COLEGIUL NATIONAL GHEORGHE LAZAR SIBIU

Lucrare pentru obinerea Atestatului de competen lingvistic Limba englez intensiv/bilingv

Absolvent: ofan Bianca Maria Clasa a XII-a A Profesor coordonator: Alexandra Cristea

GHEORGHE LAZAR NATIONAL COLLEGE

Women writers and feminism - Jane Austen and Agatha Christie Student: ofan Bianca Maria Advisor: Alexandra Cristea
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Summary

Introduction Chapter 1: Feminist literature Chapter 2: Jane Austen's Biography Chapter 3: Agatha Christie's Biography Chapter 4: The feminist tendencies of Jane Austen's novels: Chapter 5: The feminist tendencies of Agatha Christie's novels: Conclusion Sources

Introduction

This paper will present the movement known as feminism and especially its impact over literature. The problem of feminism is being discussed all over the world due to the fact that along a century it changed the course of history. Feminism was acknowledged because it gave women the rights and the equality needed to be independent. Women nowadays are grateful to those who have fought for them and the freedom experienced today, also the right to vote, to enter in politics, to have significant positions like those which men have, are only some of the privileges earned by women. This subject is of interest because feminism was and it still is one of the most relevant and important events that took place in America, Great Britain and then all over the world. The claiming of the rights required by women drew the attention of the press, politicians and many other social groups. The seven demands which were requested in the past are of great importance in the present day: equal pay, opportunities and education, financial and legal independence, reproductive rights and better child care. At the same time, this paper will contain different arguments brought by the feminist writers Jane Austen and Agatha Christie and other important figures to the feminist problem and also their contribution to the evolution of modern literature. Furthermore, the paper will prove the existence of feminist tendencies in the writers works with examples of well-known novels. The thesis will be structured in four chapters which will debate on the problem of worldwide feminism and the existence of feminist tendencies in literature. The first chapter will present feminism and literature and their evolution in history followed by a biography of its both representatives :
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Jane Austen and Agatha Christie in chapters two and three ending with chapter four and five where the paper will argue on the feminist tendencies contained in the authors works. To sum up, the paper will deal with a real problem, which is feminism and its consequences in the past and also in literature and the way it evolved up to the present day.

Chapter 1: Feminist literature

Feminist literature, as the name suggests, is based on the principles of feminism, and refers to any literary work that centers around the struggle of a woman for equality, and to be accepted as a human being, before being cast into a gender stereotype. Not all these works follow a direct approach towards this goal of equality. It is only through such media that women believed a change was
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possible in the way they were perceived in society. Not all feminist literature has been written by women, but also by men who understood women beyond the roles they were expected to fit into, and delved into their psyche to understand their needs and desires. Some works may be fictional, while others may be non fictional. Women in literature of the feminist nature are always featured as the protagonist, who, more often than not, do not readily accept the traditional role of women as decided by society. They are ready to make their own decisions, to express this choice of personal decision-making, and are ready to deal with the consequences of these choices, actions, and decisions. Though a daughter, a mother, a sister, or a wife, any piece of feminist literature first deals with a woman as a woman. It is not these relationships, roles, or stereotypes that give these female characters in literature their identity. Their identity is defined by their choices and their beliefs which are then associated with these roles. It is important to note, that, not all works of feminist literature have happy endings, both for the character, and for the author of the work. Women have been ostracized by society for openly demanding equality, and have had to face several negative consequences of their decision to go against the waves. Not only in feminist literature, women have been treated as important subjects but also in many literary works by men. Not all, but some pieces of feminist literature (particularly non-fiction) showcase and stress on women's suffrage and a demand for equality in society, for political, social, and economic rights. In modern feminist literature, the attack on a male-dominated society became more forthright and straightforward, where women demanded a closer look into the patriarchal and capitalistic approach towards feminism.
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Though a lot has changed in today's time, there is still an underlying feminist movement that is being carried out by women all over the world. While in the urban setting, women have almost been given their dues, in the rural setting, women are still expected to live by the stereotypes cast by society. Even in the urban setting, though women have achieved a lot more than society has given them credit for, they are still expected to fulfill certain roles and stereotypes that have been the norm for centuries. Feminist literature of different periods will depict different desires and different wants under the purview of feminism. The roles of daughters, wives, and mothers in literature will keep changing, and so will their requirements and beliefs. The concept of gender equality that focuses primarily on women's rights has come a long way, and feminist literature has been a great medium to bring about any visible changes in the attitude towards women. Yet, it is a long battle that is being fought, and it will be a while before gender equality and the role of women in society will be clear in the ideal sense. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said: "Well-behaved women seldom make history." One of the conclusions that could be drawn from this statement is that despite the fact that you are a man or a woman, if you have equal rights and chances, you can succeed in changing the world or like the phrase said, make history. Rebecca West said: "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what
feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat..."

