"The Old Nurse's Story"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Elizabeth Gaskell's short story "The Old Nurse's Story" from the Victorian period seems to challenge some of the predominate social norms of its era regarding gender roles; however, it does more to reinforce such roles than it does to dispute them. The author points out that the man is portrayed as a strong, silent type, one of the most archetypal cliches of the modern era. The paper relates that the woman in this book focuses on one of the oldest stereotypes regarding women., the maternal instinct, and the female characters are described by their physical attributes and emotional fragility.

From the Paper:

"In a similar fashion, the gender roles of women are also dealt with quite extensively in "The Old Nurse's Story." There is, for instance, the fact that there is almost a fixation on the description of women's physical attributes throughout the course of the narrative. Of course, good fiction is always concerned with the depiction of details to heighten the sense of scene and character. This particular work, however, seems unusually hung up on using terms such as "such a beauty." That repetitive cycle of describing women as either beautiful, or not, seems to be a furtherance of the stereotype that one of the primary goals for a woman of the age was to be physically attractive."

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