Contents
Abstract
1. Working Women in the Books of Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf
2. Wives and Mothers in the Books of Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf
3. The Knowing of Women in the Books of Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf
References
Introduction
Female social functions have changed dramatically from Victorian age group (1837-1901) to modern day (from twentieth century for this), and literature would represent in a vibrant way the connection between women and their eras. Writers such as Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf are especially important on the books and the contemporaries in Victorian and modern age. As the female writers, which are not respected in their generations, Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf have more closeness and concern to the women in their society.
Before and at the beginning of nineteenth century, a style of femininity was the 'perfect lady, ' which was inherited as a Victorian ideal of women. Family and morality were the base of Victorian modern culture, and young girls were all trained to send to the authority and matrimony (Vicinus 1972). The concept of 'The Angel in the House, ' that was referred to the embodiment of Victorian women, was prevail in the Victorian modern culture. As a result, women in Victorian Era were thought to be incompatible and excluded in many professions. Showalter(1999) points out that the first professional activities of Victorian women are either in the home or in womanhood. Through the nineteenth century, however, the prevalence of education related to the gradual growing incidence of working women. Besides, by the struggles of people and feminists, the obstructions to the access into professions for ladies, whose exclusion and incompatibility in work had been debated, were removed initially of twentieth century. (Swindells 1985) Meawhile, the idea of morality and family was highly suspected by the critics and feminists, who dispute that there is no 'The Angel in the House. ' Within a hundred years, not only female social functions but also feminine awareness had been emancipated from restraint, though some conventional notions got still continued to be.
The purpose of this paper is to compare feminine social functions in Charlotte Brontë's Victorian fiction and Virginia Woolf's modern books in conditions of three aspects: working women, wives and moms, and awareness of women. Women and professions in Brontë and Woolf's books will be compared and contrasted first of all. Then the similarities and difference of married women their work may also be examined. Finally, how feminine consciousness is portrayed in their work and its development from Victorian to modern age will be mentioned.
1. Working Women in the Literature of Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf
1. 1 Similarities
Nineteenth century is an essential period for modern day because of the gender attitude and practices and professional composition which people inherited were developed. Besides, despite to the fact that the entry of Victorian women with professions had not happened in significant numbers (Swindells 1985), the thought of professionalism and reliability in Victorian era also stimulates the ideas of the modern day novelist, Charlotte Brontë and the present day copy writer, Virginia Woolf. Because of the fact that ladies have gained more usage of education because the middle nineteenth century, both Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf have positive position on women occupations because "women feel in the same way men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts around their brothers do. " (Brontë 1985:141)
Women and professions are offered in Charlotte Brontë's novels. The best prevailing job for girls in the middle-classes in Victorian Age is governess, as Charlotte Brontë's Jane, the well-educated heroine, in Jane Eyre. To quote from Françoise (1974:155), "she is totally free in her work, that her relationships with her pupil Adele are good, she deplores Adele' French coquetry and frivolity. Mr. Rochester has enough catalogs in his catalogue for her teaching methods. " In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë depicts the backdrop of an governess' life in her employer's family.
In Virginia Woolf's point of view, it was possible that women are maintained from academies and institutes, but women can't be forbidden from using the pen, paper and writing table. Katharine Hilbery in Virginia Woolf's All the time is the implication of her agreement of female professionals. During the daytime, Katharine helps her mom write the biography of her grandfather Richard Alardyce, who's a well-known poet, and she develops her interest during the night. In addition, Katharine Hilbery is likely to be a article writer to inherit the expertise of her family real estate. Virginia Woolf uses Katharine as her idea of a feminist: matrimony is not the sole destination for women.
As the occurrence of working women has increased, freelance writers as Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf create their own heroines concerning the relation between female and professions. Though they belong to the two years that female capacities are often denied, Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf promote the same point that girls can do as effective as men in vocations. However, there are some different development of their books which signify Victorian and modern ideologies of women who have jobs, and they would be discussed in the following section.
1. 2 Differences
In the overdue Victorian age, the conventional social assignments of women, who learn to demand their own welfare and look for more constructive jobs in society, attained great issues (Vicinus 1972). Therefore, there has been a growth of the number of women who've occupations since Victorian get older. In the literary work of Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf, there are different implications and stances of working women's last outcome.