A conclusion could be drawn from this statement and that is the fact that people should not judge women or feminists just because they have other views and instead they should listen to them and debate their opinions with the purpose of extracting the best ideas from those opinions.

Chapter 2: Jane Austen's Biography

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics. Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism.Her plots, though fundamentally comic,highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.
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Austen's parents, George Austen (17311805), and his wife Cassandra (17391827), had six children:James (17651819), George (17661838), Edward (17671852), Henry Thomas (17711850),Francis William (Frank) (17741865), Charles John (17791852)and one sister, Cassandra Elizabeth(Steventon, Hampshire, 9 January 17731845), who, like Jane, died unmarried. Cassandra Elizabeth was Austen's closest friend and confidante throughout her life.Of her brothers, Austen felt closest to Henry, who became a banker and, after his bank failed, an Anglican clergyman. In 1783, according to family tradition, Jane and Cassandra were sent to Oxford to be educated by Mrs. Ann Cawley and they moved with her to Southampton later in the year. Perhaps as early as 1787, Austen began to write poems, stories, and plays for her own and her family's amusement. As Austen grew into adulthood, she continued to live at her parents' home, carrying out those activities normal for women of her age and social standing: she practised the fortepiano, assisted her sister and mother with supervising servants, and attended female relatives during childbirth and older relatives on their deathbeds. Around early 1809, Austen's brother Edward offered his mother and sisters a more settled lifethe use of a large cottage in Chawton village. Early in 1816, Jane Austen began to feel unwell. She ignored her illness at first and continued to work and to participate in the usual round of family activities. By the middle of that year, her decline was unmistakable to Austen and to her family, and Austen's physical condition began a long, slow, and irregular deterioration culminating in her death the following year.

Chapter 3: Agatha Christie's Biography:

Dame Agatha Christie [pseudonym Mary Westmacott] (1890-1976), prolific English Queen of Crime author of worldrenown created such famous detectives as Hercule Poirot, the eccentric Belgian who relied on his keen grasp of logic to nab crooks. Christie enjoyed a career that spanned over fifty years and her works have now sold into the billions. They have been translated to dozens of languages, inspired numerous other authors works, and have been adapted to radio, the stage, and film. As well as a writer of crime mysteries, she also read stories for BBC Radio, wrote non-fiction, romances, plays, and poetry.

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Born in the family home Ashfield in Torquay, Devon, England on 15 September 1890, Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was the youngest of the three children born to Clarissa Clara Margaret ne Boehmer (1855-1926) and American Frederick Alvah Miller (1846-1901), who died when Agatha was just ten years old. The shy and sensitive Agatha, who was very close to her mother, had an older sister, Margaret Madge (1879-1950) and brother Louis Monty Montant (1880-1929). The family attended All Saints Church where Agatha was baptised. While she received no formal education, her mother and then governesses taught her at home to read before she entered finishing school in Paris, France in 1906. Having long been encouraged by her mother to write, Agatha continued to write there while also studying music (which became a life-long love), singing, and piano. On 24 December 1914, at the age of twenty-four, Christie married Royal Flying Corps pilot Archie Christie, with whom she would have a daughter, Rosalind (1919-2004). During WWI Agatha worked as a nurse, tending to the ill and injured, many who were displaced Belgians. Their bewilderment and personal sorrows affected her deeply. She amassed a great deal of knowledge about sicknesses and poisons such as strychnine and ricin that she often featured in her novels. Around this time she also started writing her first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, an immediate bestseller. In 1926, profoundly grieving the death of her mother, Christie created some mystery of her own, disappearing for a time; when she was found she claimed that she had had a bout of amnesia. In 1928, Archie divorced Agatha. She then set off on her first of many trips to the Middle East, travelling on the famed Orient Express from Calais,
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France to Baghdad, Iraq, then on to the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia. It was on her second trip there she met her future husband, archaeologist Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan, (1904-1978). They were married in Scotland on 11 September 1930. She often accompanied him on digs as a member of the team, photographing and cataloguing finds. In 1960 Max was honoured as Commander of the British Empire (CBE) and in 1968 knighted for his archaeological work. Christie herself won many awards and honours in her life-time including; 1955, received the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master award; 1961, awarded an honorary degree from Exeter University; 1967, became president of The British Detection Club; and in 1971 she received Englands highest honor, the Order of the British Empire, Dame Commander. In 1974 Christie appeared for the last time in public on opening night for her play Murder on the Orient Express. When she was not travelling the world, her and Maxs home in England was in the town of Wallingford, Oxfordshire, where she died peacefully on 12 January 1976. Max survived her by two years. They now rest together in the Parish Church cemetery of St. Marys in Cholsey, Oxfordshire.

