Julien said:
in the 19th
> century...women didn't have the luxury of having a job to pay the rent
and one
> to do for fun. Women had children, stayed home, and did womanly things.
> Emily couldn't even go out and get a job, (well maybe schoolmistress or
some
> such designated job...as long as it conformed to womens work) let alone
have
> an identity. WOmen were largely dependent upon the males. Think "Sense
and
> Sensibility." If you didn't have a father, you were married off, or went
to
> live with an uncle. Writing for many women was their way of expressing
> themselves in a confining patriarchal structure. (SO nothing has changed
;)
Julien
Did you mean - when you wrote the above - women of Emily Dickinson's class?
Working class women in the UK - and, I imagine, in the US did not have the
opportunity to be "Angels of the Hearth" because they were a major part of
the workforce demanded by the Industrial Revolution. They may have earned
less than males, but they certainly contributed to the household income.
Unfortunately, my knowledge of history and reading is not wide enough to be
sure whether many of them had the time or energy to write as a way of
expressing themselves in confining patriarchal structure. In the UK, we
still (just) have a welfare state, which generally - and I am aware of the
huge homelessness problem - provides some kind of safety net for women -
it's certainly not perfect, but it's too simple to say that nothing has
changed.
Joan
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