Men Through Women’s Eyes.
Men Through Women's Eyes
Kate Chopin's Desiree's Baby and Elizabeth Gaskell's The Half Brothers, are both vividly poignant stories, -each encompassing an intensity of drama that captures the emotional response of the reader. Incorporating powerful and in places, controversial themes such as loyalty, betrayal, racial prejudice and self-sacrifice, the stories are a testament to their authors; in many ways reflecting their own personal experiences.
About Kate Chopin
Although an American by birth, Kate Chopin was of mixed French and Irish ancestry. She was born in St Louis in 1850, the daughter of Thomas O'Flaherty, a prosperous merchant who had emigrated from Ireland, and Eliza, the descendant of an aristocratic French family. Her upbringing was affluent and strictly Catholic- her later controversial works may have been an unconscious rebellion against this rigidly austere core element of her childhood.
Aged 20, Kate married Oscar Chopin, a cotton trader. They lived first in New Orleans, then moved to their own cotton plantation on the Cane River in Louisiana. Kate devoted herself to motherhood, producing six children, and to caring for the less well-to-do plantation workers in the district. It was a happy and contended life.
Her husband's sudden death from swamp fever in 1883 left Kate devastated. It is largely in this way that the story of Desiree's Baby relates so closely to Kate Chopin's own life. A seemingly perfect existence - happy marriage and affluent surroundings, are tragically wrenched from her in a cruel twist of fate; a situation totally out of her control, leaving her widowed, with little more than her talent for writing as a source of income. She returned with her children to St Louis and began writing 'sketches' of her life on the Cane River, partly to provide for her large family and partly to come to terms with her grief. These documentary sketches were published in local periodicals and were well received. Her doctor, Frederick Kolbenheyer, encouraged her to become a career writer, and, since he was an atheist, to abandon her Catholic faith. Kate Chopin's 'second life' had begun.
During the 1890s, she published almost a hundred short stories, two novels, volumes of poetry, essays and reviews. Her themes were often controversial. Kate became increasingly interested in female emancipation, racial equality, and, in particular, the repressive aspects of marriage. The Awakening is about an unfulfilled middle-class wife who seeks her own happiness outside matrimony. It caused such a scandal that Kate was condemned throughout conservative late nineteenth-century America as a sensationalist writer of 'sex fiction'. The book was banned in St Louis and Kate's publisher cancelled her next collection of short stories.
Kate Chopin died in 1904. It was not until fifty years later that her writing became widely available, let alone appreciated, in England. The irony is that its subject matter and style are more 'modern' than much recently written fiction as Desiree's Baby demonstrates.
About Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell was born in Chelsea in 1810, the eighth child of William Stevenson, a Unitarian minister. It was not long before she experienced the first of many setbacks, which were to shadow her life. Her mother, exhausted by childbearing and poverty (ministers were badly paid), died the following year. At the age of 14 months, Elizabeth was packed of to Knutsford in Cheshire to be brought up by her aunt, Hannah Lumb.
During her teens, Elizabeth had five years of boarding school education in Warwick and Stratford-upon-Avon before being uprooted again. Her father, who had remarried and still lived in London, never recovered from the news that his eldest son had been 'lost' at sea. Elizabeth's return to her birthplace to console him was in vain; he died in 1929. Not yet 20, his daughter found herself on the move once more, this time to lodge with family friends in Newcastle upon Tyne.
In 1832, Elizabeth married he Revd William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister like her father. They settled ...
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During her teens, Elizabeth had five years of boarding school education in Warwick and Stratford-upon-Avon before being uprooted again. Her father, who had remarried and still lived in London, never recovered from the news that his eldest son had been 'lost' at sea. Elizabeth's return to her birthplace to console him was in vain; he died in 1929. Not yet 20, his daughter found herself on the move once more, this time to lodge with family friends in Newcastle upon Tyne.
In 1832, Elizabeth married he Revd William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister like her father. They settled in Manchester. Five daughters were born, but the son they had both longed for died of scarlet fever before he was a year old. Similarly, as in the case of Kate Chopin, many parallels can be drawn between the events in the lives of the major characters of The Half Brothers, and her own experiences. The resulting product of an impoverished childhood, the loss of a child and lack of stability are all details touched upon in Gaskell's story, which can be identified as major influences on her life and therefore her writing.
