Novels Reflection of How Society Views Women

Novelists reflect the prevailing views of their society, even when they disagree with those ideas. The way society views women can be discerned in the novels The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, and The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Gender is used as one of many elements that orders society, and when novelists question this element, it is because they believe it is based on a false view of the issue and that it limits both men and women in their interactions and their ability to achieve.

Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is a moral work that elevates life rather than debasing it. The author brings the while forcing the reader to draw conclusions about how people cope with these issues. The primary human concern in the novel is with religious belief, reasons for such belief, and reasons for rejecting such belief. The clash is between faith and a more realistic and scientific approach to the world, between accepting the existence of God and questioning that existence. The character of Sarah, in particular, undergoes a period of questioning and examining her faith, doing so after having allowed her faith to determine her actions and direct her life for some time. Greene shows the need people have for a sense of salvation, yet at the same time questions whether there can be such a thing. In this novel, Greene interestingly does not so much question faith, but rather questions atheism, asking whether it can withstand th

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t, unable to escape because there is no current to push them. Antoinette is not only imprisoned in her marriage, but she has a jailer, also a woman, co-opted by the system to aid in the degradation of another. This woman is Grace Poole. In her own way, Antoinette is an accomplice in her own imprisonment, for she seems to prefer this to the outside world: "After all the house is big and safe, a shelter from the world outside which, say what you like, can be a black and cruel world to a woman" (Rhys 105-106). The locale is especially important in this novel. The story is set in Jamaica at a time when the slaves who worked the plantations have been freed. The colonizers like Rochester are facing a new economic reality. Antoinette is a Creole whose family also owned slaves. Her life was difficult long before she married Rochester. Her first husband had provoked the workers on his plantation into burning down the property. This and other events cause Antoinette to go mad. Her first husband dies later and she is married by arrangement to Rochester. She is a woman, so her property becomes his under the law. Rochester fears his wife, and the realities of the time allow him to spread rumors about her, declare her mad, and loc

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