Index"Trapped" by RelationshipsMental Instability and RelationshipsWorkEscapePregnancyThe Question of CompromiseReferences How far have we, as women, come politically, economically, and socially? With the nomination of a woman as president, the worsening of the gender pay gap, and the push towards more family-friendly maternity/paternity leave, a cursory glance would reveal astonishing progress compared to our twentieth-century female counterparts. But dig deeper into our concerns and our future, there is a worrying repetition of themes that, despite our progress, have not evaporated, but have simply transformed: gender equality, identity and motherhood. Three books examined in WNMU's “Women as Writers” course demonstrate these concerns: Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman (1969), Nuala O'Faolain's Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman (1996), and Maria: or , The Wrongs of Woman (1798) by Mary Wollstonecraft. These books provide a great method used to compare the characters' experiences to how contemporary women view their place in society, in the workplace, and in their personal relationships. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay “Trapped” in Relationships Concerns about gender equality figure prominently in all three books. Maria:or, The Wrongs of Women, published a century and a half before The Edible Woman, is dedicated to the struggles women face and is considered a radically feminist work (Pryce). In the book, Maria was committed to an asylum and lost custody of her son, not through the courts, but due to an organized kidnapping by her husband with no recourse. Although she left her husband for cruelty and adultery, she was never able to fully escape. She describes the experience, saying: "After leaving what the law considers my home, I was persecuted like a criminal from place to place, although I incurred no debts and did not ask for any maintenance, however, because the laws sanction such proceeding, and to make women the property of their husbands, I abstain from animadvert” (Wollstonecraft ch. 17). Mary reflects on her fate while she remains imprisoned in the asylum, and is severe because of her husband who she is there, Marian, the protagonist, experiences a similar feeling of being "trapped", although not as literally as in Marian who begins to look at her relationships differently, learning more about herself through hers. romantic relationships relationship with rising lawyer Peter: “He monopolized her” (Atwood 29 Peter, from the beginning of the book, is shown to be self-centered and dominant, to the point that Marion actually tries to run away from Peter twice). in social settings, once in a bar and another time at a party. In the first circumstance, Mariana begins to run and states: «I heard the fury in Pietro's voice: this was an unforgivable sin because it was public». Her hysteria grows as Peter chases her in the car, but when she is finally caught, she simply thinks, "The relief of being stopped and held, of hearing Peter's normal voice again and knowing that it was real, was so great that I started laughing." impotent.”Mental Instability and RelationshipsClaiming mental instability has been used as one of the most common ways to control women. Divorce was very rare in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in Britain it was only with the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 that introduced divorce through the courts. At that time, alonemen could “petition the court” for divorce on the basis of their wife's adultery. It was not until 1923 that either spouse was able to petition the court for divorce based on adultery (BBC). A member of the Tennessee Genealogy Society described the confusing approach to women's mental health, stating, "I was visiting a courthouse and noticed the term 'insanity' on many of the women's forms. I asked the court clerk about it. She told me showed where a woman could very often be divorced on grounds of insanity. Her husband would put her in an asylum and then ask for a divorce. A few months later, the documents of his marriage to a younger bride would usually arrive" (Samson). Maria may have been admitted to an institution, but for her it was not because she was mentally unstable. unstable or ill. Due to her role as a wife in the 1700s, she is completely at the mercy of her husband. Her marriage was a contract – almost indissoluble – and her commitment to an asylum was a means to an end for her husband. In Maria, the protagonist describes her husband's misdeeds: “Neglected by my husband, I have never encouraged a lover; and preserved with scrupulous care, what is called my honor, to the detriment of my peace, till he, who should have been its guardian, laid traps to ensnare me” (Wollstonecraft chapter 17). In The Edible Woman, Marian finds her problems increasing when Peter begins to treat her more and more like a wife, and she also begins to change her daily routine, avoiding steak, rice pudding, eggs, and vegetables while questioning her sanity and his relationship. Men exert power over Marian, and as she examines that relationship, she also wrestles with the implications of those relationships. As she reminded herself while preparing for a dinner: “She was becoming increasingly irritated by her body's decision to reject certain foods. He had tried to reason with him, and accused him of frivolous whims, and cajoled and tempted him, but he was adamant” (Atwood 193). Nuala O'Faolain describes her breakdown in Are You Somebody? In his memoir, he talks about his father and his death. Because she drank a lot and couldn't get well on her own, she asked a friend to help her recover in the hospital. Her friend agreed and “I cried for millions and millions of anonymous women who might never have existed, for all we know. I wrote them a kind of hymn. I still couldn't sleep." Unlike Maria and Marian, however, Nuala's instability is calmed by her primary relationship with Nell, while the other main characters find composure through their