The Role of Women in Neo-Classical Works as Apposed to Romantic Works - Term Paper Example

The role of women in neo ical works as opposed to romantic works Women had a stereotype role in the neo ical age as well as during the Romantic era, as evident from the literary works of these times. A woman was not supposed to have a public life at all; her intellectuality, sexuality and personality were deliberately suppressed and undermined. Her domestic life was also dictated by the norms and customs of that time. She had to fit in the role devised for her by the patriarchal society she lived in. She did not have the liberty to speak her own mind. Such was the role of women in the Neo Classical works; and t did not get any better during the Romantic era, because the attitudes towards women and the roles played by women were transferred on to the next generation. However, a small fraction of the people started to believe that women ought to be given some sort of freedom: at least the freedom to think, read, write and socialize. Women readership increased rapidly during the Neo Classical age; Alexander Pope himself had a huge female audience, and this trend gained further momentum in the Romantic age during which, a reasonable number of female writers emerged; ironically, they wrote anonymously because of the conservative and prejudiced mentality of the people at that time. During the Neo Classical age and the Romantic era, the education of women was patterned in a highly biased manner. Their education aimed at getting good husbands only, and not to enhance their intellectual level, skills or accomplishments. They received informal education at home and usually did not have any personal opinion or voice, on the political, social, economical, scientific, theological, national and international issues. Daniel Defoe was a champion of women’s education and learning in the neo classical age. In one of his essays he wrote: "One of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilised and a Christian country, is that we deny the advantages of learning to women. ... Their youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sew, or make baubles. They are taught to read, indeed, and perhaps to write their names, or so; and that is the height of a womans education. ... What is a man (a gentleman, I mean) good for, that is taught no more?" (Defoe, 303-304) This shows the humane and intellectual side of men that also nurtured during the Neo classical Age. The author claims that education is the basic right of women and by depriving them of it; we don’t have the right to call ourselves civilized or true Christians. He also differentiates between literacy and education and points to the fact that the kind of education that is given to the womenfolk amounts to nothing. The Neo Classical society was not immune to the needs of the women but nobody had the courage to violate or overhaul the existing system of education for women. One also realizes that Daniel Defoe was so concerned about the education of women because he saw the progress and development of society in general, by giving them better education. He is also criticizing the prevalent biased education system that curbs the right of the women to learn in a better way. Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of Mary Shelly, who was an 18th century writer, philosopher and a feminist, criticized the educational system which was highly biased towards women during the Romantic Era. She insisted that such type of education could only enslave the minds and souls of the women. ‘Their senses are inflamed, and their understandings neglected, consequently they become the prey of their senses, delicately termed sensibility, and are blown about by every momentary gust of feeling.[...] Novels, music, poetry and gallantry, all tend to make women the creatures of sensation, and their character is thus formed in the mould of folly during the time they are acquiring accomplishments, the only improvement they are excited, by their station in society, to acquire.’ (Wollstonecraft, 61) As a result of extremely limited exposure to education, the only work sphere for women was their household. Since they were barred from the outer political and economical world, all that was left for them to do was to take care of their households and rear their children. The Romantic age saw a rise in the role of women in the public sphere, but it was limited to the upper class and the bourgeois only. The women contributed a lot to literature and strengthened the ‘salon’ culture in France and other European countries. ‘Salonnie`res, then, were a social force that abetted the integration of new individuals into the elite. They encouraged social assimilation by marriage of previously unaffiliated groups-whether new or old nobility, bourgeois and aristocrat, or Jew and gentile. Romantic love was used as a justification for these new arrangements, which challenged the old ways of custom and rank. In the process, however, women began to redefine nobility and virtue. Not birth but commerce, venality of office, and intrigue at court became the new coins of power.’ (Landes, 24). Women have played a great role in patronizing art and literature during the Neo Classical and Romantic Ages. They read avidly and discussed it fervently with others. This helped in developing their thinking and attitudes towards life. They became more and more aware of their roles in society, and unconsciously discovered their hidden selves. They shaped their personalities according to the requirements of time and tried to make out the best from their confined lifestyle. Consequently, the social ranks began to merge into one another as the middle class women also got the opportunity to read the contemporary and the classic works in literature. Throughout nineteenth century, women were discouraged from participating in the public life and their domesticated roles as wives, mothers and home makers was always focussed upon by the norms and dictates of the society. It was beyond the imagination of the society in general, that a woman could have a career of her own. Mary Shelly’s ‘Frankenstein’ novel is one such example. ‘However, the role of women as author threatened to subvert gender divisions and to transgress boundaries which confined her to the private sphere of domesticity and motherhood... Like the creature, the novel had no name attached to it. It was first published, in 1818, anonymously. Most of the early reviews assumed it had been written by a man.’ (Bygrave, 56). Apart from being authors and socialites, the role of women in the professional world seems negligible. Financially, the women of both the eras depended upon their fathers, husbands or sons because the socio-economic systems of those times rendered them vulnerable and at the mercy of the male members of their family. According to the inheritance laws of Neo classical Age, the Romantic Age and even beyond, women were deprived of their rights of ownership to their ancestral property. This was an unquestionable fact that the inherited property belonged to the eldest son. Even if a man did not have a son, his daughters and wife got no share of his property. Alexander Pope raised a very important point pertaining to the laws of inheritance, in one of his poems “An Ode to Solitude”. Pope raises the question of inheritance in the minds of his readers as elaborated in the following excerpt: “... the complex of customs and beliefs evoked by the phrase ‘paternal acres’ lies at the heart of long established assumptions about women’s roles and function. The belief that property by nature belongs to men and that their sons are its natural heirs may have been immemorial, but it was nonetheless vividly present to the imagination of the age... Jane Austen uses the dispossession of women in favour of men as a trial of female character in Pride and Prejudice.” (Rumbold, 7) In her novel Pride and Prejudice, she introduces the inheritance issue with such complacency as if it is the fate of women not to get rights of inheritance of their parental/spousal property. Despite being a woman, and despite facing personal problems in her life due to this biased law, she doesn’t raise any objection to this custom. The Neoclassical works demonstrate the role of women as virtuous, forbearing and sacrificing individuals with submissive sexuality. Women were considered to be weak in their minds and will power to an extent that they had to bear the blows of ‘fortune’, ‘fate’ or ‘providence’ whatsoever. Suffering with patience was their only consolation and they were instructed to accept their destinies, even if they had the power to change it. Though women played an important role in society but they were never praised for the hardships and difficulties which they faced while running their domestic matters. Undisputedly, their virtue for being patient was praised but never sympathized with; it was considered their duty to forbear in silence. Sasha Lee wrote on the sufferings of one such woman and given below is an excerpt from her novel: ‘Because I resisted the impulses of despair- because I listened to the dictates of virtue and religion, and deigned to live out the days appointed by the Almighty.’ (Lee, 335) For some reason, all sorts of pain and sufferings were believed to be inflicted by The Almighty; this was obviously a false proposition. Human beings are as much responsible for the despair and sufferings of themselves, as fate. Women were always considered to be the weaker and fragile beings, which could not control their own lives. Ironically, their mentality was so tuned that they dared not blame a man or society for their misfortunes. The works of Jane Austen clearly show what society expected from women at that time. “Jane Austen moves turn and turn about between two plots, which can be crudely characterized as built about the Heroine who is Right and the Heroine who is Wrong. ... The moment of self discovery and self-abasement, followed by the resolve in future to follow reason, is the climactic moment of the majority of anti-Jacobin novels.” (Walder, 232). Jane Austen was more concerned about the love interest, marriage and the development of the personality of her heroines. Her heroines are witty, intelligent, charming and learned according to the norms of time; but none of them have the role to determine or to speak in the financial matters of their households. No matter how intelligent they are, they have no role in deciding the crucial and important family matters. The eighteen century society laid the entire emphasis on the grooming of women and training them to adopt a ladylike behaviour. They were encouraged to learn the social skills and manners, because these were the attributes that gauged their standing and position in society. Women and sexuality was an important issue in the works of the Neo Classical writers. Women were denounced of sexual freedom-whether within or without the boundaries of marriage. Among the neo classical novelist Daniel Defoe wrote on women issues during the 18th century that were never before written in history. Moll Flanders and Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress, were two ground breaking novels that set a new trend in this genre. His novels were about fallen women, and how they still captured the sympathy of the readers. Jonathon Swift had downright repugnant views on the sexuality of women. “Unlike Defoe dreaming Moll’s escape from Roxana’s nightmare, Swift cannot even begin to imagine women from the inside. Keeping his ironic distance, he flails and strips ‘the sex’ to get at the truth of its loathsome condition. The knowledge he produces is always external