The portrayal of women Essays

The portrayal of women Essays The portrayal of women Essay The portrayal of women Essay Women are portrayed very differently in these pre-twentieth short stories than they are in real life today. This helps to show how differently women were looked at generally before 1900. Women were seen at as inferior and the second sex in these stories. They are also seen as breeding machines and if they did not have a husband to support them with money, then they would die. This is in stark contrast to today, where they are independent and lead their own lives. Women no longer need a man to survive. In The Half Brothers by Elizabeth Gaskell, women are regarded as needing a husband to stay alive. This is shown in the very first line of the story, My mother was twice married. Even in this small statement, we can see from the fact that she was married twice that she needed a husband. When her first husband died, the mother was left with a huge mountain to climb, and the farm on her hands for four years more by the lease, with half the stock on it dead, or sold off one by one to pay the more pressing debts, and with no money to purchase more. This quote shows that without a husband, her life is a struggle. She has been left with a farm which she does not know how to run, with dying animals, and with no money whatsoever. The fact that she was expecting another child meant that her life would have been full of fear of not having enough money to be able to support her and her family. I can see that she is desperate from when her sister comes over and together they, planned and plotted how to make every penny they could raise go as far as possible. We also know that food is short when the story says, but my mother knew that they were pinched, and that aunt Fanny herself had not as much to eat, even of the commonest kind of food, as she could have done with; and as for Gregory, he was not a strong lad. The question of money is eradicated when William Preston asks the mother to marry him. He is a wealthy man and he promises to look after her and her boy. She would never have to do anything ever again because William Preston can provide her with everything she would ever need, and as William Prestons wife she would never need to do anything, if she chose to sit with her hands before her; and a boy was a great charge to a widowed mother; and now there would be a decent, steady man to see after him. The only problem is that she does not love William Preston but it seems as if the offer of marriage is too good to refuse. Indeed it was too good to refuses and she and William Preston were married. This situation again highlights the need of a woman for a husband. Here the woman has married a man purely for money, so that she can have a comfortable life with her children. She does not even love the man, and never smiled after the day when she promised William Preston to be his wife.