COLEGIUL NATIONAL “GHEORGHE LAZAR” SIBIU

Lucrare pentru obţinereaAtestatului de competenţă

lingvisticăLimba engleză – intensiv/bilingv

Absolvent:Şofan Bianca Maria

Clasa a XII-a A

Profesor coordonator:Alexandra Cristea

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“GHEORGHE LAZAR” NATIONAL COLLEGE

Women writers and feminism - Jane

Austen and Agatha Christie -

Student:Şofan Bianca Maria

Advisor:Alexandra Cristea

Summary

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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

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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..."

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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 (1731–1805), and his wife

Cassandra (1739–1827), had six children:James (1765–1819), George

(1766–1838), Edward (1767–1852), Henry Thomas (1771–1850),Francis

William (Frank) (1774–1865), Charles John (1779–1852)—and one

sister, Cassandra Elizabeth(Steventon, Hampshire, 9 January 1773–1845),

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 life—the 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.

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Chapter 3: Agatha Christie's Biography:

Dame Agatha Christie [pseudonym Mary Westmacott]

(1890-1976), prolific English ‘Queen of Crime’ author of world-

renown 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 née 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 Saint’s

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 best-

seller. 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 England’s 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 Max’s 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. Mary’s 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 strong-

minded, 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 fiancé 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

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consider carefully some of Christie's lesser-known works, such as The Secret

Adversary, Murder After Hours, A 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

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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 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.

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“I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the

emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly you find—at the age of fifty, say—that a whole

new life has opened before you, 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 Autobiography (1977).

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

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feminism was a dream of impossible futures. Still, the three waves of

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

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www.readreactreview.com

Bouchier, David, The Feminist Challenge

Knepper, Marty S, Agatha Christie-Feminist in Armchair Detective, Vol. 16,

No. 4, Winter, 1983

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