The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I February 2016 I Vol. II, Issue I I ISSN : 2395 4817

Literature and Gender

Mr. Abhinenddrasingh Brajmohansingh Thakur

Student JJT University

Jhunjhnoo. INDIA.

Abstract

Human societies have tended to assign different roles, codes of behavior and morality, and even different feelings

and thoughts to men and women. By doing so, they used the biological distinction of sex (between male and

female) to construct and enforce the social distinction of gender (between masculine and feminine). For instance,

according to 18th and 19th century English standards of femininity, middle and upper class women as opposed to

men were supposed to devote themselves almost exclusively to the domestic sphere of “hearth and home” as

daughters, sisters, wives and mothers caring for fathers, brothers, husbands and children. They were expected to

adopt a suitably modest behavior and a moral code of sexual purity and self sacrifice, and avoid having strong

desires and strong opinions, especially in opposition to the men who were seen as their ‘guardians’. Such

differences of gender roles, by affecting access to factors like education, experience, time and financial support,

have had their influence on the ways in which men and women could participate in literature as writers, readers,

critics, and arguably even as characters. Literary criticism was also for centuries dominated by men who had a

virtual monopoly over the necessary education and intellectual authority. This did not always help the

recognition of female talent: double standards were often applied to measure men’s and women’s literary output

as they were to measure their sexual behavior. We had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be

looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of

personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.

Keywords : Gender Discrimination, Mortality

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

Introduction

For centuries, human societies have tended to assign different roles, codes of behavior and morality, and

even different feelings and thoughts to men and women. By doing so, they used the biological

distinction of sex (between male and female) to construct and enforce the social distinction

of gender (between masculine and feminine). For instance, according to 18th

and 19th

century

English standards of femininity, middle and upper class women as opposed to men were supposed to

devote themselves almost exclusively to the domestic sphere of “hearth and home” as daughters, sisters,

wives and mothers caring for fathers, brothers, husbands and children. They were expected to adopt a

suitably modest behavior and a moral code of sexual purity and self sacrifice, and avoid having strong

desires and strong opinions, especially in opposition to the men who were seen as their ‘guardians’.

Such differences of gender roles, by affecting access to factors like education, experience, time and

financial support, have had their influence on the ways in which men and women could participate in

literature as writers, readers, critics, and arguably even as characters. The heroine of Jane Austen’s last

complete novel Persuasion (1818), Anne Elliot says, “Men have had every advantage of us in telling

their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands,”

and indeed until a few decades ago political, economic and cultural power rested overwhelmingly with

men in the English speaking world (and in many other cultures). Therefore, gendered approaches to

literature have often sought to counterbalance the male focus that this involved by concentrating more

strongly on women’s perspectives.

Value of gender in literary world

It is rather easy to see how education, socially acceptable experience, leisure time and financial

background are factors that determine the readership of literature. As far as education is concerned,

even upper and middle class women had serious disadvantages, not being admitted until the late

19th

century to the schools and universities which represented the highest intellectual standards. Instead,

they typically had to content themselves with a rather more limited education concentrating on moral

virtues, modern languages and the social graces of music, singing, drawing, dancing and polite

conversation. At the more basic level of literacy, women were at first similarly handicapped in

comparison with men. Female literacy levels were lower than male ones in 18th

and 19th

century

England and other many places, although by the 1840s more than half, and by 1900 almost all women in

England could sign their names in marriage registers. In addition, by the 18th

and especially the

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

19th

century, women from not only the upper class but also of the middle classes tended to have

significant free time, as well as the financial means to get access to literature through the relatively

affordable options of circulating libraries or serial publications. This resulted in an extension of the

readership of literature also among women, so that by the 1870s novelist Anthony Trollope could

declare, “Novels are in the hands of us all; from the Prime Minister down to the last appointed scullery

maid. We have them in our library, our drawing rooms, our bed rooms, our kitchens and in our

nurseries.” This increasing readership, which included large amounts of women with little or no

classical education, an ostensibly limited experience and delicate sexual modesty, in turn had its

influence on what kind of literature could seek wide popularity.

Contribution of Female Writers in Literature

Gender distinctions in education and experience have influenced the lives and works of women

authors as well. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) famously described successful playwright and novelist

(his literary rival) Eliza Haywood (1693-1756) as if her writing proceeded not from an educated and

well-regulated mind but the ignorance and dull animosity of a woman with “cow like udders and with

ox like eyes”. Several decades later, Jane Austen (1775-1817), who spent less than two years in a school

for young women (while two of her brothers went to Oxford), was ironically playing with the well-

established image of the ignorant female “scribbler” when she rejected advice on what books she should

write. Lack of a solid classical education, she suggested, deprived her of proper knowledge of “science

and philosophy” as well the “quotations and allusions” that were the privilege of masculine erudition.

As certain genres were more dependent on a formal education than others, genre and gender could be

seen to be connected. Indeed, one could argue - as George Eliot did in the 1850s - that women authors

could successfully turn to novel writing precisely because this genre, as opposed to genres like the epic,

was relatively new, with few formal rules and a short tradition almost entirely accessible in English

There was often also much suspicion about the moral consequences that could arise from the treatment

of certain subject matters as well as the publicity and financial benefits involved in female writing.