secondary relationships: Marian and Duncan, and Maria and Darnford. Today we no longer face the same problems with divorce. – in the Western world, that is. According to Life, the current cohort divorce rate, calculated on a group of people who marry at the same time, is 40-50% (Stanton). Interestingly, the same source indicates that only 27% of college graduates will divorce by middle age. While some women enjoy the freedom to leave an unsatisfactory marriage, we still hear stories like that of Mwende, a Kenyan woman punished for not having children by having both of her hands removed from her husband (Kyama). Kyama of the LA Times noted that “her poor parents advised Mwende to leave Ngila, but she did not want to return home to burden them. She sought advice from her pastor, who advised her to persist and do her best to save the marriage.” An article from a few years ago highlighted the change in divorce rates, stating that “In Asia, Africa and Latin America, however, divorce is both an indicator and a force behind social changes that have improvedprospects for women, reduced gender inequality and fueled development. All of this suggests that the more people who get out of bad marriages, the better it will probably be for their societies” (Kenny). Employment Although Maria views work differently than a mid-century woman in the 1960s, she discusses inequality of lower-class work. Through her exchanges with Jemima, she becomes intimately acquainted with the world of working women and the complications that come with it. Upon the death of her mother, Jemima was forced to become a servant in her father's house, surviving mistreatment such as physical violence, abuse and rape. Thrown out of her home, she became a prostitute and, later, an orderly in a mental asylum. Even as she experiences the “freedom” of her salary potential, she still suffers from mistreatment from men in her own profession. In a way, ironically, the asylum is the “safest” place for her. Marian also feels trapped by her job, describing her role at a marketing agency called Seymour Surveys. The “c-suite,” as we would call it today, is made up of all men, which leaves her in a position where the best she can hope for is a management role. She comments: “I couldn't become one of the men upstairs; I couldn't become a machine person or one of the women filling out the questionnaires, because that would have been a step backwards. I could conceivably turn into Mrs. Bogue or her assistant, but as far as I could see that would take a long time” (Atwood 14). As she discusses a retirement plan, she begins to reevaluate her choices, envying her roommate, Ainsley, for her less stable, lower-paying position that offers one thing: the freedom to walk away because it's not a "career." it is no longer a question of whether or not women have jobs, but rather why more and more women are not leaders. In Barriers and Bias: The Status of Women in Leadership, published by the American Association of University Women, researchers present statistics indicating that the higher we go up the corporate ladder, the fewer women we see. The AAUW reflects, “There is no shortage of qualified women to fill leadership roles. Women earn the majority of college degrees at all levels except professional degrees, and there are more women in the workforce today than ever before. There must be something intrinsic to the system that works against them” (AAUW). And in middle-income countries we observe a marked gender gap in entrepreneurship; however, in developing countries, the gap narrows again as women choose to start their own businesses out of necessity (Minniti, Naude). Again, there is work to be done. Escape Whether these women – Maria, Marian, or Nuala – lived in the eighteenth or mid-twentieth century, they still managed to cope with escape, managing their circumstances by reading, writing, or simply daydreaming. The Wrongs of Woman establishes escape from a paralyzing identity: books. Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft states that “the books Mary had obtained were soon devoured by someone who had no other resource to escape the pain.” Maria focuses on writing letters to Darnford, which also help her overcome her current uncomfortable condition in the asylum. Maria also daydreams, because «she was not allowed to walk in the garden; but sometimes, from the window, he looked away from the dark walls, in which he was pining for life, on the poor wretches who were lost along the pavements, and contemplated the most terrible of ruins: that of a human soul" (Wollstonecraft, chap. 2). The Mariana of the Edible Woman abandons herself to her own escapism. Marian is a thoughtful and perceptive woman who continually analyzes what she wants from life, how to get it andwhat lies in his way. Through this analysis, she identifies that she needs to escape from whatever ails her: escape from Peter, escape from her job, and, most likely, escape from Ainsley, who has made it clear that she is changing the direction of her life. thanks to her status as a single mother. Marian begins her escape through her unusual and evolving relationship with food, humanizing it to the point of making it unpleasant. This comes shortly after his commitment to the book. She describes her first meal after becoming engaged to Peter: “I inspected my egg, which emitted a semi-frozen white probe like an exploring oyster” (Atwood 88). It is also around this time that Marian begins her relationship with Duncan, simultaneously escaping into an unsustainable romance. His unsustainable relationship, combined with his unsustainable problems with food, indicate a temporary need to leave his current self.behind. O'Faolain escapes just as his mother (and Maria) did: through reading. She states: “I must have learned this from my mother: reading is a defense. That 'they' can't reach you when you have a book." He describes facing immense tests of personal fortitude simply through his ability to weather a storm through the written word: “I lived in a hotel