瑪莉蓮‧羅賓遜小說中女性與空間(居家和公共)的關係

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩. 士. 論. 文. Master’s Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 瑪莉蓮‧羅賓遜小說中女性與空間(居家和公共) 的關係. Women’s Relationship with Space (Domestic and Public) in Marilynne Robinson’s Novels. 指導教授：高. 瑪. 麗. Advisor: Dr. Mary A. Goodwin 研究生：周. 綵. 潔. 中華民國一 O 四年六月 June 2015.

(2) i. 摘要本篇論文聚焦於瑪莉蓮‧羅賓遜四本小說《管家》、《遺愛基列》、《家園》和《萊拉》，作品中女性角色和空間的關係。從女性的精神空間開始，分析婦女在不同的家庭空間或外部空間的發展。女性角色藉由各種空間，促進精神與心靈之成長。全文分為三部份，第一章回顧十九世紀在居家空間的女性角色，女性在居家空間扮演妻子、母親和管家的角色，受到傳統社會眼光的束縛，女性能接觸到公共空間是有限的；第二章談及瑪麗蓮‧ 羅賓遜作品中女性改變的居家角色，其中包含在家裡傳統女性居家角色的改變，承受外力影響婦女在居家空間的生活，羅賓遜提供給予女性打破邊界之機會；第三章試圖討論外部空間的精神冥想，論述羅賓遜的女性角色如何尋求獨處在野外、靜下心來。愛默生和梭羅的啟發，羅賓遜的人物成為局外人。此外依據加爾文的宗教背景，家庭成員在羅賓遜的小說中獲得歸屬感、穩固家庭。. 關鍵詞：《管家》，《遺愛基列》，《家園》，《萊拉》，空間，女性角色，精神沉思.

(3) ii. Abstract This thesis explores women’s relationships with space in American novelist Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila. Starting from women’s spiritual space, I discuss women’s different developments in domestic and outside spaces. In different spaces, Robinson’s female characters have chances for spiritual growth. My thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter One focuses on fiction from the 19th century and the depiction of women’s roles in domestic space, including how women play domestic roles of wife, mother and housekeeper; how women suffer the pressure from the traditional social gaze; and how women have a limited exposure to public space. Chapter Two analyzes women’s changing domestic roles in Robinson’s works, in order to show how traditional female domestic roles change in the home, how outside forces influence women’s experience in domestic space, and how Robinson offers her female characters the chance to break boundaries. In Chapter Three, I discuss spiritual meditations in outside spaces. I argue that Robinson’s female characters seek solitude in the wild so they can meditate. Inspired by Emerson and Thoreau, Robinson creates characters who become outsiders. Furthermore, I suggest that with influence from Calvinism in American history and Robinson’s own background, family members in Robinson’s novels gain a sense of belonging and strengthen their family.. Keywords: Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, Lila, Space, Women’s Roles, Spiritual Meditations.

(4) iii. Acknowledgements Foremost, I would like to deeply express my gratitude to my professional and kindhearted advisor, Professor Mary A. Goodwin, for patiently advising me on the ideas and writing of my thesis. I learned a lot from Professor Goodwin, including how to search for academic resources and write summaries, proposal, and thesis. I particularly owe my advisor Professor Goodwin for leading me to read Marilynne Robinson’s novels in a rich and interactive graduate seminar she offered in the NTNU English department. Professor Goodwin inspired me to do research on issues of home, women’s concerns, and religious discussions. Gradually, I am also learning how to carefully edit my academic writing and clarify my ideas in oral presentation, under her practical advice. Professor Goodwin’s academic and spiritual support refreshes me. I would also like to thank my committee members, Professor Frank W. Stevenson and Professor Iping Liang, for their close reading of my thesis, and constructive suggestions. Because of Professor Stevenson’s advice, I am able to organize the thesis in terms of complicated spatial issues. Professor Liang helps me to reexamine radical possibilities for women, against traditions. Many thanks go to all my dear classmates for their sharing and encouragement, in class and during the journey of my thesis writing. I am also deeply indebted to my family for their unconditional love..

(5) iv. Table of Contents Introduction________________________________________________________________1 Literature Review_______________________________________________________3 Methodology___________________________________________________________9 Outline of Chapters_____________________________________________________12 Expected Findings______________________________________________________17 Chapter One_______________________________________________________________19 19th Century Women’s Roles in Domestic Space I.. The Wife, the Mother, and the Housekeeper in Domestic Space______________20. II.. The Social Gaze and Women’s Limited Exposure to Public Space____________32. Chapter Two______________________________________________________________38 Women’s Changing Domestic Roles in Marilynne Robinson’s Works I.. Changes of Traditional Female Domestic Roles in the Home________________39. II.. Outside Influence on Domestic Space___________________________________47. III. Women’s Chances of Breaking Boundaries______________________________52 Chapter Three_____________________________________________________________57 Spiritual Meditations in Outside Spaces I.. Solitude in the Wild for Robinson’s Female Characters_____________________58. II.. Religious Traditions________________________________________________67. III. Religious Background and Family_____________________________________74 Conclusion________________________________________________________________80 Works Cited_______________________________________________________________85.

(6) Chou 1. Introduction Born on November 26, 1943, American author Marilynne Robinson received her PhD in English from the University of Washington in 1977. She teaches writing at many universities, including University of Kent, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Amherst’ MFA Program for Poets and Writers, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In her nonfiction When I Was a Child I Read Books, she advises her students to “forget definition, forget assumption, watch” (2012: 7), a principle that she reminds herself of when writing. Her reputation is built on four novels: Housekeeping (1980), Gilead (2004), Home (2008), and Lila (2014), and ideas mentioned in her novels are revealed in her nonfiction. Robinson offers a redefinition of family in “Family” (1998), saying that family means members stay together, feeling loyalty and obligation, receiving identities, offering identities, and sharing habits, stories and memories. Referring to “Family,” I will study family relationships and women’s roles in her work. I agree with this notion that family members share common memories so family members volunteer to follow and take care of each other. Family members thus gain a sense of belonging, strengthening their intimate relationships. Robinson’s redefinition of family provides family with more freedom and independence, comparing to women writers’ works in the 19th century. Through the discussion on family, I hope to learn more from Robinson’s novels in terms of unique family lifestyle. Robinson has referred to women’s issues as women’s rebirth, independence, freedom of spiritual space, and mobility in the introduction to The Awakening and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin (1989), and an interview conducted by Thomas Schaub (1994). She also has written about religion in “My Western Roots” (1993), a forward of John Calvin: Selections from His Writings (2006), “Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classic Edition” (2006), an interview by Sarah Fay (2008), an interview by Ramona Koval (2008), and Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (2010)..

