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The Stone Diaries

This paper will address how the image of women presented in Carol ShieldsÆ Pulitzer Prize winning 1994 novel, The Stone Diaries, are products of a particular frame and society. The frame of reference is the entire 20th Century; a century that marked significant changes for women in terms of available opportunities and freedoms. The novelÆs protagonist, however, Daisy Stone Goodwill, never truly realizes these opportunities because she is virtually ignorant of her own life, and is unaware of all that it may potentially contain, although at times she is filled with an unnamed longing. Born in 1905 into a male-dominated, stratified society, Daisy is typical of her generation of women who did not realize that she could liberate herself from the narrow constrictions placed upon women by a society that insisted on rigid gender roles that were enforced by social and economic controls.

In 1905, the year of DaisyÆs birth, North American women--as women elsewhere in the worldûwere largely relegated to the narrow role of housewife and mother; women were expected to nurture their husbands and children, but not themselves. For Daisy, this role becomes set in stone. Yet, there were women who broke the mold. In 1905, American novelist Edith Wharton published The House of Mirth which dealt with the tragic life of a young woman who let herself be overly influenced by her society; the novel became a classic. Also, in 1905, May G. Sutton became the first U.S. tennis player to win any Wimbledon singles title. Nineteen-year old Eleanor Roosevelt married Franklin D. Roosevelt in a ceremony in which she was ôgiven awayö by her uncle President Theodore Roosevelt since she was an orphan. Two weeks prior to the wedding, President Roosevelt told the National Congress of Mothers that a womanÆs role was self-sacrifice to her proscribed duty as a mother and housewife. In spite of his insistence motherhood as the sole role for women, his niece ...

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The Stone Diaries. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:50, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1702257.html