Marginalization Of Noncontalism In The Shining Houses By Alice Munro

As Annie matures into a young woman, the pressure of her community’s gender roles grows with her until she no longer can escape it. Firstly, the novel describes the female role in society as being solely domestic, Annie’s mother a prime example of this. Her lifestyle revolves around her husband, everyday heating the water for

Some young girls were beginning to be taught to stay away from the kitchen so that they wouldn’t become trapped into being a housewife. (Reader responses to a look back at the August 1976 issue of Good Housekeeping.) Although the reader doesn’t know what social status the mother in the poem is, the reader can understand that the mother does stay at home.

In 1854 Fanny Fern published what was to become not only her most successful works, but one of the most popular and enduring works of English literature during the Antebellum period: Ruth Hall; A Domestic Tale of the Present Time. Though the title – especially to a modern reader – does little to convey the level of thoughtful and heady critique that Fern expounds through this book, it is actually is a strong indictment of the feminine position as the subordinate housewife, mother, and societal agent. However, despite this criticism, it does not seem that Fanny Fern is critical of the institutions of marriage or motherhood as a whole. Her critique is based on the limiting effects of the conventional roles into which wives and mothers fall, and the deleterious consequences these roles have on the personal development and self-actualization of the women who enter into them. Therefore, it is not the institution of marriage or motherhood that Fern is critical of, but rather the expectations and limitations that society assigns to the women who assume these roles.

“The pressures of the Cold War made strong nuclear families with breadwinning fathers and domesticated mothers symbols of a healthy nation.” In the film, Edna Turnblad serves to symbolize the traditional image of the ideal American woman housewife. This is evident by the content of her stereotypical conversations. For instance, when Edna Turnblad meets Motormouth Maybelle for the first time, she explains that she could not stay for long because she left the iron on back at home. Although Maybelle comes from a completely different racial background than her, she automatically sympathizes with Mrs. Turnblad because as a woman she personally understands what it is like to leave the iron on.

Consequences, however, need not be always negative. Angela Carter’s short story ‘The Company of Wolves’ explores belonging and consequences of belonging through the reinterpretation of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale. In Carter’s version, the Red Riding Hood character has agency unparalleled in any other telling of the tale. In the climax and resolution of the short story, the text is obviously heavily influenced by second-wave feminism (the text was written in 1979, over a decade since Germaine Greer’s groundbreaking ‘The Female Eunuch’).

Although charlotte Perkins Gilman’s the Yellow Wallpaper and Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette have different perspective on women’s ability to take space in private versus public spheres, they both have the same cautionary tale on the policing of women’s identity. This commonality tells us that this policing can create the presumption that women have ‘hysteria’ thus justifying men’s control on women’s bodies and identities.

Molly, who is an unwed mother, shows the struggles she faces regarding her sickness and her father-less motherhood. She has to live with the social stigma of being an unwed mother as well as her financial instability due to her sickness. Betty Lou however is also faced with the social stigma of her perceived status as an un-wed mother. The way Mr. Montgomery and Mr. Monty react towards Betty Lou’s new status is striking. Mr. Montgomery and Mr. Waltham react in separate ways. Mr. Montgomery seems saddened by her status and offers to ‘forgive’ her for what she has done. Whereas Mr. Waltham seems aghast by the presence of a child. His perception of Betty Lou drastically changes to such a point where he offers her a “left handed deal” as Betty Lou describes. Betty Lou was of course highly upset by Mr. Waltham offering her everything aside from the single thing Betty Lou wanted,

James’ novella centers around a young governess who is in charge of watching her employer’s kids at an estate in Bly. The governess’ social standing and desire to keep her job reveal the instability of jobs for women in this era. Her employer, the uncle of Miles and Flora, is a typical wealthy landowner who has “ his own town residence...but it [is] to his country home” that the governess is sent to work (James 149). It is important to note that it is perhaps the governess’ first job (Pouquette 257) and that she is still young and inexperienced (Chase 261). During the 1850’s, middle-class women were “expected to fulfill their traditional role of bearing and raising children” and that for unmarried women, serving in someone else’s home was also “acceptable” (“The Turn of the Screw” 255). The social difference between the governess and her employer and the lack of communication between the two seems to add to her desire to maintain a good relationship with him. The employer has one rule of not being bothered with what goes on in the house and when the governess begins to encounter the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, she refuses to tell him (James 208). Mrs. Grose, a servant, is the one who suggests telling him, but the governess feels “proud...to serve him and to stick to [their] terms” (James 208). Ultimately, the governess wants to stay in good standing with her employer because she possibly has no other options for jobs.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman has surprised that her writing on “The Yellow Wallpaper” that based on her experience unfortunately become one of the early feminism literature in the Victorian era. At first, her tale is regarded as a horror story because of its gothic theme. However, after the 1960s when feminism became a trending topic of women in Europe, North America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, people started to comprehend that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a feminism narrative which accidentally developed as a source for shaping the view of patriarchy and feminism characteristics in the early construction of feminism. Hooks (2004, p. 1) declared that “[p]atriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence”. As a result, patriarchy generates a gap between men and women right. This fixed gender roles which assigned by male dominated society builds discrimination. Nevertheless, women who think critically may be revolting of it and resulting in the exploration of women imprisonment, which is “a recognition of an imbalance of power between the sexes, with women in a subordinate role to men”, states Hannam (2007, p. 4). “The Yellow Wallpaper” provides the story about woman madness in response to the patriarchal structure

