Emily Dickinson Cult Of Domesticity
Megan McGlauchlen
Women’s Voice Essay Women faced many restrictions during the 1800’s based solely on their gender. The Cult of Domesticity served as a basic guide that explained the appropriate ways women of this time period were expected to act. It essentially laid out four proper characteristics women had to portray: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. Many authors captured the difficulties in a woman’s life with having to deal with such strict expectations in their writing. These included Emily Dickinson with her poems “I felt a funeral in my brain”, “This is my letter to the World”, and “These are the days when the Birds come back”, Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. …show more content…
In Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour”, young Mrs. Brently Mallard discovers the news of her husband’s death. Once the shock and grief wear off, she comes to an important realization. “’Free! Body and soul free!’”(Chopin 2). Louise finally is free, without her husband’s name bearing down on her and out of the clutches of domesticity. She no longer needs to act like the perfect wife at home, constantly taking care of the house and looking after her husband’s every need. She can live for herself like she always wanted. “There would be no powerful will bending hers” (Chopin 2), and she would no longer be the victim of submissiveness. Her husband no longer had the superior power, which all men were granted at the time of birth, to control and dictate her every move to the point where she was just like a small child that needed guidance and direction. But, in the end her joy is all for naught. Brently is not dead. And Mrs. Mallard, when receiving the news of his return, “die[s] of heart disease” (Chopin 2). The thought of being pushed into that submissive state of being that she had just escaped from ultimately caused her premature
Women’s Voice Essay Women faced many restrictions during the 1800’s based solely on their gender. The Cult of Domesticity served as a basic guide that explained the appropriate ways women of this time period were expected to act. It essentially laid out four proper characteristics women had to portray: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. Many authors captured the difficulties in a woman’s life with having to deal with such strict expectations in their writing. These included Emily Dickinson with her poems “I felt a funeral in my brain”, “This is my letter to the World”, and “These are the days when the Birds come back”, Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. …show more content…
In Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour”, young Mrs. Brently Mallard discovers the news of her husband’s death. Once the shock and grief wear off, she comes to an important realization. “’Free! Body and soul free!’”(Chopin 2). Louise finally is free, without her husband’s name bearing down on her and out of the clutches of domesticity. She no longer needs to act like the perfect wife at home, constantly taking care of the house and looking after her husband’s every need. She can live for herself like she always wanted. “There would be no powerful will bending hers” (Chopin 2), and she would no longer be the victim of submissiveness. Her husband no longer had the superior power, which all men were granted at the time of birth, to control and dictate her every move to the point where she was just like a small child that needed guidance and direction. But, in the end her joy is all for naught. Brently is not dead. And Mrs. Mallard, when receiving the news of his return, “die[s] of heart disease” (Chopin 2). The thought of being pushed into that submissive state of being that she had just escaped from ultimately caused her premature