(7) Chou 2. Robinson’s novels give insight into women’s unique family life-style and spiritual development. In Housekeeping, Robinson describes Ruth as an orphan whose father never sees her in person and mother commits suicide. In Gilead, Robinson portrays Lila organizing a new family in Gilead as a new resident bride. In Home, Robinson depicts Glory as a new caregiver of her household, taking care of her old father, and her brother who returns home, after twenty years. In Lila, Robinson reveals Lila’s secret vagrant childhood because she was a stolen baby, and further elaborates Lila’s religious meditations in family life. One main part of my thesis study covers the design of Robinson’s four novels, in particular the vulnerable family relationships of her characters. Robinson’s characters search for spiritual growth through their family life. Beyond American “men’s” literary tradition, Robinson’s works give a voice to women’s situation and ideas that people often ignore. Another main part of my thesis investigates women’s independence in her four novels. Her characters’ pursuits show how women think independently when they have to meet the social environment’s expectations. It is not so easy for them to be their own persons entirely, considering the traditions in the American society. In the early 19th century, the public did not listen to women’s voices. It was until the late 19th century and early 20th century when feminist scholars collected women’s sufferings into a review of scholarly study. As a woman writer, Robinson in the late 20th century and early 21st century rewrites women’s identity-searching stories with more hope rather than the tragic endings especially shown in the late 19th century and the early 20th century. I aim to discuss how Robinson’s women characters find peace, energy, and hope, through sentimental resources and religious meditations on family and women’s issues. I designed the study to answer the following research question: How do female characters undergo spiritual growth in different spaces in Marilynne Robinson’s works? Robinson’s female characters are unique if we read firstly, in terms of spaces inside the house and outside.

(8) Chou 3. the house, and secondly, referring to background histories of American women’s literary history since the 19th century, and Unitarian Universalist traditions. Several studies reveal that Robinson’s female characters, in vulnerable families, seem to create different family relationships and gain new spiritual strength. I aim to categorize these ideas here to establish women’s roles in the literary history in domestic space, and the functions of religious meditations for women’s spiritual transformation.. Literature Review Following the trend in American women’s literary history, Marilynne Robinson emphasizes women’s spiritual space in her novels. In the late 19th century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” described women’s living situations at that time, indicating that a housewife-like character in the middle-class American family may suffer from hysteria and depression. People often thought women who had those syndromes were too tired and needed a lot of rest. However, in her short story, Gilman showed that those women were not sick but lived a restrictive and boring life. They seemed to have leisure time –wealthier women did not have to do housework, and they had other people help them take care of their children, but they had to stay at home. Though they did not worry about their material life, they dared not say that their spiritual life was dull. Those women, like Gilman’s protagonist, may have felt that their spiritual life was empty and incomplete. The woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” who behaves hysterically may actually have felt oppression in her domestic life, and lack of spiritual space. The doctor husband believes that the woman is sick so he forces her to take a rest cure within the room. The woman wants to write her thoughts but she can only do this secretly. Afraid of being discovered by others especially her husband, she is under serious spiritual pressure. Besides, men of the time may have considered the process of raising children easy. That is, men may have tended to neglect.

(9) Chou 4. the aspect of spiritual growth when they thought of the family life. After their babies were born and raised, women may have been tortured with spiritual anxiety. But an emphasis on spiritual growth especially in the parent-child relationship might have reduced the sense of, tension. Furthermore, Gilman argued that the patriarchal society oppressed women. The public force did not appreciate the woman who possessed the writing potential. Gilman’s character was asked to give up reading and writing, and was deprived of space of imagine. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the woman, thus, pays attention to the yellow wallpaper in the room. Gilman’s short fiction describes the relation between the woman and the yellow wallpaper. Many hidden metaphors showed women’s complicated psychological situations. In the story, the woman feels that her husband does not respect her in terms of having the chance to choose her own spiritual space and material space. If she has freedom of spiritual space, she can record her feelings in essays as an interest. She also can do what she likes in the room, where she controls the material space inside the room at any moment without interference. Her husband’s authority makes the woman afraid and suffering. “What she wishes for is an escape, through fantasy, into a symbolic version of her own plight” (Delamotte 1988: 6). No wonder the woman expects to escape reality, especially when she does not have any space to think, including which relatives she would like to see, and what kind of enclosed experience she is undergoing. The woman cannot feely write down her thoughts to express herself. Consequently, she, “forced to ‘read’ her wallpaper passively as a substitute for writing actively, has transformed her reading into an act of imagination and thus an act of freedom” (Delamotte 1988: 12). The woman is compelled by her husband, a doctor, to give up her interest in intelligent activities, including that she cannot freely read books, newspapers, and magazines; not to mention that she cannot write anything, all because that she is in a rest cure. Gilman’s personal answer and.

(10) Chou 5. critique on women’s lack of freedom could also been seen through her arrangement of the woman’s transferring her attention, from passiveness to activeness. The woman seems to accept the fact that she cannot walk out of the room, go downstairs or even visit her relatives. Although she seems to accept the fact that she cannot go out of the room, by simply going downstairs, or even visiting her cousins, she becomes more frequently observing the wallpaper, with free imagination. In such fantasy of freedom, it seems that she starts to have her spiritual space, generating her later insane act, by which she claims that no one else can deprive her of the basic freedom. The important concept of female madness in Gilman’s short fiction is related to the pursuit of space of freedom. It can be argued that in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the case of the woman corresponds to the plot of Robinson’s Housekeeping and Lila. In Housekeeping, Ruth and Lucille seek additional space near the lake, from the teacher’s authority in the school from the daytime until the evening. When Ruth and Lucille go to school, they are usually quiet. No one particularly asks too much on them because they have ordinary academic achievements, which satisfy their teachers. However, one of her teachers in the school misunderstands that Lucille has cheated in an examination just because there were only two students in the class write the same answers. Lucille’s teacher does not examine but she questions Lucille as to why she cheated in the test. For a week, Lucille and Ruth do not want to go to school and go home, and instead they go to the lake. Ruth feels that the social authority forces them to leave where they do not want to stay, and they cannot go back there following their own mind. Rather, they are able to go back only when they are forced to by the norm. In Lila, when Lila lives the vagrant life with Doll who makes Lila call her “mother” by stealing Lila from Lila’s original family, Lila likes to go to the riverside in very early morning when one can hardly see anything. “[A good sting of cold in the water from the river] made her take gasping breaths that left the taste of air in her throat” (Robinson, Lila.

(11) Chou 6. 2014: 37). By bathing in the river by herself alone, Lila cleans her body and refreshes herself. Lila thus finds her own order again. Robinson’s female characters such as Lucille, Ruth and Lila are all similar to the woman in Gilman’s short fiction Similarly, in The Awakening, Kate Chopin writes that Edna lives a traditional life as those women did, at that time in the late 19th century. Women’s center of life was on the family. Women selflessly lived the life, had no spiritual space, and owned no self-consciousness. In contrast, Robinson in Lila shows that Lila wakes up as early as she used to do in her vagrant life and “slips out of the house [where Ames and she live]” when the next day is a Sunday. “[Lila] walked away past the edge of town and followed the river to a place where the water ran over rocks and dropped down to a pool with a sandy bottom. […] She sat on the bank, damp and chilly, smelling the river and barely hearing the sound of it, hidden in the dark, not because she thought no one would be there, but because she always liked the feeling that no one could see her even when she knew she was alone” (Robinson, Lila 2014: 20). Robinson mentions that Lila sits on bank in the wild nature because she likes the feeling of anyone not seeing her. She likes to be in solitude, a status that can help her gain spiritual growth. When she meditates alone in the wild, the act frees her from anxiety caused by the social gaze. She can listen to her inner voice. She can also communicate with Nature or the Maker. As she finds that she is so small in the wild, she becomes humble and returns to herself. In the early 20th century, in the House of Mirth Edith Wharton depicts how Lily struggles with bad luck. Lily hopes to stick to her principles. First, she does not want to achieve her goals by entering a marriage with a rich husband, who she does not really love. She is not married successfully. It appears Lily refuses to marry possible candidates for ideal husbands, who belong to the leisure-class. If her future life were to be constrained by a lack of independence, she would not confirm the marriage proposal. She could not envision that she.

