The Changing Role of Women in Terms of Pieces of Literature - Coursework Example

The Changing Role of Women For centuries, women have been relegated to the role of the submissive, the weak and the powerless. Within medieval society, they were permitted into the fields and orchards because of the necessity of an extra pair of hands for the survival of the family; however, an important mark of distinction and wealth was in having the woman remain in the home. This remained an important element of society through the Victorian period and well into the twentieth century. With the advent of the machine and the production line in the 1800s, more and more Americans were moving to the cities to seek work, bringing the women in from the fields on the farms to the kitchens and family rooms of the middle class. This emerging middle class gave birth to what has since been referred to as the Cult of the True Woman, coined first by Barbara Welter in the mid-1960s (1966), a set of ideas and beliefs regarding the proper structure of the quintessential American family. By the time the Victorian era reached America, the ideal middle class life was firmly established as consisting of a father going off to work and a mother who stayed at home and reared the children. “The onset of industrialization at the beginning of the nineteenth century highlighted differences among women just as it exacerbated those between men and women workers” (Kessler-Harris, 1991). Widows, single women and others flocked to the mill towns of New England, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey attracted by the relatively high wages that could be earned in the factories, but even this began to change as the factory owners began working to reduce costs, lowering wages and demanding more work. “In 1870, 60 percent of all female workers were engaged in some aspect of domestic service and another 25 percent earned their livings in factories and workshops. Except for janitorial work, factory jobs were off-limits to black women. As late as 1900, when the proportion of white women in domestic service had dropped below 50 percent, most women of color supported themselves and their families with various forms of domestic service. Others participated in the agricultural work that continued to sustain the majority of black families” (Kessler-Harris, 1991). At the same time, the more prosperous married women were prevented from holding any kind of job, instead expected to uphold the traditional feminine values of piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. However, as shown in novels of the period such as Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and novels written reflecting this period such as Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple, these roles began changing as women began resisting their constraints and expanding their social roles. Virginia Woolf’s novel was written in 1927, just as ideas about women were beginning to change, encouraged by the beliefs of Catherine Beecher and Francis Willard, each of whom demonstrated for women how they could work from with this Cult of the True Woman to effect greater societal change and opened up lines of communication for other women to follow. “Both journalism and theater … gave women access to worlds where they were not subject to the limits imposed on the self by True Womanhood” (Roberts, 2002: 153). Woolf illustrates this power of art to transcend the boundaries of her age within her novel. She does this through the portrayal of two major pieces of artwork within the story. The first to appear is Lily’s painting of the family, which is completed throughout a long segment of the book. This is not a typical profession for a woman and is repeatedly called into question because of this, yet Lily’s painting manages to convey a unique style and expression that transcends the male-oriented traditional approach. The other piece of artwork used in the novel to depict the changing roles of women is Rose’s fruit plate, which, because it is centered on the concept of creating food, falls well within the bounds of acceptable feminine activity, while the artistry of which is seen to be appreciated only by women. This simple fact manages to convey the importance of women’s vision in creating a society that works for the best of all. Lily’s painting is in a process of evolution throughout the novel, introduced within the first 30 pages and transitioning throughout in bits and pieces as the painting takes on Lily’s perceptions of the world in the novel. Her decision to paint in bold colors and sharp lines is in stark contrast to the “pale, elegant, semi-transparent” images that were then in fashion as established by the male artist Paunceforte (32). To remain true to her vision, it was necessary to paint the color that she perceived in all its boldness, all its truthfulness and all its hardness. “Then beneath the color there was the shape” (32). Lily doesn’t seem to worry so much about capturing the soft curves and visual portrayal of her subject as was recommended by the male school of artistry, depicting Mrs. Ramsey instead as a purple triangle as an expression of her own sense of reality. She is told by Charles Tansley before the novel even opens that women can’t paint and is nervous about allowing men to see the painting for these reasons. She realizes that most men will be unable to understand that this is not intended to depict the standard conception of reality, but is instead seeking after a deeper truth. In the end, however, it doesn’t make any difference whether her painting is good or not, the ‘reality’ is that Lily was able, through her art, to capture the essence of the family as she perceives it simply by being engaged in the