Feminine Power in Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby - Research Paper Example

 A Study of Feminine Power in Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby Jane Austen wrote her novels in a span of a few years from 1810 until her death in 1817. As a female writer in the early nineteenth century, she stepped out of the prescribed gender role for women of her status by writing and making a small living from selling her works. Contemporary critics never liked her work during her life but the novels gained popularity well after her death. Even though her novels were not best sellers, her texts fully described the country life of middle to upper class landed gentry in England at the time. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby after World War I in the early 1920s. Critics touted this work as the new great American novel, claiming it was a realistic look at the dying of the “American dream.” He wrote about urban middle to upper class Americans during the heydays of the 1920s. Fitzgerald wrote women from a male point of view and over 100 years later than Austen’s women in Pride and Prejudice. However, his maleness did not prevent him from writing true to life, multifaceted women characters of his era. Despite the obvious differences in the authors’ points of view, the story lines are similar because both deal with complex masculine and feminine roles and issues between the two. In spite of differences in time and location, both novels are similar as they both suggest education gives power to women to act as independent people. However, the women in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice seem to come out happier, while the female characters in Fitzgerald’s work are less happy even though the society in which they live is supposedly freer. In the end, maturity rules the characters’ choices. Granted, it seemed on the surface women had more independent power in the 1920s. American women’s foray into the male sphere began as soon as the ink on the Constitution dried. While John Adams had ignored Abigail Adams’ pleas to “remember the ladies” when writing the new nation’s laws, women were making advances into independency. Almost immediately, because of women such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Catharine Beecher, and Judith Sargent Murray, females in the U. S. had more avenues of education open to them than before. For them equality would be gained through education. After the Civil War, when there was a generation of single women who were college educated, and they advanced into the male domain even more. The U. S. was becoming more urban and industrialized as the century ended. In England, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, women of the upper classes usually received their educations through tutors or governesses their families hired. Educating women gave them rational choices about their futures besides marriage. However, Austen’s world had few avenues for advancement outside the bounds of marriage. The women in Austen’s world had fewer choices than women in the U. S. in the 1920s. While education allowed women to move toward and into the male domain, this movement was usually enjoyed by the middle and upper classes. Both of the novels are class bound in the upper classes, therefore the lower classes are not fully represented in them. Women in the lower classes were usually too busy working for survival to recognize class or gender shifts. However, by the 1920s, lower class women were at the forefront of the flapper movement. Upper class women were emulating lower class women for the very first time. Flappers were living alone in the city, dressing in short, flirty skirts, bobbing their hair, smoking cigarettes, drinking gin from bathtubs, and living openly sexual lives. Religion had very little influence on a flapper. Women’s power was evidenced by their independent actions. However, that power was not all encompassing. But the 1920s in the U. S. were such a time of transition from old values of marriage and home to independent actions. Fitzgerald’s text demonstrates that women having affairs were still ostracized by society, which in Austen’s time was just as taboo. When Elizabeth’s sister, Lydia, takes off with George Wickham and is not married, it causes a great scandal. Eventually the two are found and forced to marry. Lydia had little control or power over that situation once she chose her path. She was not privy to the information Elizabeth had about Wickham’s devious character. Lydia’s lack of education or enlightenment and her rash actions seals her fate. Being together without benefit of marriage did not have a better end for Lydia than Myrtle’s adulterous character in The Great Gatsby. While Lydia married, she married a devious man and suffered a death of spirit. Myrtle’s life ends tragically by being run over by a car. Not only was she outcast because of her affair with Tom, she eventually died, which is the ultimate cutting off from society. Both women suffer death, one a figurative one, the other the physical one. Both lose power and are unable to extricate themselves from the downward spiral sexual freedom took them. A loss of control equates to powerlessness. In the early 1800s in England, especially in the upper classes, parents had more control of their daughters and whom they married than parents did in the 1920s. Arranged marriages in America had gone by the wayside for the most part. Not so for the Bennett sisters of Austen’s novel. Their parents were involved in getting the ladies married, sometimes to their detriment. However, it seems that Elizabeth exercised independence by ultimately choosing to marry for love and admiration. Fitzgerald’s Daisy, had married for love, but it faded. Her marriage was a sham. Her husband had an affair. Fitzgerald seems to be saying that even love is fleeting and is no longer part of the American dream. At least Austen’s Elizabeth gives hope for women who hold out for love and rationality. Austen’s women seem to fair better than do Fitzgerald’s. Modern society in the 1920s, with women acting more and more like men, does not seem to add to women’s happiness. In fact the women seem to be miserable. One can almost look at The Great Gatsby as a reversal of roles with the men acting more like women in trying to catch the women’s attention. Gatsby tries and tries to catch Daisy’s attention by having a showy house, car, and wild parties. He is trying to impress her with his money. Whereas, in Austen’s novel the Bennett sisters have a bit of money and property which attracts the men to them. The women are the ones who pick and choose the suitors. Some of the choices the sisters make are not as wise as they could be, as in Lydia’s case, but it seems that Austen’s women, for the most part, are in control of their destinies, which is more of a masculine attribute. The opposite of control is freedom, which is always a part of the American dream mantra. Americans have this idea they have freedom, but in reality, no one anywhere has freedom. There are laws and covert societal mores that deny freedom of action to most. Masculine power seems to afford more freedom. But in exercising male power, do women really have command or are they just acting as men? It seems to be a thin line. When women act sexually free, do they gain power or lose power? In looking at these two novels, it seems that women lose power when they act sexually free. Maintaining control of one’s sexuality and reasoning instead maintains power. Living in a “free” society does not equate to happiness. Having parity with men does not equate to happiness either. Having sexual freedom does not make women equal to men. It only makes them act like men. Sex complicates issues rather than simplifies them. Exercising sexual control actually makes women more masculine and rational in these novels. Living reactionary lives, demonstrates female ascribed characteristics. The 1920s of Gatsby’s world are reactionary times. It is after World War I, people are living wildly “happy” and reactionary lives. They are at a crossroads of shedding off old ideas of religion, marriage, and normalcy. Austen’s women demonstrate both sides of the spectrum, reactionary and rational. Lydia is emotional, while Elizabeth is plodding. Even though she first reacts unwise, as she matures she takes her time in decided what is right for her. The characters who surround Gatsby never mature and their dreams along with the American dream, die. By far, women in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice have more freedom in the early 1800s than the women in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby of the 1920s because they demonstrate more maturity through the choices they make in love matters. Bibliography Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Dover Thrift, 1995. Print. Casper, Scott and Richard O. Davies. Five Hundred Years: America in the World. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. Print. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New Jersey: Prentiss Hall, 1968. Print. http://austen.com/ http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/pridprej.html http://www.online-literature.com/fitzgerald/ http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography.html Read More