The Role of a Wife free essay sample

This paper looks at womens personal hopes and desires and how they often conflict with her perceived role as a wife and mother as seen through literature. This paper is a comparison of how social constraints affect women and their roles once they are married and become wives. The author looks at portrayals in Alice Walkers Roselilly, Charlotte Gilman?s novella The Yellow Wallpaper, and Kate Chopin?s novel The Awakening. All three stories look at how the lives of women were changed, or expected to change once they married and had children. The novels depict the struggle for the characters search for identity and examine how the choice to marry was influenced by social expectations, both in the late 19th century, as well as later, when Walker wrote her story. The author also illustrates how the role as the wife has evolved over the years although many of todays women are still struggling with some of the same issues, including children, work and responsibility to themselves as human beings. We will write a custom essay sample on The Role of a Wife or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Alice Walkers heroine of her short story, ?Roselilly,? has a far more aware narrator, who does not proceed into marriage blind and ignorant of its potential to constrain womens sense of self, sexuality, and identity. When asked to marry, she immediately ?thinks of ropes, chains, handcuffs, his religion.? Walker, although criticized quite frequently as a polemic writer, is quite skillful in her juxtaposition of the catalogue of these three things. (Later she will describe the potential husband in terms of his sobriety, pride, blackness, and his gray car.?) She does not fear the character of the man himself; rather she fears the socially confining role of a wife, as defined within a particular religious and social context that has the power to hem in the scope of her.