The position of women in the fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to lay down a general view of the position of women in society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America as a framework for the wider analysis. The thesis will continue to show how women were challenging society and actively seeking to change their position through movements such as the suffragette movement. The thesis will trace how the position of women was shown in the works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Benigna Machiavelli and Kate Chopin's The Awakening, and to what extent the ideas of these authors represented the changing ideas of society at this critical time in American history.It will compare the marked difference in the American public's reaction to these authors and their works to create an analysis of the struggle women were faced with. It will also show the extent to which these authors were offering guidance to women for a better future, and how much they were simply describing the times.