Elizabeth's work helping her husband among the poor of Manchester showed her the often terribly dehumanising effects of the Industrial Revolution on lower-class families of the time, and as well as personal experiences formed the crucial influence on her literary themes. From the release of her first novel Mary Barton, which highlights the lack of sympathy shown by industrial employers for the workers, Gaskell was one of the most consistently popular writers of Victorian times- a favourite of Charles Dickens himself.
Gaskell remains very much a 'northern' writer. As is found in The Half Brothers, her sympathy and compassion are always with ordinary people in whose lives misfortune and tragedy are never far away.
Both women, as products of largely male dominated 19th Century Western societies and professions, seem to make a definite statement about their ideas on society's perception of the very different roles of men and women in their stories. Their generally negative portrayal of the male characters within the storylines (Chopin's Armand Aubigny and Gaskell's William Preston) may be their subtle attempt to oppose the 19th Century status quo that related masculinity to strength and power, and femininity with meek submission.
In Desiree's Baby, the themes, setting and atmosphere of the story greatly influence the reader's perception of the male characters. The vivid backdrop of Kate Chopin's tragic tale is most suitably a cotton plantation in the notoriously racially prejudiced 'deep south' of America, and more specifically, the fictitious Aubigny house, 'L'Abri'. Described as the 'sad looking place' which 'big solemn oaks grew close to, their thick-leafed, far reaching branches shadowing it like a pall'. The reference to death (a pall is the black cloth draped over coffins), in the graphic description of 'L'Abri', home of Armand, is one of the initial insights into Armand's negative character. Young Armand's rule over the estate after the death of his parents was a cruelly strict one - 'under it his Negro slaves had forgotten how to be gay, as they had been during the old master's easy-going and indulgent lifetime'.
This obviously villainous role bestowed upon Armand is echoed later on, when after the seemingly perfect lull of bliss felt by Desiree at the apparent softening and more tender approach of her husband, Armand unexpectedly returns once again to his original ruthlessness towards his slaves, and a strange new cold and remote attitude towards his wife.
Although Armand's transformation is unexpected, Desiree (and therefore the reader) is not unaware of the reality that there is something in the air menacing her peace, - something too subtle to grasp initially, that later manifests itself to reveal a distinct motive for Armand's disquiet.
On Desiree's realisation that Armand's icy mood is due to the non-white appearance of their baby (and therefore an unspoken accusation of non-whiteness for Desiree), she desperately defends the case for her whiteness; her brown hair, her grey eyes, her pale skin - however Armand is unmoved. He rejects her with a startling disregard, in total contrast to the impulsive passion previously felt for her when he first fell in love ('...that was the way all the Aubignys fell in love as if struck by a pistol shot.')
At once, the audience's suspicions are satisfied; the 'menacing air' and 'disquieting suggestion' that were implying Desiree's ruin are fulfilled -Desiree and the baby are forced to leave. Despite Madame Valmonde's (the woman who found and raised Desiree) desperate pleas for Desiree to return to her 'mother' who loves her- however Armand's heartless treatment leaves Desiree distraught and beyond reason. Still attired in her delicately thin white gown and slippers, Desiree collects her child and silently treads the deserted field from the house. The stubble bruises her tender feet and her thin gown is torn to shreds, however this is soon irrelevant as her tragic aim becomes apparent. With the baby in her arms, she disappears among the reeds and willows along the bank of the deep, sluggish river-swamp, from where she does not return.
This tragic turn of events leaves the reader in no doubt as to the intended roles of Kate Chopin's characters; Armand is the cold, heartlessly cruel villain who drives his victimised gentle, loving wife to suicide due to his weak fear that her possible black ancestry would tarnish his powerful family name. These seemingly clear lines dividing villain and victim, are somewhat blurred by Chopin's final twist in the storyline. When attempting to destroy all possessions relating to his wife and child, Armand comes across a letter from his mother to his father. She is thanking God for 'so arranging their lives that [their] dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery.' As this is the final sentence of the story there is no reaction to this discovery from Armand - leaving the bitter taste of tragic irony in the mouths of the readers. Armand, in effect, with his callous rejection of his wife, sent her and their child to their murky deaths - and why? Because he believed her to be of black origin resulting in shame being brought upon his family name - when it is finally realised that it is Armand's own ancestry which is 'tainted'.
Despite Armand's obviously deplorable past actions, there is almost an element of pity felt for him. All that he thought had been real throughout his life - the power of his rich, 'white' name, the superiority he felt over his black slaves, had been undermined in one swift blow of poetic justice. Essentially, Armand, rather than punishing Desiree for her unconscious 'crime' (or paying God back for dealing cruelly and unjustly with him, as he thought He had), he had done nothing more than to punish himself by rejecting and refusing his own ancestral past. He himself has become the victim. A victim of socially ingrained racial bigotry, which has caused him to be conditioned to hate the very race from which he has descended.