Women in Charlotte Brontë's fiction are influenced by the ideology that relationship is the ultimate goal for ladies in Victorian years. Françoise highlights that Jane in Jane Eyre, eventually ends up by marrying after being indie and free for a while, and that she offers up the task of a tutor and looks forward to the moral satisfaction. Jane also reveals that Victorian wedded women in working-class were still minority. Another heroine in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, Shirley Keeldar, who longs for pursuing an occupation, could not stray from the home model eventually:
"Caroline, " demanded Neglect Keeldar abruptly, "not wish you had a profession--- a investor?"
"I wish it fifty times a day. As it is, I often think about what I came into the globe for. I long to have something absorbing and compulsory to fill up my mind and hands, also to occupy my thoughts. "
"Can labour alone make a human being happy?"
"No; but it can give varieties of pain, and prevent us from breaking our hearts with a single tyrant master-torture. Besides, successful labour has its recompense; a vacant, weary, lonesome hopeless life has nothing. " (Brontë 1977:235)
This passage presents the confrontation of love and professions in Victorian years. Though Caroline wants to truly have a richer life by working, professions on her behalf still cannot be prior to love and marriage. The function of work is to "prevent us from breaking our hearts with a single tyrant master-torture. " As Vicnus (1972:xi) described, 'many young women suffered the pangs of unrequited or bogus love, as defined by Caroline. '
On the other hands, Virginia Woolf cases that ladies must be financially independent to develop their occupations. In AN AREA of your respective Own, Virginia Woolf especially points out the difficulties that ladies as vocational freelance writers have found. The imaginary heroine, the accomplished Shakespeare's sister, is neglected and rejected by the population. If she's the area of her own, her imagination would be valued.
In Professions for Women, Virginia Woolf states her opinions after the start of women's liberation from work in early on twentieth century:
The whole position, as I see it---here in this hall surrounded by women training for the very first time in history I know not how many different professions-is one of incredible interest and importance. You have won rooms of your own in the house hitherto exclusively owned or operated by men. You are able, though not without great labour and work, to pay the lease. Your are gaining your five hundred pounds per annum. But this freedom is only a newbie; the room is your own, but it continues to be bare. It should be furnished; it should be decorated; it must be shared. How are you going to furnish it, how will you decorate it? With whom are you going to talk about it, and upon what conditions? (Woolf 1942:153)
In the procedure of earning the entry in to the work, women experienced acquired their own rooms and five hundred pounds each year, which Virginia Woolf thought to be necessary. She considered occupations for girls as 'amazing interest and importance. ' The 'room, ' professional work, was no longer possessed only by men. Finally, women got your choice to 'provide, ' 'decorate, ' and 'reveal' the room. In sum, ladies in the start of modern age got strived for their rights to obtain the usage of the occupations, the innovation and great improvement in female background.
2. Wives and Mothers in the Literature of Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf
2. 1 Similarities
Since the majority of the books of Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf explore the relation between woman and their modern-day era, marriage barely does not be neglected. Calder(1976:59) states, "marriage [in Victorian age]was the center of sociable life and communal aspiration. " In the first twentieth century, society still remains the domesticity and morality inherited from Victorian get older. Thus, female roles in the fiction of both Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf inevitably follow the conventions of the thought of marriage.
Marriage is a interpersonal success in Victorian age group, and being unmarried is definitely the failing of women's lives. In Jane Eyre, Jane's matrimony with Rochester is home, with her total commitment to her partner. Jane is in the public doctrine a Victorian female should be all specialized in her husband and children, which her responsibility is to give a comfortable and domestic life for her mate In the side, Caroline in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley discovers an unmarried girl is doomed to be the victim of contemporary society, as shown by Miss Mann and Miss Ainsley. Solo women are in the sacrificed cultural status, similar to the homeless and unemployed people. (Françoise 1974)
Similarly, Virginia Woolf's women are "cast in an extremely traditional mould" and "still limited to a 'female sphere'"(Stubbs1979:233). Mrs. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse leads an well-ordered life and creates the tranquility not only be giving birth to children but also by giving a peaceful life to them. In fact, the stability of the family is based on the type endowing with life, the mom. In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa is the hostess arranging the party in her house, and she actually is also the sign of the natural connection to the convention and world despite of the fact that her spouse and her are an unequal couple. (Marder 1968)
In total, the ideas of marriage in the ages that participate in Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf are similar; that is to say, wives and maternity are the basis of stability and the main of domesticity. Nevertheless, Poovey (1988) has mentioned that the Victorian subordination of 1 to another is always unstable, and the inequality can make clear the emergence of the contrary, the various movement of feminists. The change of the framework and the ideology of family has implied in Virginia Woolf's later book, Three Guineas.