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Chapter 4: The feminist tendencies of Jane Austen's novels:

Jane Austen has the reputation of only writing about young women whose only interest in life was marriage and is often derided because of it. However, this is not true. She wrote about the relationships between men and women, the problems of women in her day and had some scathing criticisms of society, especially as it affected women. She was a forerunner of the feminists. Her heroines were not only interested in marriage and children, even though this was the only acceptable career for women. Emma, for example, tells Harriet that she doesn't want to get married at all and that women with their own money are always respectable. Elizabeth, who will be dependent on her family and at the mercy of Mr. Collins who holds the entail to the family house if she never
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marries, only wants to marry if she can find 'the very deepest love'. Fanny refuses Henry Crawford, a wealthy suitor, in spite of family outrage. Elizabeth actually refuses two proposals - one from the pompous Mr. Collins and one from the very handsome, wealthy Mr. Darcy. Her heroines, apart from Catherine Rose in Northanger Abbey, are all intelligent and serious women, not silly. It is possible to also argue that Jane Austen believed that women should have careers - after all she had one herself. Elinor, in Sense and Sensibility, remarks to Edward how much she envies men being able to have careers. In spite of all this, Jane Austen will still continue to be derided by many feminists and many men as well which is a pity. It is understandable if they don't like her writing but deriding her for the wrong reasons is only stupid. While it may be true that Austen was a romance writer, it was not the way critics had once believed. Instead of exalting the value of tradition and virtue in her prose, Austen defied it and made a case for feminine rights. Whether we see Austen as a feminist because we are looking for evidence in her text or because she truly was a feminist is something that we may never be able to discern.
''Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story'' wrote Jane Austen.

"Authorship for Austen is an escape from the very restraints she imposes on her female characters. And in this respect she seems typical, for women may have

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contributed so significantly to narrative fiction precisely because it effectively objectifies, even as it sustains and hides, the subjectivity of its author"

(Gilbert and Gubar) Of course, Jane Austen is not a simple ideologue -- when a character in a Jane Austen novel makes a broad statement that seems to stand up for women in general, this is actually usually done by an unsympathetic character (such as Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey or Mrs. Elton in Emma), and is not meant to be taken seriously. In Pride and Prejudice the main example is Caroline Bingley's statement to Darcy that "Eliza Bennet is one of those young ladies who seek to recommend themselves to the other sex by undervaluing their own, and with many men, I dare say, it succeeds. On the other hand, however, Jane Austen presents a rather cool and objective view of the limited options open to women (in Pride and Prejudice this is done through the character Charlotte Lucas). And it has been pointed out that Jane Austen makes an implicit statement by simply disregarding certain structures of her era that may not be obvious to modern readers. For example, most of Jane Austen's heroines (Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, Anne Elliot in Persuasion, and even Emma Woodhouse in Emma) don't have anyone whom they can confide in, or whose advice they can rely on, about certain delicate matters. Thus they must make their own decisions more or less independently (for example, Elizabeth Bennet doesn't reveal to Jane, her sister and closest

