Short stories
Compare and Contrast the way male characters are portrayed by Chopin and Gaskell The male characters in the stories of Chopin and Gaskell are portrayed generally in a negative light, and it is partly due to the way that the authors lived their lives. Both Kate Chopin and Elizabeth Gaskell used their stories to mirror or reflect upon parts of their society that they felt undermined the basic moral rights of women. Both author's explored ideas such as male oppression and feminism (and other such key ideas for women at the time) with much depth and sensitivity. I have chosen to look at two stories which I feel best represent the kind of ideas that both women were trying to make people more aware of. Theses are Désirée's Baby by Kate Chopin, and The Half Brothers by Elizabeth Gaskell. To a certain extent, I find both authors to be in some ways biased against males. In particular, Chopin sees males in quite a disturbingly sinister light, which is reflected in the strong portrayal of the leading male in Désirée's Baby, Armand, where she claims he has an "imperious and exacting nature". Gaskell's exploration of the character of William Preston as the dominant male of the tale is not quite as blunt, in that she preferred to tackle the bare facts, leaving our own opinion on William Preston to from as the events of the story unfold: "He was reckoned an old bachelor...he was long