creation process, thus exposing, in relation to the other characters of the novel, the subjective nature of reality outside of the family circle. The concepts within Lily’s artwork demonstrate the truth that is portrayed throughout the novel regarding the oppositional relationships between color and beauty and the bare underlying form that Woolf sees as the difference between men and women as well as two halves of the same whole. For example, Mrs. Ramsey is seen by Lily as a vivid shade of purple. She is quiet and dignified, regal in her nature, yet it is she who continuously spreads light and love and color throughout the household and among her guests. It is her shade, in both tone and hue, which sets the mood of the home and it is she who brings balance and harmony to all, thus showing her to be essentially important to the entire composition. This is the reality of Mrs. Ramsey not only as Lily sees it, but also as Mrs. Ramsey perceives herself. Yet the color “burns on a framework of steel” (75) as Mrs. Ramsey is shaped by the man she married and the man she colors. This, too, is reality as Lily sees it and as Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey perceive themselves from time to time and as Woolf demonstrates within the plot of the novel as the essential give and take of the male/female relationship that can only be released through the free expression of both genders. Mr. Ramsey is the hard line and the crisp angle. His shape brings a certain type of balance as well, contributing to the overall structure of Mrs. Ramsey just as much as Mrs. Ramsey herself establishes her own colors. These concepts are carried throughout the book as Mr. Ramsey is continually shown to be dependent upon Mrs. Ramsey for comfort, love and a brightening color and Mrs. Ramsey depends upon her husband and sons for a structural framework. While he believes she depends on him and she believes he depends on her, Lily’s painting represents yet a third view of reality in that they each complete each other. Another illustrative piece of artwork that reveals the subjective view of reality is the fruit centerpiece that Rose has created for her mother’s dinner party. Again, the brilliant yellow and purple colors emerge regarding this platter of fruit first as it is noticed by Mrs. Ramsey. “Rose’s arrangement of the grapes and pears, of the horny pink-lined shell, of the bananas, made her think of a trophy fetched from the bottom of the sea, of Neptune’s banquet” (146). In this presentation, Woolf symbolizes the ‘treasure’ of the female vision as well as the failure of men to fully appreciate it to their detriment. Mrs. Ramsey sees entire worlds of fantasy coming to light before her eyes, not only of mythical scenes of bliss and joy, but of peaceful vistas through which one might explore for hours within the fruit platter which has become, to her, a work of art. Mr. Augustus Carmichael’s view, on the other hand, is presented at the same time through hard, short lines that focus primarily upon masculine action rather than soft poetry. “His eyes focused on the same plate of fruit, plunged in, broke off a bloom there, a tassel here, and returned, after feasting, to his hive” (146). Thus, it is revealed that Mr. Carmichael sees the fruit platter, realistically, as delicious food that he wishes to eat while Mrs. Ramsey sees it, also realistically, as a piece of art. Reality is subjective, but in realizing this, both Mrs. Ramsey and Mr. Carmichael have shared a moment in which both views were acknowledged as equally important although different. While Virginia Woolf’s demonstration of the subjective nature of art is divided primarily along the lines of gender definitions, this is a line that was well understood within her community and that was effective in accomplishing its job of illustrating how neither division was greater than or lesser than the other, merely complementary. Just as in the dual perception of a bowl of fruit as a piece of art and an offering of food depicted in the realities seen by Mrs. Ramsey and Mr. Carmichael are equally and simultaneously valid, so are the vivid colors and abstract presentations of Lily as much about the people she paints as real as the semi-transparent likenesses she is consistently compared with. Her view of reality presents everything as a blending of elements, a color that is the essence of Mrs. Ramsey blending with a shape that is the essence of Mr. Ramsey curled up in the corner quiet and deep with a child in her lap. Lines and colors merging and blending with the activity and life of the moment blurred and distorted by the passage of time demonstrate the divergence of realities that at a moment, this was true while a moment later, that was true, yet each were true in the painting’s context. Finally, Lily separates from her painting with a vertical line down the center with Woolf’s emphasis that Lily has “had my vision” (310). The painting was not made for anyone else, just as the fruit platter wasn’t made to exist forever in its artistic form. They were creations of the moment, expressions of an idea as it existed for that person at that time and its value was not in the finished product, but in the fact that it was a unique view of reality that had been recognized and fully experienced. In this age of tremendous social change particularly as regards the female gender, Woolf was still required to play it safe in depicting the feminist notions of the day. More than 50 years later and well into the women’s liberation movement, which has seen its share of ups and downs through the period, Alice Walker brought forward her novel The Color Purple, investigating the black American woman’s experience within this same time period from a post-Civil Rights