(12) Chou 7. spends the long days of boredom in marriage life, by functioning in the role of the “ornamental” (Ammons 1980: 351) wife. She is sure to evaluate her marital life condition, in terms of having spiritual in privacy. Considering the leisure-class norm, she is used to noticing dress details, with exaggerated hats and fans. After she marries a husband, Lily desires to live independently, in terms of appearance. She can be dressed in the way she likes, not following the leisure-class norm. That is, she can have her own unique beauty judgment. Second, Lily does not ask for money from others but she finds jobs on her own, working as a secretary and seamstress. She tries hard to pursue her spiritual space, but her life is so stressful that she does not have a method to release her spiritual pressure. She is proud and does not want to bother other people. She usually does not explain too much so other people tend to misunderstand her. Those misunderstanding causes her lonely to death. Lily’s case reveals how important spiritual space is. Furthermore, Lily cannot participate in the leisure-class because of many love affairs. Ammons regards women as powerless,” (1980: 352). This explains, “In a symbolic level, Lily somehow is murdered by the leisure culture” (357). In my opinion, this shows that women in the period between the end of the 19th century and the First World War still saw marriage as the best option for them to rise in status. Wharton’s tragic heroine Lily fights back with her last breath on the basis that she listens to her inner voice; she knows who she loves and what the spiritual and independent lifestyle she longs for. The three women writers from the late 19th century to the early 20th century excavate a history of women’s suffering—lacking spiritual space. All of the three main female characters had tragic ends. To observe women’s spiritual progress and find more hopes for women’s spiritual life, I will note how Robinson, for instance, in the late 20th century came up with her first novel Housekeeping, in which she tries to expound more possibilities for women to imagine when they hope to acquire ownership, privacy and independence. In the late 20th.

(13) Chou 8. century, in Housekeeping, Robinson creates the wanderer Sylvie, who does not wear pajamas but rather daytime clothes, when she goes to bed. She even wears shoes to bed or puts them under her pillow, indicating that she has the habits of one who is used to go drifting. Ruth considers that if Sylvie can live freely in a wandering style, she actually does not need to leave home again. Contrarily, Lucille here, representing the perspective of the social norm, questions Sylvie why Sylvie does not behave decently at home. It is shown from Robinson’s novel that both Sylvie and Ruth care about sufficient spiritual space. Among all caregivers, Ruth feels that Sylvie will not abandon her: for one thing, Sylvie is her relative; for another thing, Sylvie seems to understand the motives of her unexplained acts. Sylvie knows that she needs a great deal of individual space, like Ruth and Lucille need. Not only women need space, but also young girls sometimes need space for solitude. For instance, Sylvie knows Ruth’s truancy as well as Lucille’s (Robinson, Housekeeping 1980: 110). Sylvie chooses not to continuously force the sisters to go to school; or rather, she realizes what the sisters are doing in their small scale wandering in the wild in their truancies. Ruth believes that she and Lucille cannot be able to go to a place where Sylvie had not been. That is, Sylvie has the ability to understand Ruth and Lucille’s feelings and problems because she has wandered in the wild before she returns to the town of Fingerbone to take care of the sisters. When she stays with the sisters, she spends time strolling along the lake in the daytime mostly. I agree that the extent where Ruth and Lucille have paid a visit would not beyond Sylvie’s tracks. This observation shows that Sylvie needs private space a lot, so is she considerate of Ruth and Lucille. As women need space inside and outside home, teenager girls sometimes need their private space alone, too. That is that “Sylvie needs no explanation for the things Ruth and Lucille cannot explain” (Robinson, Housekeeping 1980: 110). The three women writers paid attention to women’s roles in domestic space, but discussed little about women’s participation in public space. By using Robinson’s novels, I.

(14) Chou 9. reflect on the possible reasons for the absence of women’s social activities in public space in literary history from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. I will also try to mention women’s improving spiritual reality, in Robinson’s novels. In addition, I aim to deepen the discussion on women’s religious meditations in outside spaces especially in Robinson’s works because Robinson combs out the hidden literary history of women’s religious and spiritual strength in her interviews, essays and novels.. Methodology This paper will examine how Marilynne Robinson’s female characters change themselves, how their family life influences them, and how they spiritually develop in different spaces. I analyze Robinson’s fictional characters that have life wisdom from daily details in Robinson’s works such as Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila. I will further link the above reflective points from Robinson’s primary novels in Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila, to Robinson’s primary nonfiction and essays. Achieving this goal of explaining how Robinson’s female characters change throughout their lives, how their family life and meditative practices influence them, I refer to reflective points on Robinson’s primary texts, secondary criticisms and multiple relevant theoretical resources. Inspired by secondary criticism on Robinson, I aim to identify and make use of some trends in related background academic resources such as American literary history, family studies, feminine theories, and religious discussions. Sylvie and Ruth in Housekeeping decide finally to burn down their house and then cross the bridge to the outside, away from their town, into a new transient life. Their choice of burning their house affects their new living pattern, since they will be giving up their safe and secure house and then living in the natural world as vagrants. They can meditate and seek salvation in the wild nature. Only by burning down their house can they prevent further.

(15) Chou 10. intervention from neighboring community. In Nature, the intimate core family stays together as the supportive power, as Ruth and Sylvie form a unit to travel around the public sphere. Because they situate themselves in the wild land, they access the chance to meditate transcendentally on life and death. Coming to Gilead from a mysterious remote place, Lila in Gilead marries Ames to found a new family. Lila’s decision changes not only her living location from “the mysterious accustomed hometown” to a new land, but also her family relationship from individual to marital. She has to get used to the new community, and deal with housework and new responsibilities, for she now has a family. Lila marries Ames because both of them are interested in religious faith and spiritual growth. In their home, Lila still has to confront the neighboring community’s intrusions because she is not so talented in cooking and housekeeping. Before Ames tells their neighbors not to come into their kitchen to help with their domestic work, Lila hides in the corner of the kitchen, crying out of helpless and stressful feelings. Lila has been a strong mother figure but she still experiences this kind of stressful frustrations. Her way of living beyond that challenge includes reading religious books to gain spiritual energy as well as family support. In Home, Glory returns home to take care of her father and brother; then when she regains confidence, she also plans to return to school to teach. Glory’s final status indicates mobility between domestic space and public space, bringing her life more energy. By taking care of the family and students, she gains spiritual reliance on them. As we pay attention to her housekeeping, she tries getting rid of unnecessary domestic rules and décor. Because many of those trifling unnecessary items such as gifts from her parents’ old friends are no use for her and the rest of the family now, she wants to make her house simpler so she can focus more on family members and religious gathering. Employing a close reading of Robinson’s novels, this study records Robinson’s female.

