tell that parent/child relationships were not as close as they are now, some characters were afraid to tell there parents things, such as Philip in News of the Engagement. All of the stories are similar in the way that they all talk about the way relationships and attitudes of people towards relationships at the time and the language in all of the stories is similar. Writers of the day felt that marriage for financial security was more important than marriage for love, this is shown in all of the stories.
Eventually later in the nineteenth century a group of women called the Sufragects formed a movement to get equal rights, and about fifty years later, they have.