perspective. The main character, Celie, is presented as a black woman heavily oppressed, trained early to be subservient and completely conventional in her ideas as a result. Unlike the women of Woolf’s novel, though, who seem to realize they’re on the verge of something but don’t really cross over, by the end of the novel, Walker’s Celie has become confident, powerful and successful business woman growing old in the love of her family. This progression occurs in a much more obvious progression than the subtle movement of Woolf’s characters. Celie begins the novel in poverty of spirit and opportunity. As a young black girl living on a 1930s cotton farm in the South, she is isolated from the rest of her community and immediately placed on the bottom rung of society in that she is black and she is female. This means she is oppressed by the white people as well as oppressed by the black men. At 14 years old, her mother is already worn out from life and soon dies while Celie becomes her father’s new sexual and emotional outlet, a mere object upon which he can vent. While her emotions of guilt, shame and despair as the two children he fathers on her are taken away “to be with God” are revealed in her nearly illiterate diary, these never come close to being considered by those around her. Celie’s situation in life doesn’t seem as if it will ever change much when she is forced to marry a widower who is at least as abusive as her father had been until one of his sons decides to marry Sofia, a woman who constantly fights with her husband. She tells Celie, “to tell the truth, you remind me of my mama. She under my daddy thumb. Naw, she under my daddy foot. Anything he say, goes. She never say nothing back. She never stand up for herself” (Walker 43). With this idea rankling in her soul and Sofia’s example before her, Celie receives another unexpected boost from her husband’s lover, Shug. Shug has been a successful singer before she came to live with the family and this independence fascinates Celie, who had never considered that a woman might truly be able to make her own decisions. Through Shug, Celie learns that her sister has been alive for all these years, that she has been happy and that she has found the two children Celie lost when she herself was still a child. Nettie is now both aunt and step-mother to these children and, by the end of the novel, will bring them back to America to know their mother. The affair Celie has with Shug further provides her with increased confidence in her own strength and the power to face down her abusive husband to start a life of her own. At the dinner table one night, she tells him, “You a lowdown dog is what’s wrong, I say. It’s time to leave you and enter Creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need” (207). In subsequent action, Celie leaves the state, starts her own business and becomes very successful. By the end of the novel, she has reunited with her husband, who has dramatically reformed, takes up an equal or perhaps slightly superior position to him within the home and settles down to enjoy her success. Both of these novelists investigated the importance of equality in the development of a beneficial society, not just for the benefit of women, but for the betterment of all. Woolf, writing within the early stages of the social change that has led to today’s modern conception of womanhood, reveals the careful line women walked as they attempted to change their status as subservient and oppressed to equal and independent without crossing the boundaries so far that they would become isolated and unacceptable to the rest of their society. Rather than addressing this topic head-on, Woolf opted to illustrate the various ways in which women and men, working together, could bring about a more balanced, harmonious and beneficial world for everyone through the use of artistic vision, the avenue many women were then embracing as a means of acceptable social interaction. Walker had the advantage of working from a position well-removed from these early days of suffrage and speaking from well beyond the drastic changes of the Civil Rights movement and further women’s liberation efforts. Thus, she is able to portray her male characters in a much more violent light as well as depict women capable of living independently without the interference of men. Indeed, far from the mutually supportive environment depicted by Woolf, women in Walker’s world would be much better off without the influence of men in their lives at all. However, she doesn’t go so far as to suggest a return to some Amazonian society in which there is a complete reversal of social status. Instead, Walker chooses to place both genders, like Woolf, upon relatively equal footing by the end of the novel, each respecting the other and peacefully sewing together on the porch. While women are seen to have moved forward in their push for equal rights and respect, Walker obviously has a much greater latitude in allowing her women to move beyond the women of Woolf’s story in power, confidence, independence and opportunity. References Kessler-Harris, Alice. (1991). “Women and the Work Force.” The Reader’s Companion to American History. Eric Foner & John A. Garraty (Eds.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Roberts, Mary Louise. (Spring 2002). “True Woman Revisited.” Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 14, N. 1: 150-55. Walker, Alice. (1982). The Color Purple. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company. Welter, Barbara. (1966). “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly. Vol. 18, N. 2, P. 1, pp. 151-74. Woolf, Virginia. (1955). To the Lighthouse. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company. Read More