(16) Chou 11. characters’ thoughts and feelings about family relationships within American literary tradition, revealing their significant transformations as well as individual uniqueness. Then, I refer to Robinson’s interviews, nonfiction essays as the bridge between life observed in reality, and the imaginary lands in the novels. Interviewed by Sarah Fay, Robinson in 2008 talked about her ideas of religion on the Paris Review. Robinson reveals the definition of religion because she uses the pastor John Ames to be the protagonist in Gilead and daughter Glory of another minister Ames’ neighbor, in Home. During the interview, Robinson mentions that anything written meets the religious definition if people discuss it compassionately and perceptively. For instance, in Home, marital failure frustrates Glory. When she is going to marry her fiancé, she finds that her fiancé is already married. Being able to go through this frustration, Glory gradually gains this perception: it is not the end of the world if a woman breaks up with her boyfriend or even fiancé. The next one could be better! Life as an individual could be more important for a woman! If a woman experiences a heart-breaking relationship and then confines herself in her own room, that would be miserable. A woman can gain spiritual growth and more energy that is positive when she tries to look on the bright side. If she hurts herself out of a relationship with a man, suffering a kind of torture that prevents her from managing a career or caring on her study, she might sin in ignoring other miserable lives in the rest of the world. That would be worthless for her. Therefore, I think, in Glory’s case, she overcomes her pain because she observes her relationship with detailed perception and then she forgives her fiancé maybe out of a kind of compassionate emotions. She understands that her fiancé is also a poor man or he would not commit this error. She tries thinking in his shoe so she gets the chance to live beyond this confinement. My research method relies on many descriptions of real events in literary life in the novels. I use mostly a Historical Approach to make comparisons between Robinson’s works and American literary history and social history. In this way, I hope to point out the reasons.

(17) Chou 12. why Robinson’s characters are unique and innovative within American women writers’ literary history. In addition, my thesis will cover major theories applied including family studies, feminine criticism, and religious discussions. Together with other women writers and feminist scholars’ ideas in their works, my thesis will contemplate feminine issues that American social history also highlights. Relevant sociological theories of family, women’s roles in the home, as well as religion, politics, and economics contribute to the clarification and concreteness of my thesis. I will arrange my theoretical discussions from home discussions, feminine criticism, to religious studies. First, in The American Woman’s Home, Catharine E. Beecher points out those women’s important responsibilities are taking good care of others especially at home. Corresponding to the female growing needs in the time background, Godey’s Magazine presents a transition of women’s roles from motherhood to New Woman. Second, through the lens of feminist theory regarding women’s roles, Elizabeth Nolan’s “The Women’s Novel beyond Sentimentalism,” demonstrates how the genre beyond sentimental novels reveals how women characters can develop an understanding of their worth as they conduct spiritual searching in family life. Feminist scholar Griselda Pollock’s observation on women’s inability to wander around on the street alone inspires me to explore the possibility of women’s artists in reality and the fictional world. Third, in light of Jane Elliott’s “Feminist Fiction,” I would like to explore women’s spiritual strength and new acts especially in Robinson’s Housekeeping in terms of inside space and outside space.. Outline of Chapters I will divide this thesis into three chapters and a conclusion. In Chapter One, I hope to study American women writers’ domestic history, in preparation for later comparing it with Marilynne Robinson’s domestic discussions on themes of home and feminism. For example,.

(18) Chou 13. in the 19th century, Catherine E. Beecher in her book The American Woman’s Home promotes professional academic research on household management. The domestic subject might help women gain more respect at home but women were still unable to go out of the house to have jobs. However, male social members had better career chances. Having received good educations and profession training, male social members unquestionably could work in public space. The discrepancies between female and male social members were largely the result of an inflexible ideological education. Moreover, in the late 19th century American women writers represented the tragic domestic reality that women did not lead a life with a sense of spiritual satisfaction because the social norm confines them in the house. As one of women’s important domestic roles, mother figures affect women’s value in life a lot. To illustrate details of maternity and household management in the early 19th century, I have analyzed criticism of Godey’s Magazine. This women’s magazine reflects American women’s concerns, indicating a transition from imagining becoming a religious moral mother one who has social meaning/value rather than one who simply serves as a visual decoration to her husband, to attempting to pursue New Woman’s values, women’s rights, and individuality. In the early 19th century, women’s center of marital life was domestic family life. Though women had multiple potentials, the social gaze expected them to develop no public life and to stay at home. Furthermore, in the late 19th century Charlotte Perkins Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” constructs the woman’s madness that is based on individual, personal experience and the literary Gothic tradition. Gilman unfolds how miserable and humble women’s position was at home because of the tension between the husband, and the wife and mother. Women’s intellectual ability actually can aid spiritual marital life, if men respect women’s need of knowledge in reading and writing. Chapter Two studies Robinson’s unique insight into family relationships. My thesis discusses emotional elements in the household and social elements in the neighborhood..

(19) Chou 14. Women in these novels still are unable to control their own domestic personal space, not to mention domestic working places such as the living room in Sylvie’s case, and the kitchen in Lila’s instance. Considering that her husband may pass away much earlier than she will, the mother has to self-educate so she can set a good example for her child, as a model of a good learner. Specifically, in Gilead, Lila actively reads to make herself the model of an active and lifelong learner for her child. I hope to establish that Robinson’s redefinitions of “home” help women characters in her works pursue their own life-style. In Housekeeping, how Sylvie and Ruth experience the flood (Robinson, Housekeeping 1980: 64) explains why they can choose to live a transient life to enjoy self-reliant solitude with the most intimate family unit’s acceptance. While Lucille considers how to contact with the neighbors, Sylvie and Ruth seem to form a close unit by dancing together in the water. In Gilead, Lila and Ames’s common interest in religious faith (Robinson, Gilead 2004: 67) magnifies the subtle details of family formation and continuous development that are taken for granted by most of us. Subsequently, physical domestic space provides us with a clue to detect women’s voices in their family life. In Home, Glory shows how she transforms herself because her father and brother trust her deeply. My further interpretation will foreground her domestic space revolution in terms of housekeeping and décor. Glory’s design of her new home space mirrors her spiritual growth. Chapter Three pays attention to women’s solitude in the wild, religious traditions, and religious background and family. In her novels, Robinson breaks the boundary between inside and outside. Robinson’s female characters have unique lifestyle. In the wild, outside force does not intervene in them and they reduce their material desire. Women characters do not destroy social framework just because they go outside into the wild to seek rest and peace. Robinson uses the water metaphor in her works. In her pioneering novel, Chopin chooses the sea metaphor while Robinson uses the lake one in her Housekeeping (Robinson, introduction.

