Susan Rawling's Analysis

Superior Essays
In 1963, Lessing’s wrote “To Room Nineteen” in which she explores a time between two phases of Feminism in America and Britain. Through her character Susan Rawlings, Lessing explores the struggle that many females had in a search for identity and self outside of the domestic sphere. Susan’s struggle to abandon intelligence and to establish her own identity and independence threatens both her family and sanity.
In the novel Susan Rowling lived at a time when women’s roles were primarily domestic. The late 1800s through early 1900s was a time were many Americans were marrying, and with marriage comes kids. In the 1800s, the average women birthed about six kids because there was no such thing as birth control at that time (Depaulo). Women at
…show more content…
She lived in a time where women’s’ roles were to be the homemakers. She would have no real meaning and purpose other than to do everything around the house and raise her children. This causes Susan to feel a loss of independence and a need to search for her identity. Before she married her husband, she had a purpose and a clear understanding of her identity because she was a teacher; when she married, she had to give up her job up because he wanted to be a homemaker, and they decided that she would stay home with the kids. This goes back to how much inequality existed between the sexes at this time. Female and male roles were so distinct, the men were superior and had multiple freedoms, and the women just stayed home and took care of the house and the kids. Because Susan married between these gap of periods, Lessing states “This is a story, I suppose, about a failure in intelligence: the Rawlings’ marriage was grounded in intelligence” (Lessing 413). This concludes that this marriage was destined to fail because of “failure in intelligence”. The “Intelligent” in this period of late 1950s early 1960s is the intelligence to adopt traditional roles of the female and male gender roles (Perkins). That is what was seen as the intelligent thing to do at this

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The essay “Our Secret” written by Susan Griffin was taken from a chapter in her book A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War. In “Our Secret,” Susan Griffin explains the repercussions of bottling up our emotions and the harm it can have on our mind and body in the long run. In this essay Susan is talking about the life of Heinrich Himmler through his childhood diary, as well as, explaining the controlling behavior of his father throughout his life.…

    • 728 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Sandra Cisneros’ bildungsroman The House on Mango Street, we see the main character, Esperanza struggle to find her place in Chicago, as well as within her own culture’s idea of the “perfect” woman, the ideal woman of her community and the ideal woman of the 80’s. In Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, we see two girls’ journey after they are abandoned by their mother in a small town located in Northern Idaho. Set in the 1950’s, we see Ruth and Lucille develop as they find their place within their small community and within society’s restrictions of this era. Although these two bildungsroman novels are drastically different, Robinson’s Housekeeping and Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street both explore female oppression throughout history…

    • 1975 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Apush Reflection Questions

    • 1124 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Chapter Reflection Questions How did patterns of family life and attitudes toward women differ in the northern and southern colonies? In the Chesapeake colonies of the South, women primarily served the purpose of bearing children. An unbalanced ratio between men and women meant that few women remained unwed for long, and women gave birth on average every two years and had an average of eight children each if they lived long enough. These women were rarely able to raise their children by themselves, as childbirth was one of the most common causes of death for women.…

    • 1124 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women In The Chesapeake

    • 202 Words
    • 1 Pages

    In the South, or the Chesapeake, “women could anticipate a life consumed with childbearing. The average wife experienced pregnancies every two years” (57). Having children out of wedlock was also very common in the south because of the imbalance in the ratio of men to women. There was way more men then women so women did not stay single very long and most of the time they were very young. Getting married as early as 20 years old, women in the Chesapeake became widows very early in their life seeming as their husbands were around twice their age.…

    • 202 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In 1879, Henrik Ibsen wrote his three-act play, The Dollhouse. One of the major themes is the oppression of women in the late 1800’s. Women's suffrage was a giant issue during the time the play premiered. Women's suffrage was a time that lasted from the mid-1800’s through the 1920’s, when women were fighting for the right to vote. During this time, The cult of domesticity came out and told women that they should stay home and take care of her children and husbands.…

