Fu 1 Bonnie Fu Mr. Toby Pre-AP English November 14, 2022 Women Under the Yoke In ancient times, women all around the world always had less power than men, so women were under great repression by men. Ancient women lived under the yoke created by men and society. They were considered as possessions of men, as tools to reproduce, and as means to show men’s social and political power. Moreover, most of them did not have the right to be educated, have their own business, walk around in the world outside their family. In modern times, after the Second Industrial Revolution in the middle of the19th century and the early 20th century, more and more women started to work in society, and women at that time seemed to have more rights. Nonetheless, since the yoke of women had existed for so long, the majority still had trouble escaping from the yoke created by men and society. A girl in a short story and Louise Mallard were two of them. In the two literary works, female characters are repressed by their partners and lose their freedom to live the ways they like. In the case of the girl, who was a character in “Hills Like White Elephants” written by Ernest Hemingway in one of short stories’s collection “Men Without Women”, she had to decide whether to give up the child she was carrying based on her partner’s attitude and did not care about herself. This girl was pregnant during her journey with her partner, but she did not want to have an abortion while her partner wanted to. The man considered this baby as the only thing bothering them relationship, and never took account of the girl’s psychological and physical pain caused by pregnancy, since he only desired to maintain his own freedom. From his perspective, Fu 2 abortion was a simple operation, and he could have everything with the girl after the operation. He used his language of love to control the girl’s mind in order to inadvertently make the girl relinquish her opportunity to make a decision according to her willingness. Furthermore, because of the social atmosphere of that time as well as the unconscious compromise of female oppression by men, the girl finally acquiesced to the man’s repression. All in all, she failed to escape from the man’s restraint and lost her freedom to prevent herself from being hurt psychologically and physically. In “the Story of an Hour”, Kate Chopin created Mallard, a married woman who hardly had freedom of soul or body and could not live for herself unless her husband passed away, since she lived under the control of her husband and marriage without love. When she thought her husband had died, she realized that she was capable of chasing her freedom to live for herself without any other power or private will upon her. This reaction implies her enthusiasm for living in the way she liked. Such thoughts also show that living with her husband meant losing freedom and enduring inhibition. Instead of travelling around the wonderful world outside her family or going to work to create the value of her life, she was expected to take care of the family as “women’s duty” and also never hold any right to make significant determinations in family. In addition, the outcome of the short story, Mallard’s death was not because of the sudden appearance of her husband, the fact of losing freedom again led to her death. Overall, she was unable to be liberated with suppression by her husband and marriage. Although there is an approximately 30 years’ time span between the dates of the ‘two short stories’ publication, two American authors both displayed how the girl and Mallard suffered from living with little freedom and great repression. The girl and Mallard both tried requesting freedom. However, the social atmosphere and men’s Stubborn minds did not allow Fu 3 them to get rid of repression and attain freedom. “It Was the Best of Times; It Was the Worst of Times” (Dickens 1). With the awakening of female consciousness after the Second Industrial Revolution, women started to fight for their rights and attain more and more freedom gradually. Nevertheless, at the same time, numerous women like the girl and Mallard were still in anguish for lacking independence as an individual. They had difficulty breaking the solid yoke and struggled to live under the yoke. . Fu 4 Works Cited Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Vogue (1894). Hemingway, Ernest. Men Without Women. New York City: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927. Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. London: London: Chapman & Hall, 1859.