(20) Chou 15. 1989: ix-x). Both Edna in The Awakening and Ruth in Housekeeping seek rebirth, though Edna goes to death (Robinson, introduction 1989: xix-xx) while Ruth merely leaves her home to become a vagrant; whether she is alive or actually dead is unknown. Chopin emphasizes women’s independence, when Robinson demonstrates women’s new mobility in the wide wild, where Nature relives women’s domestic anxiety. By leaving home, which social study views as an epitome of the social structure, women possess both natural space and spiritual space, decreasing vulgar monetary desire. In Lila, Robinson seems to compare the water in the river in Gilead to the water in the premier sacrament in the ancient time. Ames baptizes Lila in the wild near the river because Lila as a drifter says that she cannot really be married to Ames though she said Ames should marry her in a sense. As Ames is a preacher, Lila who once lived a vagrant life has never been baptized for she did not go to church as Doll who was her “surrogate” mother did. “I can’t marry you [Ames]. I cannot even stand up in front of them people and get baptized. I hate it when they’re looking at me,” says Lila (Robinson, Lila 2014: 87). Yet, Ames responds that he can baptize Lila not in the church but under the sunshine with sunflowers aside in the wild by the water from the river. When he rests his hands three times on her hair, the touch of his hand makes her “cry” (2014: 88). I think Lila at this moment believes that Ames is the one who she can truly trust and depend on so she feels sincerely moved. Robinson in Gilead has mentioned the characteristics of water that is so pure that it is meaningful and can express the holy notion. By Ames conducting the sacrament of baptizing, Lila gets rebirth from her being abandoned past and almost orphan-like life. Lila increases confidence in herself and future life, uses a new perspective to live, and deals with the interrelationship between humans with new values. Situated in the wild, Lila frees from the social gaze and gets rebirth inside by the outside water sacrament. She feels moved and she cries which deeply impresses and influences Ames. In Gilead, Ames talks to Glory’s father, his preacher friend, and he.

(21) Chou 16. mentions that through the act of baptizing Lila he sees holy rebirth. He witnesses how Lila is deeply touched and enters her new life gradually. Influenced by Emerson’s revolutionary naturalism, Robinson also mentions the idea of returning to Nature, where one learns to reduce physical need to seek possible salvation. Inspired by Thoreau, Robinson considers that being an outsider can one make judgments. One thus has one’s own opinions, different from the community. Robinson’s women characters change themselves as they confront difficulties in family life by going back to themselves spiritually in Housekeeping, and religiously in Gilead and Home meditating on family relationships, women’s roles and life. In Robinson’s opinion, she suggests how one can maintain “one’s greatest dignity and privilege” (“My Western Roots” 1993) by the surprising experience of solitude. In this way, one can thus really live one’s unique life-style. She, moreover, agrees with the disobedience and revolutionary energy in Henry David Thoreau’s essays. The most valuable thing is that Thoreau gains this power of reforming the society by starting from fundamentally changing one’s domestic life in the wild, which is full of potentiality without confinement. I argue that Robinson’s women characters, taking Sylvie in Housekeeping for exemplification, not only have critical judgment, but also claim their own mobility by traveling and benefit from supportive family relationships. In the following part of the chapter, I will further refer to Jane Elliott’s criticism on Robinson’s first published work Housekeeping, a pioneering novel in the late 20th century American women’s literary history as well as a foreseeing of what Robinson is interested in academic areas such as domesticity, social order, nature and salvation. Lastly, in terms of religious background and family, Robinson, following Calvin, mentions that the function of family is for family members to help and take care of each other, especially spiritual help. Robinson considers that one can become independent by serious self-learning spiritually. One therefore can learn to reduce one’s material desire, and meditate.

(22) Chou 17. peacefully, opening a broader worldview.. Expected Findings The first objective is to show how Marilynne Robinson redefines family relationships in domestic space in her novels. In Robinson’s Housekeeping, family members unite to live a better life. Ruth chooses to follow Sylvie in living a transient life whereas the residents in the town of Fingerbone want Ruth to live a normal life with neat and tidy housekeeping. Take Chapter Four for instance. The town of Fingerbone is flooded when Sylvie just arrives home. Sylvie, Ruth, and Lucille together experience this natural disaster. They have “great quantities of canned goods” (Robinson, Housekeeping 1981: 64) in their pantry so they will not starve. While Lucille wants to go out of their home to seek other people and observe the others’ situations, Sylvie takes Ruth by hand and pulls Ruth after her “through six grand waltz steps” (Robinson, Housekeeping 1981: 64). I think Sylvie and Ruth do live an independent way of life although they are suffering difficulty in the floods. Their house is ruined. They are isolated but Sylvie and Ruth dance in the water in order to find hope and happiness in the hard situation. This explains their later choice of living a vagrant life because they enjoy their independent solitude. Sharing similar values, family members would be able to communicate with each other on a profound level. Take Lila and Ames in Gilead for instance. Both of them share the same interest in Christianity. When they educate their child, they will have similar values. For example, Ames agrees with Lila’s act of teaching their son the Lord’s Prayer, the Twenty-third Psalm, Psalm 100, and Beatitudes (Robinson, Gilead 2004: 67). Actually, the interaction between Lila and their son reminds Ames of the way he learned religious verses when he was a child—learning interactively with his father. I think this is a wonderful experience for Ames, Lila and their son because Ames and Lila share the same religious faith.

(23) Chou 18. and passion. In this way, they can also cooperate well when they bring up their son. Since they will not quarrel about what they should teach their son, their family life would work in harmony. Family is composed of members who want to stay together, who value each other, including their sayings and ideas, and who experience common everyday events together. In Home, Glory returns home to live with her old father and take care of him, representing an act of taking responsibility in their family. In my opinion, when Glory goes back to the home of her childhood memory, she strongly feels that her family needs her. To begin with, her old father has lived alone after Glory’s mother expired, and Glory and her other siblings all left home for their career or new independent family life. Then, her brother Jack surprisingly comes back after being away for twenty years of sorrow and strangeness. Because of her old father and her brother Jack, Glory works even harder in order to build a new home with familiar tastes of their common memories but without unnecessary limitations to the old routines. She hopes the three of them can live together with hope and happiness. The second objective is to describe how Robinson’s characters Sylvie, Ruth, and Lila seek spiritual meditation in outside space. In Housekeeping, Ruth and Sylvie go to the lake in the wild and relax their mind. Feeling free and peaceful, they think how small they are in the Nature. They thus meditate, gaining spiritual growth. In Gilead series, Lila in her neighbor Glory’s home expresses that if one changes oneself, everything else may change as well. If one does not change, the future salvation seems unnecessary..

(24) Chou 19. Chapter One 19th Century Women’s Roles in Domestic Space In the 19th century, many women mainly functioned as the wife, the mother, and the housekeeper at home. They dealt with many mechanic domestic tasks, which required their time, mind, and physical strength. They might suffer from a lack of respect. Though they had good material comforts, they needed to live up to other family members’ expectations. That is, other family members did not respect women, and thus some of those women sometimes felt depressed. Women lost their own individuality. From the 19th century to the early 20th century, domestic theorists and American women writers including Catharine E. Beecher, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, and Edith Wharton all mentioned how the traditional social norm judged women; how domestic rituals confined women in details; and how women only had limited chances to enter public space. The physical and material satisfaction could only sustain the existence of one’s body or make one’s life continue, but could not guarantee women spiritual satisfaction. Using the 19th century and the early 20th century American women’s literature and domestic criticism, I hope to explore firstly women’s roles in domestic space such as the wife, the mother, and the housekeeper; and secondly women’s limited access to public space. Such historical and literary resources are relevant to my thesis because of these observations in Marilynne Robinson’s novels. Robinson considers and emphasizes humans’ life existence. Out of love, Robinson’s female characters have concepts of forgiveness and salvation in mind so they have new hopes of the new lifestyle. Female characters take care of their children with ultimate conscience and love, hoping that their children feel protected and have more strength to seek their own living ways. Female characters find methods of healing their children’s mental wound. Female characters hope that their children grow up confidently. Catharine E. Beecher’s criticism particularly offered an ideal view of women’s domestic.