It is similarly in this way that Elizabeth Gaskell undermines the villainous surface of her major male character in The Half Brothers with underlying weaknesses and vulnerability. This (depending on the reader) leads to reactions of sympathy or the feeling that they deserve contempt for the contempt with which they have treated the 'victimised' characters.
In Elizabeth Gaskell's The Half Brothers, it is William Preston - second husband and father of the narrator's mother, who is negatively portrayed. His unyielding jealousy of his wife's love for her first son, Gregory (his stepson) drives him to scorn the child mercilessly. Just before his wife, tragically dies giving birth to their son, her final unspoken request is clear- as she sits the two little half brothers before her, her 'sweet smile' suggests that she wishes for them to be loved and cared for equally after her death.
However, William's grudging dislike for his stepson is little overcome despite his late- wife's silent plea. As he becomes increasingly engrossed and besotted with his own son, his feeling towards Gregory becomes unreasonably insulting - with repeated accusations of stupidity and dullness from the admittedly slow yet good-natured boy.
With the constant insults and unfair favouring of the narrator (the youngest son) over Gregory, he begins to allow the stupidity and dullness of which he is accused grow on him, until he is withdrawn from school and shadows old Adam the shepherd, in order to receive some kind of practical training. It is under the watchful guidance of Adam that Gregory learns the various ways across the perilous mountains and moors which is to create the major twist in the story, introducing the themes of self-sacrifice and regret to the storyline's climax.
After taking a shortcut through the moors, on the way back from an errand for his father, the narrator finds himself in trouble. When it begins to get dark and a blizzard approaches, the narrator abandons all hope of finding his way back and resigns himself to his inevitable death. However, realising that his half-brother must be lost and in trouble, Gregory locates him, and sends his hound back to the house to get help. Gregory shields his half-brother from the fierce blizzard with his own body and so, is exposed to the blizzard's full force. When they are finally found, Gregory is dead. On realising that Gregory died trying to keep his step-brother alive, William Preston's guilt at his mistreatment of his loutish yet kind-hearted stepson is apparent. In the same way that a perverse sympathy could be evoked from the reader for the shallow and ironically, self-hate demonstrated by Kate Chopin's Armand Aubigny, pity is felt for William Preston, again undermining his status as villain. He is exposed to be little more than a wretched character doomed to a lifetime of guilt. None of his future actions could ever fully recompense his mistreatment of Gregory, who in his death proved himself morally superior to the unrelenting William Preston.
Both Kate Chopin and Elizabeth Gaskell use various indirect elements of their stories to portray the negative perceptions of their main male characters. Setting is used largely to reflect the personalities of the characters; the icily cruel and unforgiving backdrop that are the perilous mountains and moors of the Fells are an almost direct representation of William Preston as is the sinister, richly impassioned and racially prejudiced American Deep South of Armand Aubigny.
The authors also use the female characters of the stories, in order to enhance the negativity with which they wish the reader to approach the male characters. In Desiree's Baby, Desiree is (naivety aside), faultless in her portrayal- she is beautiful, gentle and almost childlike in her affectionate innocence. She is the helpless victim suffering at the cold hands of Armand, leading the reader to further question the superficial motives for his cruelty and enhancing our dislike for him. Madame Valmonde is to a lesser extent, also a female representation of everything lacking in Armand's character - unconditional love for Desiree regardless of her parentage and a constant source of support and aid for her.
Although in The Half Brothers, William Preston's focus for dislike is Gregory rather than his wife, her unconditional unwavering love for her son (despite her husband's jealousy) represents how a parent (step, biological or otherwise) should behave towards their child, which acts to increase reader animosity towards William Preston. Aunt Fanny also plays a pivotal role in the story - her strength of character is in direct opposition to the weak, petty and evident insecurity by William Preston, which drives him to compete with his stepson for his wife's love.
Overall, both authors make controversial statements about several issues within their short stories. Racial prejudice, self-denial, typical male and female roles and self-sacrifice are theme which are tackled with skill within Kate Chopin's and Elizabeth Gaskell's writings, to produce dramatic, suspense-filled and wholly tragic tales written from an unusually contentious 19th century female perspective.
Natalya Frederick 11JT
Short Stories Essay