Alexander Pope applies moral double standards when he expresses special outrage at those shameless

scribblers who not only write “libelous Memoirs and Novels” but are also “for the most part of that sex,

which ought least to be capable to such malice or impudence” - that is, women. The image of

the immoral female author who capitalizes on stories of (sexual) scandal - and thus earns an independent

living which gives her a dangerous potential for licentious behavior - was the legacy of early

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

18th

century writings like Delariviere (or Mary de la Riviere) Manley’s highly popular satires of sexual

and political corruption (The Secret History of Queen Zarah, 1705, The New Atlantis, 1709) or Eliza

Haywood’s explorations of power games between genders in works like Fantomina (1725). As a

reaction to such images of ‘immodestly’ public women writers, later female authors wishing at least

formally to conform to ideals of private domestic femininity often opted for publishing

anonymously and largely refrained from to the public exposure involved in drama. The late 18th

century

novelist Frances Burney (1752-1840) was expressly banned by her father from having her plays

produced on stage, although she had spent months working on her first one. The father advised instead

that ‘In the Novel way, there is no danger’, which was all the more true that Burney - like Jane Austen,

Ann Radcliffe and many other female writers - published several novels anonymously.

Female writers continued to experience restrictions in subject matter as to what aspects of life they were

supposed to portray or even be aware of. Many critics of Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell

Hall (1848) and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847), unaided by the gender-ambiguous pen

names of Acton and Ellis Bell under which the novels were published, were unwilling to suppose that

such scenes of brutal violence as depicted in these novels could have been even familiar to ‘lady’

writers. A few years later, Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Ruth (1853), dealing with the social neglect and

injustice involved in the tragic story of an unmarried mother, was banned as dangerous by her husband

from her own house and symbolically burned by some of her male acquaintances.

Problems faced by Female Writers in Literary Work

In addition to limitations of schooling and socially acceptable experience, women authors often also had

to labor under economic and legal disadvantages. To start with, as Virginia Woolf was to write later, “a

woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. A comparison of the output

of 18th

and 19th

century female novelists with those of their male contemporaries suggests that many

women writers (like Elizabeth Gaskell) found it difficult to reconcile the demands of serious writing

with their normal household duties, to the detriment of the former. Although as yet unmarried, Frances

Burney wrote her first novel Evelina (1778) in stolen hours, and delayed revealing the publication of her

book to her father until critical and popular success were already certain. This success then helped her to

become a semi professional writer who received considerable sums of money by subscription and for

the copy rights of her three subsequent novels. As an added difficulty, married women writers in the late

18th

and early 19th

century (like Ann Radcliffe, 1764-1823) could not enter into legal contracts or have

control over their earnings, both of which were the exclusive right of the husband.

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

Considering the manifold limitations that women writers and readers experienced, it is little surprise to

find that related themes would have found their way into the writing of and about

women. Restriction did, in fact, become one of the most enduring motifs of English fiction dealing with

women’s lives, manifesting itself in various disguises as the abduction and incarceration of women

characters by male ones in carriages, castles, madhouses, brothels and seemingly comfortable homes.

Such motifs run through works as various as Aphra Behn’s The Unfortunate Happy Lady (1698), Mary

Davys’s The Reformed Coquet (1724), Frances Burney’s Evelina (1778), Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries

of Udolpho (1794), Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman (1798), Charlotte

Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847), Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), or American writer Charlotte

Perkins Gilman’s famous short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (1891), and even works by male authors

like Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) or Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860). The effects

of the social restrictions were often symbolically represented in fiction as the mental anguish and

even madness that many female characters were made to undergo from the heroine of Frances Burney’s

Cecilia (1782) through the famous ‘madwoman in the attic’ of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) -

rewritten as the heroine of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) - to the main character of Sylvia

Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963). Women writers of the past three centuries have been at the forefront of

trying to remedy the disadvantage of earlier centuries, when, in the words of the heroine of Jane

Austen’s Persuasion, the pen has been in the hands of men, that is, literature - as most institutionalized

aspects of culture was overwhelmingly under the control of men. By taking the pen in their own hands,

increasing numbers of women writers have been giving voice to women’s experiences and concerns.

Such concerns included inadequate education, insufficient useful activity, economic dependence, legal

disempowerment, moral double standards and many more. In addition to thematising specifically female

experiences, women writers have also been taking active part in public discourse on more general social

issues such as the importance of responsible leadership in Ireland or the living and working conditions

of the urban laboring classes.

Conclusion

As literary production, so literary criticism was also for centuries dominated by men who had a virtual

monopoly over the necessary education and intellectual authority. This did not always help the

recognition of female talent: double standards were often applied to measure men’s and women’s

literary output as they were to measure their sexual behavior. We had a vague impression that

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their

chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise. We

have found that after so many different situations, female writers performed their works and placed

theirs important value in literature and equally valuable position got which is given to male writers in

literature.