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confidante, her changed feelings about Darcy until he has actually proposed again, and she has accepted). It is interesting that the most explicit feminist protests by Jane Austen in her six novels all have to do with literature.
''All of Jane Austen's opening paragraphs, and the best of her first sentences, have money in them; this may be the first obviously feminine thing about her novels, for money and its making were characteristically female rather than male subjects in English fiction. . . . From her earliest years Austen had the kind of mind that inquired where the money came from on which young women were to live, and exactly how much of it there was"

(Moers)

Chapter 5: The feminist tendencies of Agatha Christie's novels:

Agatha Christie, whose books, written between the years 1920 and 1973, have sold over five hundred million copies and have been translated into dozens of languages. Is Christie a feminist or anti-feminist writer, or do her works fall somewhere in between, in some middle ground? Obviously, evaluating an author as feminist or anti-feminist involves making subjective judgements that are influenced by a particular reader's conception of feminism and interpretation of a work. The character of Mrs. Boynton in Christie's Appointment with Death, for example, provides a real dilemma for the critic. On one hand, Mrs. Boynton is the epitome of the
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dominating, castrating mother stereotype. Christie makes us sympathize with her victimized family and view Mrs. Boynton as a personification of evil power, as a particularly malignant female Machiavelli. Yet at the end of this novel, Christie, intimates that perhaps Mrs. Boynton is a tragic figure, herself a victim of a patriarchal society that provides few outlets for strongminded, power-hungry women other than domestic tyranny. Is this characterization feminist or anti-feminist? Certainly there is support for either judgment. The final decision, a subjective one, will depend on whether the reader/critic chooses to see Mrs. Boynton as evil by nature or a pathetic victim of society. A feminist writer will be defined as a writer, female or male, who shows, as a norm and not as freaks, women capable of intelligence, moral responsibility, competence, and independent action; who presents women as central characters, as the heroes, not just as "the other sex" (in other words, as the wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, lovers, and servants of men); who reveals the economic, social, political and psychological problems women face as part of a patriarchal society; who explores female consciousness and female perceptions of the world; who creates women who have psychological complexity and transcend the sexist stereotypes that are as old as Eve and as limited as the lives of most fictional spinster schoolmarms. Christie does portray women making it on their own in society through their brains, skills, and energies, too many of these women, they claim, are shown to be deadly and destructive. In contrast to Hercule Poirot, who uses reason, knowledge, and method to conduct his investigations, Miss Marple relies on intuition and nosiness, and Ariadne Oliver usually fails to uncover the truth because of her untidy mind.

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Christie's books display sexism. Certainly some of her most popular detective novels (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, And Then There Were None, The A.B.C. Murders, Murder on the Orient Express) present women in totally stereotypical ways: as empty-headed ingenues, for example, or as gossipy old ladies. Other less famous novels are just as anti-feminist. In Evil Under the Sun, for example, dress designer Rosamund Darnley gladly gives up her successful business enterprise when the man she loves proposes and insists she live in the country and devote herself full-time to marriage and stepmotherhood. Lynn Marchmont, in There Is a Tide, is only really attracted to her dull fianc Rowley Cloade, after he tries to kill her. The main character in Sad Cypress, Elinor Carlisle, is a truly romantic heroine, sentimental and helpless: She is obsessed with love for her cousin Roddy, and when she is accused of murdering Roddy's new girlfriend, Elinor, a classic damsel in distress, she must be saved by Dr. Lord and Hercule Poirot. The women in Endless Night are an unattractive lot, all representing negative stereotypes of women: Ellie, an overprotected rich girl, is perfect prey for the two unscrupulous murders she is too stupid to recognize as threats; Gerta is a criminal accomplice whose hypocrisy is only matched by her disloyalty and cold heart; Aunt Cora is only interested in money and what money can buy. Christie, it is clear, often uses sexist stereotypes of women, sometimes shows women as inferior to and dependent on men, occasionally idealizes self-abnegating women and monsterizes strong women, and frequently implies that woman's true vocation is marriage and motherhood. Yet Christie should not be so easily dismissed as an anti-feminist writer. Perhaps because readers and critics usually concentrate on Christie's major works, they fail to consider carefully some of Christie's lesser-known works, such as The
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Secret