2. 2 Differences
Marriage in Charlotte Brontë's literature is different from Virginia Woolf's in conditions of the women's subordination. In Victorian age, men control over women in marriage and matrimony, both which are recommended in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. However, this example has transformed in modern age, when masculine ability has gradually eroded. Rather than residing in the masculine domination, people begin to be suspicious of the worthiness of marriage in modern day. Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas has indicated the decadence of family.
In Jane Eyre, the theme of mastery of male ability can often be seen. In Jane's years as a child, she actually is demanded to call John Reed "my expert. " When she builds up the relationship with St. John and Rochester, she insists on her personal will and freedom. However, she expresses her have difficulty and inability to stay away from the domination of St. John: "By levels, he purchased a certain affect over me that needed away my liberty of head: his reward and notice were more restraining than his indifference" (Brontë 1977:423). As for Rochester, he completely masters Jane, not only as an company but also a guy. Jane says, "for a moment I am beyond my own mastery" (Brontë 1977:272). She cannot avoid the interest of male domination from Rochester, even though she tries to flee from him. In the long run, the rebellious and ambitious Jane submits to her master, Rochester, and finally becomes "absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. " (Calder1976)
In Virginia Woolf's judgment, unlike Charlotte Brontë, relationship to women is a way to show subordination in masculine culture. Once women are committed, they lose their self-reliance, self-identity and the relationship with contemporary society. In Mrs. Dalloway, it suggests that it's likely that women will be the prisoners in marriage; nonetheless, Clarissa, the protagonist, still can feel at ease and find a means out in matrimony by arranging a party at home. May (1981:134) statements, "Mrs. Dalloway is approximately degrees and types of relatedness and humans one to the other, varying from unhappy madness to self-compromising sociability. " Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas is dependant on her observation of the population. In the beginning, the Victorian family (the Pargiters) seems stable but gradually falls into decadence. Eventually the users of the three family have been segregated, and many of them continued to be unmarried or even isolated. At the end if the story, the children and grandchildren accumulate in a celebration, which indicates that point has taken the revolution and breakdown to traditional Victorian modern culture.
From the literary work of Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf, we can uncover the development of the thought of relationship from Victorian to modern day. Virginia Woolf, as a lady copy writer, examines and criticizes women's role in matrimony, which can be an ultimate goal for Victorian women.
3. The Awareness of Women in the Books of Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf
3. 1 Similarities
More careers provided for women were the implication of female's knowing of the value of economic freedom. Therefore, impartial heroines could be seen in Charlotte Brontë's literary work in Victorian era (Vicinus 1972). Besides, they became the foreshadow of Virginia Woolf's modern literature. Independent heroines are often portrayed in their fiction.
In Charlotte Brontë's books, Shirley and Jane Eyre, the outspoken main woman protagonists are the models of women freedom. Shirley Keeldar, who identifies herself as 'a girl, then one more, ' is an economically independent female in Shirley. Furthermore, Shirley also shows that the dependent relation is always unpredictable and contributes to misery. Like the workers with their owners, wives are maltreated and disregarded. In Jane Eyre, Jane won't succumb to the truth, and it could be seen from her rebellion in child years to her quest for knowledge and love in womanhood. Jane is not satisfied with the feeling of confinement: "I QUICKLY longed for a ability of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, locations full of life I desired more of practical experience more of intercourse with my kind"(Brontë 1977:140).
Françoise(1974) also points out that Jane does not refuse her love for Rochester which she confesses and attentively listens to his depiction of his account, consequently of her refusal to the traditional feminine assignments: reliance, modesty and shyness. Corresponding to Showalter (1999), Jane's jogging away from Rochester is her self-preservation. In Jane Eyre, as cited by Showalter (1999), Jane instructs herself, "I care for myself. The more solitary, a lot more friendless, a lot more unsustained I am, the greater I will value myself" (Brontë 1977:344). On her behalf, action is often the best way to self-reliance. Françoise (1974) stated that Charlotte Brontë's heroines displayed the feminine disobedience to conventional guidelines and the liberty of the Angel in the House.
