The heroic age seems always to be put and yet whatever time we live in, we seen

always to need heroes. The figure who attract and capture our imaginations, whose thoughts
and actions cut new channel, whose lives matter because they occupy new territory or suggest
alternatives to the cramped dailiness of ordinary existence. The hero, is not so much a god, a
warrior, or giant as human being loving at the furthest extreme of the possible. Since in reality
no one could live perpetually in such extremely-the heroic character even when the hero is
supposedly historical figure- is always an invention, a paternal fictionalizing and heightening of
the mundane, the result of a collaboration enter into for the sake of human progress, between
the heros self.

Psyche as Hero is written by Lee R. Edwards. She is willing to show about the hero as
this topic is women. In other words it discusses about feminism. Woman as a hero which as a
title of this book psyche as hero is taken from Greek myth of Amor and Psyche. The story of
the love between a mortal woman and male god, of Psyches passionate yearning for Amor, of
Amors evasions and manipulation, and Venus jealousy of both the beautiful maiden and her
own son, emphasizes a quest that fuses powers needs with loves. From the story, it was told
that Psyche felt humiliated by her surrounding for her innocent, then the power of love save her.
Then it called Psyches heroism.

This book was written by Lee R. Edwards, a professor of English and Womens studies
at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in around 1980s and it is publish for the first time
in 1984 in United State of America. She has written more than a dozen papers and article and
edited four books of feminist criticism as long as she works as a lecturer in the University. Aside
from this book, Lee Edwards also edited American Voice, American Women: A Collection of
Fiction edited with Arlyn Diamond, Woman: An issue edited with Mary Heath, Lisa Unger
Baskin, and The Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism edited with Arlyn
Diamond. Lee R. Edwards is really feminist writer since all of her books are about woman and
feminism. She is not really popular like other feminist writers, her biography is a little bit hard to
find.

Psyches heroism, like all heroism, involves both doing and knowing. The pattern of the
tale parallels the growth of consciousness. Each material advance marks an increase in psychic
range, an apprehension of what was formerly forbidden and inaccessible. The possibility of the
woman hero is contingent only on recognizing the aspirations of consciousness as human
attributes; it is the absence of this understanding that has kept Psyche and her heroic daughters
so long in shadow. For if heroism is defined in terms of external action alone and heroic action
are confined to display of unusual physical strength, military prowess, or social or political
power, then physiology or a culture that limits womens capacities in these areas thereby
exclude women from heroic roles. But if action is important primarily for what it tells us about
knowledge, then any action-fighting dragons, seeking dragons, seeking grails, stealing fleece,
reforming love- is potentially heroic. Heroism thus read and understood is a human necessity,
capable of being represented equally by either sex.

Psyche as hero examines the fulfillment of heroic possibilities of plot and character in a
variety of English and American novels arranged in rough chronological order from the mid-
eighteenth century to the present time. Lee R. Edward talks the psyche as hero in Clarissa,
Emma, Jane Eyre, the Scarlet Letter, Middlemarch, Jude the Obscure, the Awakening,
Daughter of Earth, Gaudy Night and The Dollmakers. The suggestion that heroism patterns all
their plot and that a comprehension of its imperatives ought therefore to guide interpretive
responses implies not just new readings but as yet untried critical theory.

Edward grouping some topics for the woman heroism from some literary works, by
comparing the oppression of the woman character in the early novels and modern text. Actually,
Edward discuss it detailed but it comes to the matter since the reader is not familiar with several
names of the women characters written in the book. Additionally it discuss more about the some
pieces of the story directly then comparing one with another. For the reader who are not
acquainted with those stories will have some difficulties in comprehend the passage. However it
becomes the challenge for the reader to know more about some literary pieces that she should
know.

This book is divided into two part which is the first part it tells about woman hero in the
character of early novels and the second part about the woman heroes in modern text. In the
first part in some literary works like clarissa, scarlet letter, madame bovary jane eyre, the
awakening and so forth, Edward describes marriage is a death for the woman at that age, if it
is necessary to choose between marriage (or death) and happiness, they must determine both
the resolution and its ground (p. 27). Moreover in the fourth chapter, he says that wedding be
funeral. For Edna, Clarissa, Hester who failed in their marriage make wedding is like a jail that
cannot give them a freedom, they life under pressure because of their husband. Furthermore
marriage also becomes the traditionally sanctioned choice. Since most of the early novels were
written in Victorian age when the right for women was limited. In the Victorian era women were
seen, by the middle classes at least, as belonging to the domestic sphere, and this stereotype
required them to provide their husbands with a clean home, food on the table and to raise their
children. Womens rights were extremely limited in this era, losing ownership of their wages, all
of their physical property, excluding land property, and all other cash they generated once
married. When a Victorian man and woman married, the rights of the woman were legally given
over to her spouse. Under the law the married couple became one entity where the husband
would represent this entity, placing him in control of all property, earnings and money. In addition
to losing money and material goods to their husbands, Victorian wives became property to their
husbands, giving them rights to what their bodies produced; children, sex and domestic labour.
Marriage abrogated a womans right to consent to sexual intercourse with her husband, giving
him ownership over her body. Their mutual matrimonial consent therefore became a contract to
give herself to her husband as he desired.