Adversary,

Murder

After

Hours,

Murder

Is

Announced, The Moving Finger, and Cat Among the Pigeons, all of which illustrate that Christie is capable of presenting a wide range of female characters that go beyond anti-feminist stereotypes, creating some very admirable female heroes, and exploring many problems women face as a result of the sexism that pervades our society. Only a writer with a healthy respect for women's abilities and a knowledge of real women could create the diversity of female characters Christie does. Her women characters display competence in many fields, are not all defined solely in relation to men, and often are direct contradictions to certain sexist "truisms" about the female sex. Christie also presents, in a positive way, a category of women who are generally ignored or ridiculed in literature because their lives are independent of men's lives: the single women. Besides unmarried older women such as Jane Marple, this category also includes lesbians (for example, Hinch and Murgatroyd in A Murder Is Announced and Clotilde Bradbury-Scott in Nemesis), feminists (Cecilia Williams in Murder in Retrospect, for instance), children (Geraldine in The Clocks, Josephine in Crooked House, Joyce and Miranda in Hallowe'en, Julia and Jeniffer in Cat Among the Pigeons), and handicapped women (such as Millicent Pebmarsh in The Clocks). Christie's women, furthermore, often defy sexist "traditional wisdom" about the female sex. For instance, young women married to older men are supposed to be mercenary and adulterous, but Christie's Griselda Clement (in The Murder at the Vicarage) is totally devoted to her scholarly older husband, a poor vicar. Women, it is also commonly believed, prefer to use their brains to ensnare a mate or run a household rather than to
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contemplate philosophy and politics. Yet beautiful young Renisenb (in Death Comes As the End) is interested in learning about life and death and the politics of ancient Egypt. As well as in the diversity of her women characters and in her delightful female heroes, Christie's feminist sympathies are revealed in the way she points out problems women face living in a patriarchy, problems that have not changed much over the centuries. One such problem is the economic oppression of women, as much a reality today as ever. In A Murder Is Announced, Dora Bunner, a single woman with no family to support her financially, describes the ignominy of her poverty. Christie also uses her most complex women characters as incidental detectives, putting them through strengthening quests for female selfhood based on her own life traumas; if these women marry, the marriage is a partnership of equals similar to what Christie tried to achieve in her own two marriages. Christie's distrust of the current male-model workplace as not conducive to health or creativity anticipates Betty Friedan's mature feminist views in The Second Stage (1991). Surpassing the careers of even her most redoubtable heroines, Christie ultimately demonstrates that for her, writing itself is a feminist act. The implied, neatly camouflaged feminism of her life and work demands acknowledgment.

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly you findat the age of fifty, saythat a whole new life has opened before you,

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filled with things you can think about, study, or read about.... It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you. An (1977). Autobiography

Conclusion
Feminism was a movement of great importance which offered women equal chances with men, a fact impossible until then. The fight sustained by women was extremely hard but successful and women received the rights they wanted: access to politics, education and better child care. In my opinion feminism was of great importance because women were underpaid at work and undervalued at home, due to the fact that few had attained positions of power and influence and because so many are still subject of discrimination and violence from men, it is easy to imagine that feminism was a dream of impossible futures. Still, the three waves of
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feminism offered women revolutionary results. Therefore, I think men should take up the feminist challenge and engage in a critical dialogue with the movement itself, recognizing the seriousness and the complexity of the issues which are being raised and responding as men to the new knowledge which women have created. Nevertheless there were also restrictions regarding women in literature. They were not allowed to publish any work which was aimed directly towards men but they still managed to write important works like:The feminine mystique , The second sex which were a revelation of that era and contained the feminist ideology. In my opinion Jane Austen was one of the most important forerunners of feminism and the feminist tendencies in her work are obvious. Also Agatha Christie is in my opinion a modern feminist who always tried to hide that she was a feminist but she spoke through her characters exposing her view on the movement. Furthermore, feminism was always a fluid movement with a rare degree of creativity and adaptiveness. Maybe in the future it will be going through another change and offering a new kind of challenge to women and men whose consciousness has been raised by the first decade. From my point of view, nowadays many people recognize that feminism represents a great step towards equality and sanity in human relationships. That is certainly something worth fighting for.

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Sources

www.scribd.ro www.buzzle.com www.pemberley.com www.gale.cengage.com www.feminist.org www.readreactreview.com

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Bouchier, David, The Feminist Challenge Knepper, Marty S, Agatha Christie-Feminist in Armchair Detective, Vol. 16, No. 4, Winter, 1983

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