The Changing Role of Women

Paper Summary:

The paper examines the role of the protagonists in Kate Chopin's "The Awakening", Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter", Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's "Frankenstein". The paper shows how each author writes of the realities of women's lives in the 19th century, which, for the most part, were unfulfilled and controlled by the men around them. The paper highlights how the status of women evolved throughout the 19th century.

From the Paper:

"Edna Pontellier is a new type of heroine in 19th century fiction. She is truly "awakening" and realizing there is more to life than the roles assigned to women of the time. Chopin writes, "In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her" (Chopin 16). She illustrates how women all over the country were looking at life differently, and how they had evolved during the 19th century, from little more than domestic servants to educated women who were seeking meaning and fulfillment to their lives, even if it meant leaving the home to find them."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Chopin, Kate. The Awakening, and Other Stories. Ed. Knights, Pamela. Oxford: Oxford University, 2000.
• Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wall-Paper." The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women's Writings. Ed. Glynis Carr. Fall 1999. 9 May 2008.< http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr/19cUSWW/CPG/TYW.html >
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. George Parsons Lathrop (Riverside Edition), 12 vols. Boston, 1890.
• Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein Or, the Modern Prometheus. New York: Collier Books, 1961.

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