    • 121 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1931 for “Allison’s House”, Susan Glaspell is responsible for creating the high school nation-read One-Act Play known as “Trifles”. Published in 1916, Glaspell defied the harshest restrictions set for women and shared her talent with readers all throughout the country. Back then, it was infrequent to hear about women completing such a major act. However, publication became an ordinary habit for Susan Glaspell. Additionally, Glaspell would often write about the oppression directed at women and revolve her stories plot’s around it.…

    • 1807 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    2. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Home: Its Work and Influence is an extraordinary observation into the manner of the treatment of women in the late 1800s. Home is a place where an individual or group of people habitat (p. 15). The wife’s role is never valued.…

    • 287 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    Feminism in Literature (A detailed analysis of Feminism in, Story of an Hour; My Antonia; and Yellow Wallpaper) “In November 2015, Hillary Clinton (1947–)—former U.S. Secretary of State, former U.S. Senator, and former U.S. First Lady—was the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic nomination in the U.S. presidential election of 2016, and was heavily favored to secure the nomination” (Collins Lines 1-3). In today’s world women are accepted into society as an equal of man, and of men of all color. For a women to run for President of the United States, it is not a big deal. This may seem as though a mindless assumption to many people in today’s society; however at one point in human history this could be seen as unacceptable.…

    • 2390 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In the eighteenth-century women spent the majority of their days the doing many tedious task at homes. The worst bar none is bearing children because they had on average five to eight children and not even…

    • 391 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Sarah Jane Whiteling Essay

    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Rodeo Thompson Sarah Jane Whiteling Sarah Jane Whiteling was born in the mid-1800’s, a tough time in history to be alive. She lived in Pennsylvania with her husband, a son, and a daughter. Sarah was accused and found guilty of killing her entire family by the method of poisoning from common rat poison which contained arsenic.…

    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    The roles of women reflected in the late nineteenth century up until the 1960’s were known to be portrayals of the perfect housewife or of one who lacked status. Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” and Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” both represent the gender role that was expected of woman in their time period and their restrictions to having their own identity. Mrs. Mallard and Girl are similar because they both lack their own true identity and have expectations from others as to how they should act and who they should be. A common theme shown in both stories is repression.…

    • 1265 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Education can change a woman’s life and to become independent. In the 1900s many women were discriminated because many women did not have education. As mentioned before they were not allowed to attend a university. In “A Jury of Her Peers” the county attorney makes fun of Mrs. Peters “And keep your eye out, Mrs. Peters for anything that might be use.…

    • 212 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Before and after 1949, the gap between the possibilities and limits of Chinese women’s lives was large, where the limits on women far surpassed the possibilities for a prolonged amount of time. Societal views were placed upon women, creating a system in which women must conform to a specific type of person or they would be shunned upon by those around them. This system was what determined the future of a woman in China. In the following stories, “Sealed Off”, by Ailing Zhang, “A Woman Like Me”, by Xi Xi, and “Fin de Siecle Splendor” by Zhu Tianwen, we explore the status of women during these periods of times.…

    • 1295 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Gender and representation In Marleen Gorris’s ‘A Question of Silence’ During the mid 1970s and into the early 1980’s, feminists critiqued ideologies and the system of beliefs in the patriarchal society. Feminist filmmaking became key to portraying fairer representations of women in film denied to them in Early Hollywood, whilst also using experimental techniques to give authorial voice to women filmmakers. Marleen Gorris’s Dutch film ‘A Question of Silence’ (1982), is considered one of the fundamental films in early feminist filmmaking. The film follows Janine, a physiatrist, and her journey to discover why three women (Andrea, Annie and Christine) murder a male shopkeeper.…

    • 1460 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    A lower-class Australian who is an outsider among the group, causing him to be self-conscious, driving him to be a successful businessman who was also Rhoda’s lover for a period of time. Susan: A nature-oriented person who cannot tolerate the city life, causing her to move back to her family’s…

    • 1464 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays