Flatland, written by Edwin Abbott, is a novella written in 1884, which delves into the discrepancies in the treatment of gender in the Victorian era of England through the use of satire. Abbott creates a world of two-dimensions where the inhabitants are shapes, and social standing is based solely around the number of angles each shape has. This piece of text parodies the social positions of both women and men in Victorian England through the exaggerated treatment of each in Abbott’s novella, Flatland. In Abbott’s fictional world, the hierarchy affects both the male and female inhabitants, albeit in varying ways. Women are straight lines and carry no angles, which assigns them to the very bottom of the hierarchy. The women have strict rules
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For instance, they have separate doors to come through, and in certain areas they are not allowed to leave their house without their son or husband with them. The women in Flatland have no personal worth and have no rights, similarly to how women were treated in Victorian England. This is exemplified when Simon Morgan states that, “[women] had no separate existence in law from their husbands and who could not own property in their own right” (129) regarding the social placing of women. …show more content…
The women in Flatland were denied education and were taught a separate language from the men, segregating them further from the rest of their world. Women were thought of as “devoid of brain-power, and have neither reflection, judgement nor forethought, and hardly any memory” (29) and therefore were treated as such. This parallels the opinion on women’s education in the Victorian era as described by Morgan: “it was widely thought that power and knowledge rightfully belonged in the hands of men” (36). This was their perspective as they believed women could not contribute anything useful to the community with respect to knowledge. Additionally, the narrator in Flatland explains that the men use a different language to talk to woman, one that has “no object except to control feminine exuberances” (49), and is referred to as a more emotional language. Men spoke a different language to each other and hid the fact that another language existed solely for male use. This separation of language prevents the women from participating and allows the men to portray them as unskilled creatures that serve to maintain the household. Women were, however, allowed to learn the “Art of Feeling” (26), along with the lower class in order to be able to determine the class of other men around them, but were otherwise denied higher education. Although while lower class men learned the “Art of Feeling” (26) with
For instance, they have separate doors to come through, and in certain areas they are not allowed to leave their house without their son or husband with them. The women in Flatland have no personal worth and have no rights, similarly to how women were treated in Victorian England. This is exemplified when Simon Morgan states that, “[women] had no separate existence in law from their husbands and who could not own property in their own right” (129) regarding the social placing of women. …show more content…
The women in Flatland were denied education and were taught a separate language from the men, segregating them further from the rest of their world. Women were thought of as “devoid of brain-power, and have neither reflection, judgement nor forethought, and hardly any memory” (29) and therefore were treated as such. This parallels the opinion on women’s education in the Victorian era as described by Morgan: “it was widely thought that power and knowledge rightfully belonged in the hands of men” (36). This was their perspective as they believed women could not contribute anything useful to the community with respect to knowledge. Additionally, the narrator in Flatland explains that the men use a different language to talk to woman, one that has “no object except to control feminine exuberances” (49), and is referred to as a more emotional language. Men spoke a different language to each other and hid the fact that another language existed solely for male use. This separation of language prevents the women from participating and allows the men to portray them as unskilled creatures that serve to maintain the household. Women were, however, allowed to learn the “Art of Feeling” (26), along with the lower class in order to be able to determine the class of other men around them, but were otherwise denied higher education. Although while lower class men learned the “Art of Feeling” (26) with