Let the Women SpeakLet the Women SpeakThe 19th century “Cult of Domesticity” in the society has caged the idea of feminism enthroning women lower and inferior to men. Women having more liberated minds than the ordinary female shouted their role suffocation through various literary works. Kate Chopin was one of the courageous writers that exploded this reality in the face of society during the time when this strict regulation blanketed the world. She was a pioneer in the feminist stories revealing how women were confined to enclosed private spheres of the homes and denied of public participation (Hicks, 2009). Such was revealed in her short story “The Story of an Hour”. The women like Mrs. Mallard waited for her freedom for so long. When the news of her husband’s death got to her ears, she instantly elevated to a heavenly euphoria as she envisioned the gate towards freedom and liberty being opened up for her. However, the shock of encountering her after all alive husband shattered her spirits causing her instant death. The voice of the women was after all inhibited to be heard at this time, thus, causing tumultuous female struggles against gender equality and role liberation.
Arts and literature are mirrors of the society. Kate Chopin’s literary works became a literary canon in the 19th century way of writing. She advanced the topic of feminism explicitly showing details of female liberation and individual self-assertion (Deter). Together with the rest of the writers with, Kate Chopin asserted a fiesta of whining in the stereotyping of female roles and the standards on how they were valued in the society. Chopin’s exploration of relationships exposed the inherent conflict between the woman’s traditional requirement as a mother and wife and the woman’s deeper need for personal identity and personhood (Maillakais). Mrs. Mallard was just one of the instruments used in the literary revolution that screeched the discreet needs of the women at that time. There were many unspoken wants, thoughts, needs and desire inside of her that made her heart weary and weak from carrying them all through her
The Feminine Mystique
For the first part of the 20th century women’s liberation did tend to come under the feminist banner:
The radical feminist movement that helped create the Western feminist understanding of the feminine, centered at the University of Wisconsin. [W.F.] Carey was a founding member of this movement, and she was an active student in the Women’s Studies department. She spoke extensively about how social change in the social sciences was necessary for women to lead better lives for the sake of their families, but also was critical of the dominant narratives about women as a passive, selfish and needy family, and the fact that every couple should have a strong relationship to care for one another. She talked about how the feminine role could be a means of the empowerment of women. Carey’s analysis of the need for the empowerment of women also took into account the “mother and wife paradox.” The struggle among women to raise their own well-being was the cause of feminism, yet in many ways, in relation to a range of other causes — from education and other social, economic and political forces to social conditions — education and work also contributed to the liberation of women from the social, psychological and social barriers to the pursuit of success and autonomy. Her most recent book is Feminist Manifesto. Carey was on that same intellectual and moral spectrum in ways that most other contemporary feminists had no clue (Aldrich et al. 2012).
The Women’s Studies movement also made possible feminism’s work on feminism’s origins, the way women could be women, women could be mothers, and the way women could be fathers, and many more in other ways.
In that sense, Feminine Mystique gave many of the same insights that feminists have now gained when they were taking part in the political debates on women’s roles in society, but it also gave some of these insights that feminism did not use for the sake of gender and gender identities and in the way in which women were able to build and organize their own identities.
This is not necessarily the case with the feminism that many feminists like to ascribe to feminism. Feminism started when women raised girls. For one thing, children grow up in a world where children are the only men around. There is something almost comical about the fact that even though the child of an actual father may be more violent by nature than a mother born to a male than a mother born to a female, that is still a very male role for a man.
Women with that perspective were able to have one of two careers (one of both had the birth of their own children):
Carey worked in nursing and as an emotional therapist for child care workers in the Midwest; as a psychologist and as a counselor; as an active mother in Arkansas; and as an assistant teaching and advising at the Family Practice Center of the University of Texas at Austin.
It was important for many feminists to consider her work before they wrote their own feminist book: Carey was the first person to work for an organization — Women’s Studies — which was not a feminist organization but more like an advocacy group.
Carey’s book raised eyebrows among progressive feminists, but also many in the community, which was a good point to take notice. It showed that feminist perspectives were not an exclusive matter and that those who advocated for feminism were, nevertheless, taking on feminist voices when they disagreed.
Carey’s contributions to the feminist movement — like her feminist ideas, her own views, her own political, economic and social positions — were made for as much for being progressive as her own political and social positions. Care