(25) Chou 20. profession in the early 19th century. Religious faith and institutions were regarded as women’s reliance at home no matter they were married or remained single. According to Beecher, unmarried women could adopt children from the church and then build their own family. In the late 19th century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin depicted how women worked hard to become the perfect wife, mother, and housekeeper at home but their family life could not satisfy their need to live with individuality, freedom, and life interest. Women characters in their novels struggled for women’s independence from the traditional family pattern. Later, this background is useful and important so that I will later compare these novels with Marilynne Robinson’s works in the late 20th century because her characters struggle in conflict between freedom and tradition.. I.. The Wife, the Mother and the Housekeeper in Domestic Space Catharine E. Beecher promoted women’s Home Economics as a science and a field of. study in the early 19th century. She was a predecessor of women’s educations. It was full of the social meaning that she founded the first female seminary, Hartford Female Seminary, as the nation’s foundation. Catharine E. Beecher’s sibling Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the famous work Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Catharine E. Beecher shared domestic tasks, and decorated their warm and comfortable house with necessary articles of furniture such as a stove, a carpet and so on. Harriet Beecher Stowe thus could be released from heavy domestic rituals and concentrate her attention on writing. Stowe incorporates management of domestic space, use of scientifically modern ways of housekeeping in the Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), making women gain confidence in housekeeping especially in the kitchen. These two sisters cooperated to publish The American Woman’s Home in 1869, four years after the Civil War had ended.. Basing on issues such as housekeeping, food preparing, and child rearing,. Beecher and Stow wrote whether the wife felt that other family members treated her with.

(26) Chou 21. respect, and how single women could build a religious home through adoption. In the introduction to The American Woman’s Home, Beecher’s mission is to help wives feel respected through domestic work. Beecher writes this book because she fears, “the honor and duties of the family are not duly appreciated” (Beecher 1869: 19). Beecher’s answer is to raise the status of women’s profession in the home, with expertise similar to that of other existing professions such as “law, medicine, or dignity” (Beecher 1869: 19). I think Beecher points out how the wife in the home confronts the pressure from her husband, representing the society’s judgment. The wife works at home under pressure because her husband has no idea of how difficult those domestic tasks are. In 2002, Nicole Tenkovich in her introduction to The American Woman’s Home mentions that not only wives and mothers but also single women can benefit from Beecher and Stowe’s book. “A generation earlier, [the unmarried woman] might have lived [her adult life] at home, ministering to [her] aging parents” (Tenkovich 2002: xix). However, within the Beecher sisters’ lifetimes, many unmarried educated women redefined the traditional family structure. “Such a family need no longer be constituted by heterosexual marriage and promulgated by childbearing” (Tenkovich 2002: xx). Inspired by Chapter One of The American Woman’s Home, titled “The Christian Family,” Tenkovich comments that any women can build a home by motherly caring for the orphan and helping them follow the self-denial example of Christ (Tenkovich 2002: xx). In my opinion, Beecher offered women another life choice. Without male social norms, women could still devote themselves to caring for children as their own family by possibly adopting an orphan from a religious organization. Godey’s Magazine focused on American women’s issues from July 1830 to August 1898. In Godey’s Magazine, brave women face challenges of caring for children, treasuring family values, and gaining support from the intimate family unit. In “A Wonderful Duty: A Study of.

(27) Chou 22. Motherhood in Godey’s Magazine,” Sarah Mitchell shows motherhood, and how these women deserved their own private space at home in the mid-19th century. Later, Godey’s Magazine discussed the idea of “New Woman,” focused on the female education, and invited successful women to write columns. “The new focus on the burgeoning women’s rights movement and a new emphasis on individuality” (Mitchell 2009: 177) replaced motherhood. Marilynne Robinson’s mother characters and mother-like caregivers correspond to meaningful mothers in Godey’s Magazine. In the early 19th century, Beecher and Stowe’s book reflected social standards of their home: American females considered that being a mother meant they should patiently bring up and educate their own child. In the mid-19th century, American mothers thought that they played “the most fulfilling and respected role” as women (Mitchell 2009: 171). In the mid-19th century an American woman established a home with her husband, and having child, they could be partly responsible to the society by “raising another moral and pious member” (Mitchell 2009: 172). Owing to those mothers’ efforts, the next generation would have more possibility to contribute to the society and less chances to cause social problems. Furthermore, in terms of social value, a pious maternal figure was probably able to “guide the moral and religious behavior of her husband and children” (Mitchell 2009: 173-174). The American society determined the social worth of women by how well they performed their maternal duties. Women were not just accessories to their husbands because they had social importance. Women could have a voice at home when their husbands interacted with them in family life and as their children gradually grew up. There exists a gap, in terms of women’s domestic issues, between the early 19th century, and the late 19th century in American literary history. Social statistics show that there is a change after Beecher, and Stowe. First, in “Women in 19th century,” Kathleen Steele and Jessica Brislen demonstrate that American women applied for professional jobs though they.

(28) Chou 23. lacked higher educations. Those women, therefore, could not get professional work chances. Before the civil war lasting about from 1861 to 1865, women only could continue their studies at “three colleges.” After the civil war, “nearly 40% of college students were women,” a fact that indicates women gradually could receive higher educations. In “The ‘Superior Instruction of Women’ 1836-1890,” Roger L. Geiger says, “In 1836, Georgia Female College was chartered in Macon, and the next year Mary Lyon opened Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts. At Oberlin Collegiate Institute, male and female students were taught together in the same collegiate classrooms beginning in 1834 and in 1837 four women enrolled in the classical course” (Geiger 2000: 183). Second, in “Women and Work in Early America,” Jone Johnson Lewis discusses the relation between the Industrial Revolution and the growth of women’s work outside the home. “By 1840, ten percent of women held jobs outside the household; ten years later [by 1850], this had risen to fifteen percent,” Lewis points out. In “Good Men and ‘Working Girls’: The Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1870-1900,” Henry F. Bedford collects Horace Wadlin’s archive, showing that women labor outside in the marketplace increased, in the later period of the 19th century. Wadlin shows, “in 1875, women constituted less than one quarter of the labor force, a proportion that grew to over one third ten years later” (Bedford 1996: 90). Besides, in the late 19th century, more women could work outside the home but generally worked as factory workers, says Lewis. Considering Boston women’s types of jobs in the 1880, Bedford analyzes relevant social statistics from Carrol Wright’s detailed survey of “The Working Girls of Boston.” In the 1880, 20 percent Boston women had work. Wright calculated, “of those forty thousand women, about six percent were teachers, artists, musicians, and physicians, […] half of the remainder [were] domestic workers; […] the remaining twenty thousand women [mostly] were engaged in trade and manufacturing” (Bedford 1996: 91). I notice that this historical contrast suggests why Marilynne Robinson in.

