Women in Rebellion - Essay Example

Women in Rebellion Women in the nineteenth century led a life so completely different from the life of a twenty first century woman that it seems to be hardly believable. In the nineteenth century, women were completely dominated by men. Women were not educated highly and were discouraged from taking up employment. They had no earning power, hence no money. Consequently, all the major decisions in their lives were taken by their fathers or husbands. Even if a woman inherited money, her husband had a right to it .It was unthinkable for a middle class woman to express an urge for a satisfactory sex life. Even in such restricting circumstances, some women did rebel and blazed a path for their emancipation . Many books were written which highlighted the veritable slavery women were subjected to . The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins as well as The Portrait of a Lady by the American author Henry James are both novels which portray spirited women as their central characters. Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert is a French novel which aroused a lot of controversy when it was published, as it portrays the sexual craving of a middle class woman All the novels are set in the nineteenth century, in Victorian times . While the story of The Woman in White takes place in England, The Portrait of a Lady takes place in different parts of the world., and Madame Bovary is set in France. I shall now take up The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert for my discussion on female rebellion in the novels of the nineteenth century. As its title suggests, The Woman in White is a story with a mystery. The story begins with Walter Hartwright , the young drawing master meeting a mysterious woman dressed completely in white, on a lonely road in the middle of the night. He helps to find her a cab , and is told by her to beware of a certain baronet. .He overhears some people saying that she had just escaped from a lunatic asylum. Hartwright is appointed to teach Laura Fairlee and Marian Halcombe at Limmeridge House. He immediately falls in love with the lovely Laura, but conceals his feelings. He tells Marian about his encounter with the mysterious woman , and Marion finds through a letter written by her dead mother to her husband that she was Anne ,who had joined her school and who had a strong resemblance to Laura. After a few days, He learns that Laura is engaged to be married to Sir Percival Glyde, a baronet, and the marriage settlement of Laura is to be drawn up .Laura gets an anonymous letter warning her against Glyde. Hartwright meets the mysterious woman in white again in the cemetery. .Hartwright leaves Limmeridge house on Marian’s advice. Laura goes to Italy with her husband after her marriage, and returns to her husband’s home . Accompanying them are the suave and dangerous Count Fosco and his wife, who is Laura’s aunt. Marian comes to stay with the Glydes. Marian overhears a plot by Glyde and Foscoe to appropriate Laura’s money and she warns Laura against signing any document without reading it. She climbs on to the roof of the veranda to overhear the plot ,but falls sick. When she recovers from her illness, she learns that Laura has died in London. Sir Percival has inherited all of Laura’s money . Hartwright returns to England and visits Laura’s grave where he sees Marian and the living Laura. He learns that Laura’s death has been faked by her husband, who had buried Anne Catherick, the woman in White, as Laura, and sent Laura to the lunatic asylum in the place of Anne. The resemblance between the two women facilitated this duplicity .Marian has discovered Laura at the asylum and contrived her escape from there. Marian and Walter nurse Laura back to health. Walter uncovers the ‘secret’ behind Sir Percy’s anxiety- his parents were not legally married and he has no right to his property or title. Walter tries to obtain the church registers as evidence, but Glyde sets fire to the church where he is also destroyed with the evidence. Count Fosco is murdered by an Italian secret society, and Walter Hartwright marries Laura. In Madame Bovary, Flaubert has tried to portray the needs of a sensuous woman who is frustrated by the monotony of her life into rebellion. Charles Bovary is a doctor in a French village, who is married to a disagreeable woman. He meets Emma when he goes to attend the broken leg of her father , and is struck by her freshness and beauty. When his wife dies, he marries Emma. Soon, Emma finds marriage to the boring doctor stifling. Once they attend a ball given by the Marquis d’Andervilliers, where Emma is enchanted by the fashionable women and dashing noblemen . Finding life in the village dull, she becomes listless, and they shift to a small town nearby. Here, she gives birth to a daughter whom she names ‘Berthe’ , but motherhood does not agree with her. She becomes infatuated with a young student Leon, who finds her refined tastes attractive. But Emma hides her feelings and Leon goes away to Paris for higher studies. Emma meets Rodolphe Boulanger, a dashing landowner, when he brings a servant to the doctor for treatment. Rodolphe decides to seduce Emma, and suggests that she should go riding with him for the sake of her health. The doctor encourages the idea, and an affair starts between the two which continues for three years. Emma makes a plan to elope with Rudolphe, but Rudolphe does not turn up , but sends a letter of regret concealed in a fruit basket. The shock of betrayal being too great for her, Emma falls sick. After her recovery, Charles and Emma attend an opera where they meet Leon who is now working in that town. Emma and Leon start a clandestine affair , which after some ecstatic moments, begins to turn stale. For Emma, Leon does not measure up to the rakish Rodolphe. In the meantime Emma spends recklessly on luxury items , on credit from the wily merchant Lheureux. Finally, unable to repay her debts and disillusioned by her lovers, Emma swallows arsenic and dies in agony. Charles lives in memory of Emma. The Woman in White begins with the sentence, “This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure and what a Man’s resolution can achieve” .This sentence conveys to us what the Victorian society of the nineteenth century expected of a gently bred woman. She was supposed to be the embodiment of patience, even in the face of grave injustice done to her. Laura, one of the central characters of the book has all the qualities that makes the ideal woman of those times. She is docile, patient, beautiful, innocent to the point of ignorance, and truthful to the point of foolishness. Her sister Marian, on the other hand, is shrewd, wise and ready to take risks Not being blessed with beauty or an inheritance, she has no suitors. She wants to protect her half-sister Laura at all times. Hartwright finds that she has guessed his secret- that he loves Laura. “Her penetrating eyes had contracted a new habit of always watching me” ,he writes in his journal.