What did you find about the roles, expectations, portrayals, economic status, and/or literary representations of women in the Victorian Age?

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What did you find about the roles, expectations,
portrayals, economic status, and/or literary
representations of women in the Victorian Age?
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Gender and the Victorian Era

• Female power
• Female powerlessness
• Objects of desire
• The Ideal woman

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• Isolated childhood
• Father lost his business
• Family moved into dilapidated farmhouse
• Rumored to be illegitimate
• Later fathered an illegitimate son
• Actually revered marriage even though plays
  suggest otherwise

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• Torvald Helmer.
• Nora, his wife.
• Doctor Rank.
• Mrs. Linde.
• Nils Krogstad.
• Helmer's three young children.
• Anne, their nurse.
• A Housemaid.
• A Porter.

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• http//melaman2.com/cartoons/singles/mp3/gi-joe.mp
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Explain this quote

• .the socialization of women into servicing
  creatures is the major accusation in Nora's
  painful account to Torvald of how first her
  father, and then he, used her for their
  amusement. . . how she had no right to think for
  herself, only the duty to accept their opinions. 
  Excluded from meaning anything, Nora has never
  been subject, only object.  (Templeton 142).

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The Social Context

• Nice Home
• Good job for Torvald
• Celebrating Christmas with plentiful gifts
• All of these come at a cost.
• Narrow, unpleasant adherence to rules of proper
  conduct
• Without money, dont fit in (Linde and Krogstad)
  and are outside the society circle
• Painful, isolated will do most anything to
  get back in

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Torvald

• A professional man on his way up
• Intelligent
• HOWEVER, intelligence is limited by the social
  boundaries
• Opinions of others revolve around how they
  will affect his social standing

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Nora

• How is she described?
• What are her actions?
• What are the motivations for her actions?
• How do others respond to her?
• What conflicts does she face?
• Which major theme(s) applies to her?

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The Secret..