(29) Chou 24. her works aims to make a balance between staying at home and going outside the home. Most of Robinson’s female characters hope to pursue outside space and only one of her main female characters work as a teacher and the rest of those female characters work as domestic workers or servants. In the 19th century, American women mostly stayed at home and did domestic work. American women in middle-class or upper class families, usually would not worry about financial problems or household work. Their only duty was taking good care of the whole family. They often lacked independent economic resources. In order to maintain family peace, women could not express their opinions and served like subordinates, when they communicated with their husbands. In “the Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote about a woman who has a rich material life but lives a dull spiritual life. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin depicted Edna who is not fully satisfied when she plays roles of the wife and mother, but who thinks she may find the new meaning in public life as an artist with dignity. When Edna lives at home, her center of life is all her family. She does not have freedom, individuality and self-consciousness. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was descended from the well-known family who had outstanding performances in various areas such as literature, art, and law. “[Gilman] was the great-granddaughter of the Reverend Lyman Beecher, the great-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine Beecher, Isabella Beecher, and the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher” (Allen 1988: 30). When Gilman considered getting a chance to receive a good education, her ancestors’ professional achievements inspired her a lot. “[Several aunts, uncles, and acquaintances offered [her] rather extraordinary intellectual stimulation. Growing up in the bosom of the Beecher family, she decided at a tender age to dedicate herself to a life of ‘world improvement,’” (Allen 1988: 31). She thus worked hard enough to be an occupational writer and an amateur painter. “As a young woman she determined to attend the newly.

(30) Chou 25. opened Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) despite her mother’s objections” (Allen 1988: 33). Having a talent for art, young Gilman began art creation. When Gilman gave birth to her daughter, she did not feel peaceful in her new family, suffering from serious depression after childbirth. “The young bride [Gilman] became pregnant within two months and gave birth to Katharine Beecher Stetson, on March 23, 1885. During the nine months she was carrying the baby, she had experienced periods of seriously debilitating depression, a condition she and [her husband Charles Walter Stetson] expected to subside after the baby’s arrival. […] Despite her determination to rise above her personal misery, to be a good wife and a good mother, she could not escape the fact that she had become a ‘mental wreck,’” (Allen 1988: 38). In order to recover herself and get better health and spiritual conditions, she took rest cure and in the meanwhile, she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” because of her suffering personal experience. She believed that women lived breathlessly in domestic space and that the society had traditional expectations for the role of the mother made women’s mental and physical health broke down. In her lifetime, Gilman hoped not to become a feminist but a humanist so she could seek equality. She faced early life difficulties, when she got divorced, such a decision that was not very common at her time. She sensed that it was challenging to raise a child; it was hard to let her husband really understand her pressure; and thus she was in the miserable situation. After divorce, she enthusiastically engaged in writing and publishing her works. “Gilman dedicated herself to the advancement of women and the cultivation of socialist consciousness in the United States and throughout the world,” (Allen 1988: 29). She paid attention to women’s domestic environment and women’s oppressed situations. She also stressed women’s labor issues. Her works included Herland in which she introduces her ideals of feminist utopia, Women and Economic that she argues that and that “there is no female mind,” and women’s maternal roles are artificial. “Published first in 1898, Women and Economics is a treatise, in.

(31) Chou 26. fifteen chapters, on the injustice and adverse consequences to both women and the society of women’s financial dependence upon men,” (Allen 1988: 44). It was not until the 1960s that were her works reviewed more frequently so her contribution to women’s domestic suffering was highly noticed then. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman’s wife feels depressed because her husband hardly understands her situation in marital life. Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” mentions that the woman gives birth to her child, and then inevitably feels depressed. The mother feels strengthened but challenged in raising children. The protagonist loses her individual will. In “Male and Female Mysteries in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’” Eugenia C. Delamotte mentions, “the perils of the Gothic heroine defined in the 1790s were oblique reflections of the fear and despair in real women’s lives” (1988: 3). It actually was an even miserable situation that some women gave birth to their children and then inevitably felt depressed, because raising children was an endless challenging task and because their husbands just could not understand their pressure. In the late 19th century, Gilman challenged the traditional view of taking care of children limited in domestic space. She agreed that the society is a big environment where all the people coexist together. In the initial stage, when the mother took care of her child, it helped a lot if she could also receive some social information. For instance, the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” suffers from the severe pressure, for she is lacking privacy inside room, and fails to communicate successfully with her husband on the issue of her uncomfortable feeling. She gives birth to her child and then she suffers from depression. With her family, she moves to the countryside, and undergoes the rest cure in the room. She is supposed to take the rest cure within her room. She thus stays within domestic space. At the end of the story, the woman still just has a humble position because she becomes insane and creeps around, rather than standing up and leaving the enclosed space. She creeps out from the wall, and onto the floor.

(32) Chou 27. in the room, as if enjoying freedom. In this story, the narrator’s marriage and family life is characteristic of women’s Gothic traditions. The confined woman can observe nothing but just the wallpaper within the domestic setting. The enclosed woman cannot go out of the room, which is a tradition of Gothic, as well as failing going out of the room (Delamotte 1988: 6) and shockingly revealing her true self (Delamotte 1988: 8), indicating that space she owns is simply limited and is within the room in the household. “Critics of ‘The Yellow [Wallpaper]’ have long argued that the confessional narrator of Gilman’s most famous work is ‘insane’ at the end of the story. […] [Such interpretation has] been widely accepted. [It invites] a host of theoretical readings from feminist criticism to psychoanalytical examinations of the narrator and text. [Critics] ignore subtle indications that the narrator’s behavior at the end of the story may not be a form of insanity but rather a deliberate act of rebellion—an expression of the tremendous rage she feels toward her husband, John” (Knight 2006: 73). The oppressed woman can only stay in domestic space. Second, in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the unexpected visits of others intrude on the woman’s domestic space, causing a situation that exacerbates the woman’s mental pressure. When her husband and other family members can just open the door and go into her room without her further permission, they catch her doing the forbidden writing. Her husband and other family members take the right of entering the woman’s room for granted because they are her caregivers. Lack of privacy causes the narrator to be pressured in a desperate way. “[The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” must also make [her observation on the wallpaper] a mystery to her husband, concealing her writing from other members of the household, who may enter her room at any time,” states Delamotte (1988: 8). Gilman seems to show that the woman thus does not have a sense of security. Third, her doctor husband John does not allow his wife to do anything related to the.

(33) Chou 28. brain, especially writing. That is, the narrator’s husband’s medical authority makes her powerless to question the practice of rest cure. He forces her to follow his medical authoritative decisions. She even cannot do what she likes to do freely. Gradually, she cannot help but start to immerse herself in perceiving the patterns on the wallpaper. In addition to lacking privacy and ownership in her enclosed room, the woman fails to communicate with her husband successfully and suffers from the mental pressure. Finally, she seems to go insane—she becomes the imagined woman on the wallpaper, and tragically achieving a triumph, she suppresses her husband by “getting out at last” (Gilman 1892: 1681). Her position is still a humble one because she gets mad and creeps, but stands and walks through or out domestic space. By the Gothic tradition, the woman reveals her true self, and finds her own space, out of the repressed wallpaper by means of exaggeratedly creeping out of the wall, a place that represents repressed domestic space, built by her husband’s authority and domination. This scene represents that her husband’s authority can no longer have suppressed the woman, within domestic space. In the late 19th century, Gilman saw women’s need for space in the society. In Gilman’s short fiction, the woman narrator longs for social stimulation because men typically work outside but women stay at home. In this short story, Gilman displays that men were responsible to supporting the whole family and making decisions, whereas women dealt with domestic work and took care of the whole family, in a peaceful manner. This ideal family mode could not allow educated women to have fair professional right; that is, women could not work in public space, but paid all their attention to their “normal” focus, the family. Viewed as a feminist predecessor in the late 19th century American women’s literary history, Kate Chopin was the author of short stories including “Désirée’s Baby” (1893), and “The Story of an Hour” (1894). As a pioneer, she demonstrated issues of race and women. In 1995, Neal Wyatt points out, “[after her father was killed in a train accident,] Kate Chopin.