in Tehran for a few months in the 1970s. Men armed with machine guns patrolled the lobby in front of the elevators. I didn't care. Every evening I ran back and settled down with perfect happiness wherever I went in Remembrance of Things Past.” Today, we see a similar form of escapism presented when stories emerge about the reading habits of the Muslim world – it seems that the pastime has evolved to reflect a deeper consideration of women's rights. In Alice's Clandestine Adventures in Saudi Arabia, author Jasmine Bager reflects: “There are supposedly public libraries in the country, although no one I know has ever visited one. It is an unspoken rule that women are still prohibited from entering” (Bager). He describes the experience of finally being given the green light to share experiences in a discreet book club, despite the fact that "the book club could be shut down and the bar employees could be kicked out if a person who finds the club objectionable reports the its existence to the authorities.” The book club represents the perfect method to connect women, yet participants must still proceed with the utmost caution. As one woman states: “We believe that book clubs are incredibly important we would talk about Machiavelli, the Big Bang and of Wonderland? This is the beginning of social change'” (Bager). PregnancyAtwood identifies women as prisoners, even in their own homes – a theme we see in The Edible Woman, in which Clara Bates is shown to have succumbed. to a more traditional role, a role that Marian rejects because of its limitations. As Marian describes when she visits Clara, “I now felt there wasn't much I could do. I was only supposed to be a witness, or perhaps a kind of blotter, my mere physical presence absorbing some of the boredom” (Atwood 28). Marian continually describes children as complicated creatures who disrupt fun, referring to a child as a "leech" or an "octopus." When Marian first visits Clara, she notes: “We had difficulty speaking: everyone's attention was concentrated on the baby, who was whimpering, and for some time he was the only person who said anything” . When Marian hosts a dinner later, it is Clara's baby who ruins it: “The conversation had stopped. Marian hovered around, holding out diaper pins but secretly wondering if it wouldn't be in bad taste to go down and get one of the manyanti-odor devices in the bathroom of the lady downstairs". With this identification of the child as complicated and attention-sucking, The Edible Woman contrasts the role of the professional woman with that of the housewife or mother figure. Marian's friend Clara has moved on from her academic life and now dedicates her time to raising her children. Marian looks at Clara with a mixture of fascination and pity, not envious of her choices. As a working woman, it makes sense that Marian would be so critical of her pregnancy. He looks at Clara with “a wave of embarrassed pity” and states that, at Seymour Surveys, “pregnancy is seen as an act of disloyalty to the company.” Marian's relationship with Ainsley best shows her discomfort with motherhood and how this affects a woman's choices. . Ainsley is determined to become a single mother, embracing it as an alternative to the role of Clara, which seems tired, messy and too far from the lifestyle that both Ainsley and Marian have embraced. Ainsley's choice, while certainly despised by Marian, is surprisingly modern and suits her needs, not those dictated by society. Ainsley states: “How can society ever change if some individuals within it don't lead the way? I'll just tell the truth. I know I will have problems here and there, and someone will be tolerant about it, I'm sure, here too." Unlike Jemima in Maria, Ainsley does not see pregnancy as a problem; she was given much more freedom to make choices without the support of a man. In Are You Somebody?, we see a similar disdain for motherhood as Nuala O'Faolain describes the struggle she has with the desire for freedom versus the maternal instinct. She blames herself and her siblings for contributing to her mother's downfall, stating, “My mother didn't want us. She herself had not felt wanted. It wasn't the marriage that killed her, it was us” (O'Faolain 213). O'Faolain highlights the choices women must make and the implications of those decisions. She later discusses her desire to have children, commenting: “I would have been a terrible mother, for most of my life. But I would be a good mother now. Too late. Sometimes I have to look away from the little kids. They are too good to bear” (O'Faolain 181). Just as Darnford finds chemistry with Maria, so does Duncan with Marian. Marian's suffocating relationship with her finance? leads her to seek fulfillment elsewhere. Unconventional and unusual, Duncan brings a new perspective to Marian's damaged relationship with Peter. She tells Duncan “'I'm getting married, you know'” to which he replies “'But you're here. You're just another laundromat substitute'” (Atwood 56). Marian's shocked response is "'I wonder then what you're a substitute for'". Duncan describes himself as “'very flexible'” and “the universal replacement'”. Marian continues to see Duncan throughout the book, eventually finding herself in a situation where she needs to introduce Duncan and Peter. Duncan refuses, disappearing as quickly and strangely as he was first introduced to, "'One of us would be sure to evaporate,'" he comments. O'Faolain also talks about sex as a distraction, much like Marian, stating "People say without thinking, 'Oh, what they need is sex.' That would be a nice distraction. But desire is in the head as well as in the heart so as in the body” (O'Faolain 182). Marian struggles with sex not filling the void, and Duncan's helplessness highlights this. After a particularly unsatisfying encounter, Marian comments, “What she really wanted, she realized, had been reduced to simple security. He thought he had managed it all these months, but he had gotten nowhere. At the moment, his only concrete result seemed to be Duncan. 2016.