Some Aspect of Early Victorian Period in John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women - Essay Example

Mrs. Mallard, the main character of the story is told that her husband has died in a train crash. With this information she sits throughout the story and moves forward in her life at least in her mind. The reader is told that Mrs. Mallard has a heart condition in the beginning of the story. Mrs. Mallard describes her plight with her husband. She cannot talk about anything she wants to talk about, she gets ignored and she has to mind her place. Mrs. Mallard resolves herself that she is finally free and she goes through a shift in her consciousness and decides what she will do next.

Unfortunately at the end of the story she finds that her husband did not die in the train crash and her only way out now is to have a heart attack and die; which she does at the end. The short story does show how she was expected to listen to him and do what he said which supports what Mill says. An interesting point is that women today are not much different from women then although they have worked hard towards getting a voice. Kuhl describes spinsterhood during this time and the fact that women were to have "high moral standards" and that they were to adhere to "strict rules of conduct in marriage and courtship.

" Specifically she states: Based on high moral standards, strict rules of conduct in marriage and courtship, and a public lifestyle that would reflect pious dignity, women of the Middle Class were carefully conditioned and expected to live up to a specific code of behavior. The ultimate goal of which was marriage. It became the duty of every woman of the Middle Class to marry and produce children, preferably boys to inherit the newfound status and wealth of the class (par. 3). This statement creates an image of slavery for women of this time period because they were more breeding stock than part of a marriage.

They were expected to do only what the man said and which is