Rights and privileges of Victorian women were limited, and both single and married
women had hardships and disadvantages they had to live with. Victorian women had
disadvantages both financially and sexually, enduring inequalities within their marriages and
social statuses, distinct differences in men and womens rights took place during this era; so
men were provided with more stability, financial status and power over their homes and women.
Marriages for Victorian women became contracts one which was extremely difficult if not
impossible to get out of during the Victorian era. Womens rights groups fought for equality and
over time made strides to change rights and privileges, however, many Victorian women
endured their husbands control, cruelty targeted against their wives; including sexual violence,
verbal abuse and economic deprivation and were given no way out. While husbands
participated in affairs with other women wives endured infidelity as they had no rights to divorce
on these grounds and their divorce was considered to be a social taboo. That is what makes
marriage to be the sanctioned choice.

In the second part Lee Edwards entitled it with the road to Olympus. In the mythology,
Psyche at first tries to kill herself, and then decides, like the heroine she is now becoming, to
rise to the challenge and seek out her enemy, Aphrodite who wants to revenge her, in order
either to placate her or to die in the attempt. Knowing the truth Zeus sympathizes. He gives
Psyche ambrosia, thus making her immortal. Psyche has now become one of the family, as it
were. She has been accepted. Aphrodite, too, must embrace her as part of the family. And thus,
there is finally the proper wedding and a feast.The harmony of the new, or newly reunited, family
and the gift of joy and pleasure is Psyches boon, her gift to mankind. She has thus completed
her heroic quest, quite as a male hero might have done. Finally, Psyche is clearly a very
powerful archetype related to the women characters in some literary works.

What has been missing until the turn of the twentieth century is a clear sense of
alternatives, a development of new structure upon the ruins of the old ones. If the protoheroes
have made awareness of the inadequacies of traditional formulae and the irreconcilable
contradictions between abstract meaning and concrete circumstance, the character of these
women heroes have been able to discern only the vaguest outlines of a new set of options. The
shift from protoheroism to heroism itself depends precisely on such discovery, on the
emergence of new structure from the ashes of the wedding-funeral.

In the demography of late-Victorian England, specifies that middle-class women for

outnumber middle-class men. For this reason, marriage can no longer be relied on to provide
the sole medium for absorbing womens live. Women who cannot marry, because there arent
sufficient men to go around, and who have no patrimony to support their independence must
seek outside employment. Lee Edward gives the support of this idea not only from the
characters of the novel but also one of the books principal female characters, Marry Barfoot.
She gave much support about woman revolution in nineteenth century that the women seize
control of a new technology and use it to secure their freedom. In line with she said that in
woma revolution to get freedom, such kinds of novel that being a comparison used by Lee
Edwards, like The Odd women, Daughter of Earth, and Gaudy Night telling that the woman is no
longer humiliated by men, but they could fight for their life. In one of her speech she said that I
am not chiefly anxious that you should earn money, but that women in general shall become
rational and responsible human beings.

The thing between love and work becomes problematic for husband and wife at that
time. Since woman would like to get freedom, in other words earning money by themselves and
be responsible, they would to work. Another side if the wife is working, the husband oppose
them to work because they are feeling subordinated. In another case, there are women who
would rather to be single than married. They like being a whore than married woman, because
no man dared mistreat her, she was pledged to obey no man. They equal the status of whore
with married woman, they said in prostitution, as in marriage, she made her living in the same
way as they made theirs, except that she made a better living and had more rights over her
body and soul.
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTHS AND TED HUGHES
VIEW OF NATURE IN THEIR SELECTED POEMS

An Occasional Paper
Presented to
Mark Anthony G. Moyano, Ph.D
Faculty of the Department of English & Humanities
Central Luzon State University

In Partial Fulfilment
Of the Requirements of the Course
British and American Literature
LL735

By,
Shinta Oktavia
November 26th, 2016