(Collins 91) Later, she advises him to crush his feeling foe Laura. “Crush it!… Tear it out: trample it under foot like a man!”, she tells him . These words , so ‘unladylike’, show her rebellious spirit. She tells him that Laura was a docile girl, “Till you came here she was in the position of hundreds of other women who marry men without being greatly attracted to them or greatly repelled by them”. This remark is an insightful commentary on the lives of young women of the time, who had nothing to look forward to in their lives but marriage. While Marian protects Laura from her own feelings, Emma Bovary, who is in the same situation as hundreds of other women who marry without love, is terribly bored by her marriage . She longs for romance and the finer things of life which her rather prosaic husband cannot provide. Emma, with her appetite for romance, plunges into an extra- marital affair with Rodolphe, just to escape the humdrum way of life. . Marian’s robust character is brought out in the words she speaks to the schoolmaster. He says the boy’s words may “ignorantly shock” her feelings, to which she retorts, “….You pay my feelings a great compliment in thinking them weak enough to be shocked by such an urchin as that!”( Collins 110) Same sentiments of rebellion against the stereotypical lady is expressed by her at Blackwater Park when she tries to compose herself in ”some feeble and feminine way.” Madame Bovary, on the other hand, is full of refinement. When they have company for dinner, she cooks dainty dishes. She fantasies about being married to some other man who is “handsome, intelligent, distinguished, attractive’.(Flaubert 45) But Charles is a dull person ; his conversation is “as flat as a street pavement”. (Flaubert 41) She tries to love him – she tries poetry, and music. “It left her as unmoved as before”.(Flaubert 46) In The Woman in White, we see that Marian is unlike the quiescent girls of that time. She refuses to persuade Laura to marry Sir Percy. “I accuse nobody, and I suspect nothing”’ she says. “But I cannot and will not accept the responsibility of persuading Laura to this marriage”(168) Later, when Laura wants to confess about her love for Hartwright to Glyde, Marian is shocked. She says, “Laura! You will never lower yourself by making a confession to him?” (Collins 186) She asserts that Sir Percy does not have “a shadow of a right” to know it.(186) When the marriage is fixed for an earlier date, to suit the convenience of Sir Percy, Marian rebels .”My tongue burns to tell your uncle that he and Sir Percival are not to have it all their own way,.” she cries. (Collins 202) She urges Laura not to agree to the earlier date, but Laura demurs, saying Sir Percy would have fresh cause for complaint. Marian cries, “Who cares for his causes of complaint? No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women.”, adding that men were the enemies of the innocence and peace of women. Strong words indeed, from a character of a Victorian novel.! Unlike other heroines of the Victorian novel, Marian is adventurous and can take a risk. She decides to listen to the secret discussion between the baronet and Count Fosco and does not hesitate to climb on to the roof of the veranda , braving rain , to overhear their conversation .She gets caught in the rain and becomes very ill .Later , she goes to the lunatic asylum where her sister is confined, and acts immediately to secure her escape from the place. She does not hesitate to liquidate all her meagre assets to get enough money to bribe the nurse who helps Laura to escape. In this she shows knowledge of financial matters which was the prerogative of men of that time.. Collins had a dislike for social conventions. Marian Halcombe is a triumph of his imagination and characterization. With her firm , masculine mouth with a suggestion of a moustache and her swarthy complexion, Marian is the opposite of the popular heroine of the times. In her boldness, her decisiveness , and her risk taking tendency, she is a rebel .There seems to be a hint of lesbianism too- the sisters kissing on the mouth and the excessive sorrow they feel at parting with each other, point to that. Flaubert’s Emma is a rebel in another sense. Belonging to the bourgoisie, she is always hankering for the good things of life. In his impeccable style, Flaubert writes about the frustrations of a middle class wife of the time, who flouts convention to find sexual gratification in extra marital affairs. Madame Bovary is a seminal work which depicts realism. Emma, although intelligent, lacks the critical thinking and analyzing capacities of Collins’ Marian. She observes minute details like the dresses people wear, but she does not judge the characters of the people she trusts. She has hardly any friends. She lives in a world of romantic fantasy. When ordinary little things no longer make her happy, she resolves to find happiness elsewhere. She is a rebel against the smug, self-satisfied and undistinguished life of the bourgeoisie. Set in the period of social self righteousness and oppression of women , both The Woman In White and Madame Bovary represent female rebellion against gender discrimination which was practiced at that time. Works Cited Collins,Wilkie. The Woman in White Penguin Books Ltd. Middlesex. 1974 Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary Wilco Publishing House. Bombay. 2004 Symons,Julian. “Introduction”. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins . Penguin Books Ltd. Middlesex 1974. Read More