Strong Women in Literature
You see her walk into an office building downtown and think, "Now there's a strong woman!" She sports a gray business suit, flawless coiffure, and subtle make-up. Her briefcase is an indication that she is a woman to be taken seriously. She could possibly be a top executive for a Fortune 500 business. She is undeniably the epitome of strength. But what about the single woman with two children working full time during the day and attending school at night so she can give her children a better life? Or the woman who puts her dreams aside to care for her terminally ill mother? Or even the woman who stays at home, caring for the children, cleaning the house, cooking meals, and chauffeuring children to and from their extracurricular activities? Although they may not evoke images of strength, these women are just as strong as the executive on her way to a power meeting. "My Ex-Husband" by Gabriel Spera, "Eveline" by James Joyce, and A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen all feature strong women as central characters. These women show their strength by standing up for themselves, making self-sacrifices for the benefit of others, and rebelling against society's stereotypes.
The female persona in Spera's "My Ex-Husband" finds the strength to stand up for herself and her beliefs when faced with a cheating spouse. As the poem begins, the woman is preparing to leave on a date when her new beau notices a picture of the woman's ex-husband. She soon finds herself telling him the story behind their divorce.
"He seems like any woman's perfect catch" (Spera 633), but she ultimately discovers that her spouse is disloyal to her, and he doesn't care "how slobbishly he [carries] on his affairs" (Spera 633). "Most women believe that if you love your partner, you wouldn't even be interested in an affair; therefore, if someone has an affair, it means that they don't love their partner and they do love the person they had the affair with" (Glass). The woman in Spera's poem feels that the man to whom she was married betrayed her, therefore she stands up for herself and leaves him behind.
Although it is not easy to pursue your dreams, it is even more difficult to give up those dreams for the interests of others. Eveline, the main character in James Joyce's short story by the same name, is torn between staying in her unhappy home with her father and leaving to find a life with her lover, Frank. Eveline made a promise to her dying mother "to keep the home together as long as she could" (Joyce 6). But because of her unfulfilling job and her verbally abusive alcoholic father, she begins toying with the idea of leaving with Frank. She believes if she goes with Frank, he will "give her life, perhaps love, too" (Joyce 6). Eveline is willing to sacrifice her chance of finding true love just so she can escape the confines of her life with her father. In the end, however, she chooses to keep her promise to her mother, and surrenders her dreams of a life of her own. Even though she desperately desires to leave, she finds the strength to stay in an unhappy situation so she can care for her father.
Women have had to overcome many social stereotypes in history. Ibsen's play A Doll's House was written in 1879, a time when women were considered to be objects more than humans. Nora, the female lead in A Doll's House, elects to leave Torvald, her husband due to his reaction to her error of judgment. She realizes that they do not understand one another, nor do they love one another. Nora recognizes that she has been nothing more than Torvald's "doll wife" (Ibsen 977), merely an object for him to play with and show off to his friends. She tells Torvald that she "must take steps to educate [herself]" (Ibsen 977) and "learn to stand alone" (Ibsen 977). When Torvald makes it clear that "nobody sacrifices his honor for the one he loves" (Ibsen 979), Nora replies, "Hundreds and thousands of women have" (Ibsen 979). She makes it clear that she does not care about the things that people will say about her decision. She resists the stereotype that society has placed on her gender and sets about finding who she is on her own, without the assistance of her husband.
It is interesting to note two other similarities in each of these works. First, the main female character in each story leaves behind a life, or in Eveline's case, the promise of a life, with her husband or lover. This demonstrates that these women believe they are strong enough to handle life's trials alone. Second, a man authored each of these literary works. Perhaps this indicates the desire many men have to understand what motivates a woman. Each author presents his main female character as a woman whose strength is illustrated when she is faced with difficulty. Each character finds a strength that perhaps she wasn't aware of before. She is aware that the road ahead will be difficult, but she almost craves that difficulty so she can prove to herself that she is, indeed, a strong woman. Mrs. E. Little conjures up a wonderful image of a strong woman in the poem "What Are the Rights of Women?"
Works Cited Glass, Shirley. (1998, July/August). Shattered vows. Psychology Today Online. Retrieved May 9, 2001 from findarticles.com on the World Wide Web.The right to love whom others scorn,
The right to comfort and to mourn,
The right to shed new joy on earth,
The right to feel the soul's high worth...
Such women's rights, and God will bless
And crown their champions with success (Little).
Ibsen, Henrick. A Doll's House. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1999. 930-980.
Joyce, James. "Eveline." Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1999. 4-6.
Little, Mrs. E. (1848-49). What Are the Rights of Women? Ladies' Wreath 2. Quoted in Brown, Alexis Girardin. (2000, Summer). The Women Left Behind: Transformation of the Southern Belle, 1840-1880. The Historian. Retrieved May 9, 2001 from findarticles.com on the World Wide Web.
Spera, Gabriel. "My Ex-Husband." Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1999. 633-634.