and judgemental. For reasons cultural as well as psychological, Swift defines women according to a physicality that is gross, filthy and lasting”. (Flynn, 88) Alexander Pope and his other contemporaries expected women to reveal their sexual selves in conjugal relationship only. They represented the ‘view of the Church’ which professes such beliefs to people. “In a system that confines women within sexuality, chastity is necessarily woman’s characteristic virtue and lust her characteristic vice. Of chastity in itself Pope has very little to say, except for the paradoxical praise of married love: ‘Chaste as cold Cynthia’s virgin light/ Productive as the Sun.” (Rumbold, 19) Slowly and gradually, with the dawn of the Romantic Movement, the mentality of the poets and writers began to reflect the changes regarding the roles of women. Keats, Coleridge and Shelley dared to write on the concept of female sexuality and their sexual freedom during the 19th century. An evil side of female sexuality remained an important topic in the works of Neo Classical and Romantic writers and poets. During both Ages, women often acquired the roles of ‘an evil temptress’; ‘enchantress’; or a ‘seductress’. Sometimes such qualities were attributed to them symbolically. “The best known demonic temptress embodying both the satanic and the seductively female is without doubt Matthew Gregory Lewis’s Matilda in ‘The Monk’. She stands as the first in line of a whole tradition of evil seductresses whose “fatality” lies in the clever allure and manipulation of their male counterparts.” (Rummel, 47) Coleridge was alarmed to read such indecent details of incest, rape and murder that he viewed it as a moral transgression by the writer. He remarked in the February 1797 issue of the Critical Review 2n. Serial: “Situations of torment, and images of naked horror, are easily conceived; and a writer in whose works they abound deserves our gratitude almost equally with him who should drag us by way of sport through a military hospital, or force us to sit at the dissecting table of a natural philosopher. . . . The romance writer possesses an unlimited power over situations; but he must scrupulously make his characters act in congruity with them. Let him work physical wonders only, and we will be content to dream with him for a while; but the first moral miracle which he attempts, he disgusts and awakens us.” (Coleridge, 258) Pope’s “Rape of the Lock” portrays Belinda as the ‘Femme fatale’- but in a mocking fashion. Feminism was not demonized in the Gothic tradition in the neo classical works. But women were still believed to have some sort of dark powers that overcame the senses of men. It was believed widely that women possessed some sort of charm or magic that obscured the senses of men. Pope actually criticized the ‘female vanity’ of that time and insisted on the fact that it was doing no good to the society in general. This role of women as ‘femme fatales’ carried through the Romantic Era with slight changes. Keats’ “La belle dame sans merci” is a classical example of the femme fatales in the Romantic works. The Romantic poets and writers believed that female love has a darker side to it, which has the tendency to ruin a man’s life. Her love is deceiving, tricky and selfish. Women were also viewed as femme fatales because their love and passion is anti thesis of reason and judgement. They have the power to make men do whatever they desire- whether right or wrong; evil or noble. Whenever desires and passion overcome senses, things are bound to get ruined. The destructive side of female love is what wise men fear from. In ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the beautiful woman without any mercy ruins the lives of everyone who falls prey to her beauty and love: princes, knights and warriors. She satisfies her passion by destructing their lives forever. She derives pleasure from their sufferings and takes pride in the fact that noble men, princes and common men alike willingly become her victims. The whole strategy of femme fatales begins with ‘love’. The Neo classical age was also known as the Age of Reason, therefore writers and poets abstained from writing excessively on the topics of love and sexual desires. Since the depiction of human relationships is incomplete without the element of love, we still find romantic poetry in the neoclassical works but in an entirely different light. This can also be the result of the style of writing adopted by the writers and poets of the Neo Classical age. They based everything on reasoning and found no place for imaginary or creatures of fantasy world in their works. Work Cited Defoe, Daniel. "The Education of Women". British Literature, 1640-1789: an Anthology. Ed. DeMaria, Robert. 2nd edition. UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2001. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 2nd edition. London: Dover publications, 1996. Women and the public sphere in the age of the French revolution) author: Joan.B. Landes. Published by Cornell university press, New York. 1988. Bygrave, Stephen. Romantic Writings. London: The Open University Press, 1996. Rumbold, Valerie. Women’s place in Pope’s World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Lee, Sophie. The Recess: or A Tale of Other Times. Volume 3, 5th edition. London: W. Flint Printers, Old Bailey, 1804. Walder, Dennis. The Realist Novel. London: The Open University, 1995. Flynn, H. Carol. The Body in Swift and Defoe. UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990) Rummel, Andrea. “Delusive Beauty”: Femmes Fatales in English Romanticism. Germany: Bonn University Press, 2008) Coleridge. T. S. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: The Eighteenth Century. Volume 4. Ed. Nisbet. B. Hugh, et al. UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Read More