In modern age, Virginia Woolf also stated the importance of being economic impartial and having a room for one's own for women. As Virginia Woolf (1945:112) stated in A Room of your respective Own, 'the behavior of flexibility and the courage to write just what we think, then the chance will come and the dead poet who was simply Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she's so often laid down. ' If the room of your respective own is a place for the womanly conference, which provides the specialist, politics, and aggression in male world, it'll be a grave, as Clarissa's attic bedroom in Mrs. Dalloway. However, if it is a center combined with female traditions and culture; if people here make attempts to women independence, then Shakespeare's sister, the future Virginia Woolf, may appear eventually. That feminine shares the equality with guy is not a illusion (Showalter 1999). In Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Lily, a lady painter, eagerly wishes to confirm her capability to Charles Tansley, who claims that girls cannot coloring and write. She signifies the women of independence and female's desire of overtaking the gender boundary.
Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf have mentioned the female understanding and independence of these contemporary age range; however, it seems that Victorian women still fail to be segregated from domestic matrimony. The variations of Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf's heroines in conditions of female consciousness will be reviewed in the next section.
3. 2 Differences
Though both Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf have portrayed and announced their stances toward women consciousness, they have got endowed them with different characteristics and destinies suggesting the traditional notions in Victorian and modern day. In Brontë's books, however, female tasks ultimately cannot steer clear of the bond of matrimony, which is recognized as the destination of Victorian women. On the other hand, Woolf's women would not always follow this routine. Furthermore, she's described the flaw of Brontë's fiction.
In spite of the fact that most of the heroines in Brontë's novels are ardent, restless, and often contradictory in their interior world, they are generally tied to matrimony at the end of the storyline. Both Brontë's Jane Eyre and Shirley provide the evidence of convention that Virginia Woolf disorders. Love and matrimony are significant substances in the literature in nineteenth century. In Jane Eyre, Jane is ambitiously wanted to follow the vastness of knowledge. In the meantime, like Shirley Keeldar in Shirley, she can only just contemplate marrying a guy who can be her grasp (Calder 1976). Likewise, the two heroines in Shirley, Caroline and Shirley, search for self-reliance; however, both of them search for ideal mates as well. The routine of Jane Eyre and Shirley is comparable to some degree: those female protagonists have no choice but being dominated by men at last.
In twentieth century, Woolf's All the time shows that women's awareness has challenged the cultural notion concerning feminine roles which marriage to women is not the one solution. Though being in the issue of the fact that if she should break the convention and disobey the expectation from her family, Katharine Hilbery can decide her own future. Besides, in Virginia Woolf's A Room of your respective Own, she argues that Charlotte Brontë's writing inherits masculine style, "It was a phrase that was unsuited for a woman's use. Charlotte Brontë, with all her marvelous gift idea for prose, stumbled and dropped with this clumsy tool in her hands" (Woolf 2000:77). Virginia Woolf respect that books has been approved by men since historical time; thus, masculine phrases are unavoidable even in women's literary work. Showalter (1999) has portrayed a similar view that feminine writers had been deprived of the vocabulary of their own style and the knowing of ambition, and their deprivation possessed lengthened from Victoria's reign to the twentieth century. The delicacy and fastidiousness of Woolf's terms is an expansion of this feminized style.
Conclusion
Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf's portrayal of female characters had mirrored the female interpersonal roles in Victorian and modern day. In the move between nineteenth and twentieth century, the women's ideology and the social norms had changed, while some of these still have been inherited. They were presented in Brontë and Woolf's literature in a various and fascinating way.
To compare women in the literary work of Brontë and Woolf, the female roles in occupations and matrimony and their understanding were chosen. Increasingly more women had possessed their vocations, which intended that that they had the economic self-reliance; however, Victorian women still could give up it for relationship. Besides, it was uncovered that while domesticity have been respected in both Victorian and modern day, people gradually acquired found the flaw of the subordination of wives. For women's interior world, self-discovery and thirst for self-reliance were both considered in Brontë and Woolf's books. Unlike Brontë, Woolf got emphasized the significance of women's own income and female language. It is concluded that female had gained more flexibility in modern age and that Virginia Woolf strongly supported the idea of gender equality and was positive toward the future women status.