(34) Chou 29. [who was born Kate O’Flaherty] grew up and was surrounded by smart, independent, single women such as her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, all of them widows.” Like Chopin, Chopin’s husband Oscar Chopin came from the background of "French catholic." Oscar Chopin offered Kate Chopin space and freedom to use her intelligence and live independently. They had their family in Louisiana. After her husband died of swamp fever, she began her writing career in order to raise six children. She was intelligent so she wrote rather rapidly and she did not need to spend too much time on revision. She did not work outside home but she usually worked at home with her children around by her side. She wrote The Awakening (1899), in which her female character Edna Pontellier seeks freedom from the society. Chopin in The Awakening creates Edna, raised to become a perfect wife and mother. Edna idolizes her husband and children because most women around her do so. Her life thus is fine but dull. Therefore, she hopes to listen to her inner voice. That is, she does not want the society to regard her just as Mrs. Pontellier and her son’s mother. As for the literary method in The Awakening, “Chopin was working in a mode of mingled naturalism and symbolism,” comments Gilbert (1987: 92). I want to argue that Chopin’s The Awakening is naturalistic because it describes believable everyday reality: how “fictitious” selves that we assume like garments (Gilbert 1987: 102), replace women’s “true” selves. Between traditional maternal duties and women’s own happiness, Edna wishes to listen to her interior voice. She considers what to do can she show her true self: developing her own ideas and artistic interest. Caring husbands and children has already occupied most of her life. She does not so much want the society to view her just as the wife and the mother. “The situation in the Pontellier household recalls views on marriage articulated by Margaret Fuller and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who perceived that a woman’s financial dependence on a man resulted in her subordinate position. Edna perceives the inevitable link between money and independence.

(35) Chou 30. when she moves out of her home and into the small ‘pigeon house’ that she buys with her own funds” (Shapiro 1987: 108). Instead, Edna imagines the happiness she would feel it the society regarded her as an artist who lives independently. In addition, in the late 19th century Chopin’s The Awakening discusses that there is no public space for women to develop their professions, so women only can become the sacrificing wife and mother in domestic space. Women mechanically manage housework at home. Women cannot find their values, except that they help male family members not worry about domestic work so men can put all their effort to accomplish public affairs. Women’s professions are nothing in social space so women just need to become thoroughly devoting wives and mothers in domestic space. It will be a waste of women’s energy and talents to try becoming an unknown and penniless female artist, who immerses herself in artistic activities just for interest. However, women sometimes in a marriage life need to be alone. “[Edna hears her husband] moving about the room; every sound indicating impatience and irritation. Another time she would have gone in at his request,” (Chopin, The Awakening 1899: 40). Husbands take women’s contribution for granted, treating women with little respect. Women work mechanically at home. Women cannot figure out the worth of her except helping their men be free from domestic work and have a better chance to be successful in the social arena. “Edna suffers more than her husband because he can always lose himself in the world of business. After a weekend with his family, he looks forward to returning to a lively week in Carondelet Street, but she has to remain in an alien world of mothers and children” (Shapiro 1987: 108). Chopin in “The Story of an Hour” depicts how a late 19th century wife feels an overwhelming and complicated freedom when she finds out that her husband has been killed. When she seems to recover herself, she goes downstairs, and then finds out that her husband is in fact still alive. She suddenly dies of heart attack. This case shows that women’s status.

(36) Chou 31. was low in the society at that time, and that the marital relationship brought women bondage in life. Having a husband in a good family, Mrs. Mallard does not worry about her financial life but she feels part of her heart is dead because her life is all the same from day to day. The story also reveals how heavily a woman puts emphasis on her husband. In “The Story of an Hour,” Chopin ends the story with the statement, “they said she had died of heart disease—of the joy that kills” (1984: 1611). This very statement suggests that Mrs. Mallard’s psychological state includes the unspeakable marital pressure. There are two explanations to explain “joy.” First, the joy suggests that Mrs. Mallard still loves her husband and she is too happy to see him alive so she dies. In the fiction, she knows that she will weep again when she sees her husband’s body and she has loved him-sometimes. This indicates that she loves her husband in her subconscious. Second, the joy is a sarcastic reference to Mrs. Mallard’s lack of freedom in her marriage while her husband is alive. In the fiction, she whispers, “Free! Body and soul free!” and she describes the feeling in her mind as a monstrous joy at her husband’s death. Josephine Donovan points out the fact that women were confined to domestic space in the 19th century. Women could not voice out their arguments; therefore, their material space and spiritual space shrank. In domestic space was dead air. I refer to Josephine Donovan’s “Toward a Women’s Poetics” because I want to demonstrate the American literary tradition of domesticity. “[One of the structures] of experience that seems nearly universal is that women have been confined/consigned to the domestic or private sphere. […] An essential component of the practice of domestic labor or housework is that it is non-progressive, repetitive and static,” Donovan mentions (1987: 101). It seems that confined women stay in the domestic sphere, in which their material space and spiritual space shrink. In the domestic sphere is a deathly stilled motion. Women have to do basic housework such as cooking, washing clothes, and cleaning and so on, every day, and take care of family members. Yet these family.

(37) Chou 32. members tend to think that it is not so hard for women to do all housework. Therefore, sometimes family members will forget to respect their housekeepers, and ignore their devotion of time and energy to the family. Without respect or acceptance, women are not able to do housework, which does not have progressive development, which does not offer them fresh feelings, and which has mechanical and dull characteristics. Naturally, women will feel frustrated in this case.. II. The Social Gaze and Women’s Limited Exposure to Public Space Marilynne Robinson’s female characters mostly stay in domestic space, which tends to make them nervous. They are domestically unstable. Here I discuss the relationship between women and public space in the 19th century and the early 20th century. I also seek the possibility of women artists in the history background in order to compare with Marilynne Robinson’s later female characters. In the 19th century, Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe both were public figures who advocated traditional domestic science. “Prior to the 1830s (and long afterward as well) academies provided the chief with means for girls to attain educations beyond the primary or common-school level. [Educators established] ‘Female seminaries’ (or ‘institutes’) with the belief that women should be instructed in at least some of the collegiate curriculum in order to prepare them to become teachers as well as good wives and mothers. […] While holding that the women’s course should be distinctively female, [Catharine E. Beecher] strenuously urged that [educators gave] women’s institutions the resources and consequent advantages of men’s colleges. Women had even less incentive than men to finish an entire course, so completion rates were exceeding low” (Geiger 2000: 184-185). Catharine E. Beecher believed that women’s roles were housekeepers at home, or furthermore teachers in the classroom. She was opposed to women public speakers, who proposed ideas of.