Women and Society in Literature

Paper Summary:

Novelists reflect the prevailing views of their society, even when they disagree with those ideas. The way society views women can be discerned in the novels "The End of the Affair" by Graham Greene, "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence and "The Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys. The paper shows that gender is used as one of many elements that order society and when novelists question this element, it is because they believe it is based on a false view of the issue and that it limits both men and women in their interactions and their ability to achieve.

From the Paper:

"D.H. Lawrence's portrait of a woman in Lady Chatterley's Lover also sets the female against the social order. Added to this, he suggests that female nature is being stifled by that order for purposes of its own. Further, Lawrence suggests that women represent and seek out in others a certain naturalness, a primal sexuality, that contrasts with the abstract and cerebral. Lady Chatterley has bowed to the social pressures of her time and married Sir Clifford. He has retired to his estate after the end of the war, a shattered and impotent man. He is convinced only of his own superiority to the working-class people on his estate and elsewhere. Clifford has achieved a popular success with the stories he writes. In effect, Clifford gives his wife permission to conceive a child by another man, since he is impotent and has no desire for sex. However, he assumes that his wife will select someone of the same social class."

More papers on Women and Society in Literature:

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• Essay # 54512 : "Women's Inequality in Literature"

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