Proměny vědomí žen ve třech románech z přelomu století

Potočková, Kristýna

The aim of this work is to document how the substantial change in the social status of women that took place at the turn of the twentieth century is reflected in three novels of that period, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, and in the lives of the authors. The essential and common themes of these texts are marriage and motherhood, the two institutions which reflect the most the changing consciousness of women. The historical background of the period provides evidence for the division of roles in the marital institution, which was strongly established in the preceding centuries, and for the unequal position of women in general, resulting from the male superiority, mostly fortified by men's financial dominance. The heroines, akin to the authors, come from the upper or upper-middle classes which were the most active in the feminist movement because these classes had time and education to assess the situation and propose transformations. Art and sexuality are in various ways essential to the process of self-realization. The creative and sexual drives can be both an opportunity for a woman's liberation as well as an incentive for rejecting to submit to men that is enforced by men's habit of collecting works of art (inclusive of women) or...

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