The play shows how differently women and men used to see duties. Men were not aware of the difficulties and hard work that a woman's life was surrounded; they gave to women little credit to the work performed at home and they hoped that they would fulfill their role as housewife with joy and without complaints. The play has a scene where the county attorney and Mrs. Hale, express their idea about the household duty of each gender. The county attorney assumes that women are exclusively responsible for household, and therefore are responsible for any lack of joy in the farmhouse. In the other hand Mrs. Hale acknowledges that although domesticity has a physical aspect, most of it comes from the emotional and mental state of the people in the home.

This novel greatly illustrates the results of labeling the role of women in society. In the world of the Cooks, females are the masters of the house—the home is their dominion. It is from the home that the women glean their sense of dignity and worth. “Farm women are proud of the fact that they can keep the house looking as though the farm stays outside” (121). In their day to day lives, these women do not have a great deal to be proud of, but the physical state of their home is a visual example of the labor that they commit. So, it is from the state of their living environment that they derive a sense of self. Similar to the men comparing

how then does the performance of gender become visible in the home of two heterosexual women? Argue that in the absence of a male the female identity becomes more fluid and neutral, due to the removal of a binary counterpoint. The main argument of this work can also be seen as a contemporary reworking of the idea that it is suffocating for a woman to be restricted to narrow gender roles, as outlined in A Room of One’s own (Woolf) and The Second Sex (de Beauvoir) and that removal from these historically constructed roles can be evidenced in the home. The demonstration of identity is more in tune with individual personality and less related to historical domestic roles of wife and mother.

Secondly, the next principle of intersectionality looks at homes as private sanctuaries where family members can feel at ease. The romanticization of this private place suggest that homes can provide a family member with a safe environment. Yet at the same time, this perspective of “home” is also being used to embody ideas of gender roles and stereotypes. While public life began to be seen as a place for masculinity (to work and provide food for the family) and private life in the household became feminine and women became to take on roles of care takers. Therefore to avoid the dangers of the public life, women were usually expected to remain at home. “Prejudice against [women's] participation in public life mounted, and [they] were excluded

The wooden floors throughout the home may also be perceived as middle class, but in reality have a more practical logic: less work to clean. Which could be a reconfiguration of domestic duty, or a logical decision for a lifestyle which simply does not have time to continually clean. Although on one hand the financial security of being able to live as a single woman outside of marriage reflects a degree of status, it also reflects social and cultural changes in female access to finance and education. A western educational privilege could be considered an enabling background reason for the females cohabiting outside of heteronormative boundaries without crossing over into homosexuality. However, this would be too simplistic, one of the occupants is of working class background and this living arrangement has not always been the case. Furthermore, with regard to inbuilt middle class markers of the space, the house has not been altered since the owner arrived. The blank “gender neutral” colours of the house offer no clues about the gender identity of the inhabitants, but they do reflect a lack of urge to feminize the colours or decoration in accordance with wide held assumptions about female taste. In terms of status, this highlights social and cultural obligations as well as capital, therefore less available time for cultivating and transforming the space. The lack of a need to express identity through material culture can be evidenced through the unfinished paint samples in the kitchen (figure 9), which shows how creativity is manifest through an active lifestyle and domestic chaos (figures 3 5 8 9 and 10 show messy surroundings), rather than the choice of material decoration of the

James’ novella centers around a young governess who is in charge of watching her employer’s kids. The governess’ social standing and desire to keep her job reveal the instability of jobs for women in this era. Her employer, the uncle of Miles and Flora, is a typical wealthy landowner who has “ his own town residence...but it [is] to his country home” that the governess is sent to work (James 149). It is important to note that it is perhaps the governess’ first job (Pouquette 257) and that she is still young and inexperienced (Chase 261). During the 1850’s, middle-class women were “expected to fulfill their traditional role of bearing and raising children” and that for unmarried women, serving in someone else’s home was also “acceptable” (“The Turn of the Screw” 255). The social difference between the governess and her employer and the lack of communication between the two seems to add to her desire to maintain a good relationship with him. The employer has one rule of not being bothered with what goes on in the house and when the