Evadne Evades Domesticity PDF

Preview

Summary

A paper on how the female character Evadne portrays the "New Woman" mold of the late nineteenth century in Rebecca West's story "Indissoluble Matrimony." ...

Description

Women’s Voices in Literature

Due: March 25, 2018 Essay #2 Evadne Evades Domesticity

In the short story “Indissoluble Matrimony,” Rebecca West creates a story line that portrays the main female character Evadne as being an exemplary example of a “New Woman” (Lesson 8, 1). This idea of the “New Woman” was a feminist notion that became popular at the end of the nineteenth century and eventually was viewed as a major influence on further feminist movements. Evadne’s character exemplifies most, if not all, components of a New Woman in the story and the plot shows normal patterns of domesticity being broken in an unhappy marriage through a great battle of the sexes, just as fiction writings about New Women tend to feature. Evadne Silverton is shown to be a humble woman of color who has much built-up anger and desire within her from over the past decade of being married to a man she is no longer in love with. She is brave and knows her capability of being strong and independent on her own, without her husband George. One of the key qualifications of a New Woman is their “adequate education” and ability to use that knowledge wisely. A second is their participation “in political discussion and decision-making processes.” Evadne is shown doing both of these on page 102 when a letter arrives at the Silverton’s house addressed to her, inviting her to speak at a meeting held by the town council’s Socialist candidate. George remembers how she “passed through his own orthodox Radicalism to a passionate Socialism” two years into their marriage (West, 102). She gained a vast education in Socialist politics on her own time by “reading enormously of economics” and has been using her knowledge of it ever since as a writer for the Socialist press and “speaking[ing] successfully at meetings” (West, 102). The fact that she educated herself on a topic she wished to know more about and then uses that knowledge she gained in ways that

allow her to be an influential part of political discussions and meetings shine a light on her being a New Woman. Another aspect of the New Woman is the female deciding for herself if, when, and how many children she wishes to bear (Lesson 8, 2). At the bottom of page 101, Evadne complains to George of their lives and their personhoods being “beastly dull” and boring, comparing themselves to dogs and yawning for an exaggeration of being in a bored state. Her suggestion for filling the boredom and erasing their dullness is to have children. She remarks on how she wishes they had had children, in the past tense, but then adds that maybe it is not too late for them (West, 101). The fact that she wants children but does not yet have any shows that previously in their marriage, she was likely not as developed or influenced by the New Woman feminist movement as she is now. Her suggestion of having children now shows that she is more encouraged to voice her wants and desires and that she is not afraid to tell her husband she wishes to procreate with him. The plot of “Indissoluble Marriage” includes the several characteristics that fiction plots surrounding a feminist New Woman usually consisted of. The characteristics include showing “marriages [viewed] as economic social, often loveless, contracts; the rights of women to their own desires outside the bounds of family; and the defeat of oppressive conventions, traditional marital or social roles” (Lesson 8, 1). Readers see these characteristics through the clearly poor relationship between George and Evadne and how unhappy Evadne is in their ten-year marriage. George lacks trust in his wife, continuously making himself believe that she is cheating on him. She is also heard yelling at him: “I haven’t been happy since… I married you, you silly little misery, you!” (West, 110). Their marriage is a clear example of a loveless contract seen as a marriage, and Evadne’s desire to swim, desire to be involved in Socialist politics, and desire to

be reminded of better times when her mother was alive and close to her shows her own desires not involving her marriage and family. By admitting her unhappiness, Evadne also is defeating traditional marital roles of women putting aside their own happiness in order to focus on fulfilling the wants and needs of their partner. Women in these stories began finding “rooms of their own,” as we have so often discussed in this class. Readers get an insight into Evadne’s “room of her own” after the pair gets in an argument over George’s persistent accusations of Evadne having an affair and Evadne leaves the house, taking off on her own, unknowingly followed by George (Lecture 8, 3). She goes to a reservoir that lays in a “bowl of heather overhung by the moorlands,” reached by walking through “a mile’s mazy wanderings between high hedges [that] sloped suddenly” (West, 104). While swimming, Evadne wears a black swimming suit that shows some skin but she feels comfortable in. George admits to not seeing her dressed like this often, displaying how Evadne fits yet another of the New Woman characteristics: “show[ing] outward signs of being different by wearing more comfortable clothes” (Lesson 8, 3). Through her independent studies and work within the Socialist political party, as well as her escape to a familiar, happy place and disregard for her societal role as a wife and women, Evadne Silverton is an ideal example of a New Woman, based on the feminist movement in the late twentieth century. Her unhappy marriage to George and her ignoring and avoiding of his attempts to control her life fill the necessary plot lines of a fiction story focused around a New Woman. Rebecca West did a fantastic job of creating a female character in Evadne that so boldly fits the mold of a feminist in the New Woman model.

Citations: West, Rebecca. Indissoluble Matrimony. Zut, 2010....