Expectations of Women: Then and Now

While exposing feminism through her characters, Jane Austen also chooses to portray the flaws of women in her novels. Isabella Thorpe of Northanger Abbey provides a great example of everything women were expected not to be. While feminism has dramatically increased over the years, we see woman acting more like Isabella, who would be described as a coquette in her time.

Instead of just having those select few women who are looked down on by society, we have turned into a sexualized culture. This has major implications for our women today: Have we taken feminism too far? Yes we want strong and independent women, but there are limits to how women should be. Austen shows that even though women were not supposed to act flirtatiously, many women were not delicate and did involve themselves in manipulating men. This seems apparent today, we know exactly how flirtatious women are but we forget that at one point in time this was hidden and frowned upon.  

Isabella provides an example of how dramatic flirting and manipulation can be, and that it is different from being outspoken and knowledgeable like Austen’s protagonists are. Instead of waiting for men to approach her, she approached men and followed them frequently so that they would be constantly aware of her beauty. This is similar to today, women have been taught to chase men through flirting and also by how they dress and act. We have come a long way for women’s rights, but has society abused it? We have almost reached a point where we are right back to Austen’s issues, but they are the exact opposite of what she had.     

Instead of being delicate, women learn from a young age to be more like Isabella. We have shows such as Toddlers and Tiaras, which is teaching young girls from birth how to attract men by enormous amounts of makeup and risqué dancing. How will this affect how women are treated? They have worked so hard for years to be treated as equals, only to go back to where they started, only with less respect. Who has created this image? I believe that it is our media saturated culture that tries to determine what women should be. It’s almost just like how women were supposed to be a whole list of unattainable things in Austen’s day. Instead of knowledge, they need to be a size 0. Instead of being talented at an instrument, they need to be able to get a wealthy guy. It’s all the same, just in a different package. So maybe we are not so unlike Austen’s culture, but we still think that we would never put those kinds of pressure on women today. 

Feminism Through Time: Jane Austen's Pioneering Legend Through Novels

We all know about the feminist movement, we have all heard about huge historical moments and people such Susan B. Anthony and the 19^th amendment. Women’s rights have only recently gained momentum, and often times we forget that women’s suffrage did not begin in the late 1800’s. Since the beginning of time, women have been seen as the weaker of the two sexes. But it has not been socially acceptable to say that this is wrong until now. Jane Austen put forth her own views on women’s rights before it was talked about, and she did so in a creative way; she showed the problems of women through her novels.

In Pride and Prejudice, Austen’ s most recognized novel, her main character Elizabeth points out the flaws in society’s view when one of the women, Caroline claims that “A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages…and besides all this she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions…” Elizabeth replies by saying “I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women.  I rather wonder now at your knowing any"(Austen58). While these ideals seem frivolous, they were important because women did not have a real job other than keeping the house. These skills were important to be marriageable, which was the ultimate goal for many women.

The views of how a woman should act have changed, but we still face these problems today. We have the right to vote and do the work we choose, but girls are still told how they should look or act by the movies and magazines that have saturated our culture. Magazines such as Cosmopolitan are constantly giving tips on how to dress and look better. Austen saw that giving expectations for women as wrong, and gave her opinions the only way she could. The wit and humor that she uses show how ridiculous the views of woman are, and how no one can live up to the standards that society has created.  Society expected women to be seen, not heard, an opinion is a luxury that women have today but Austen’s culture did not. What is interesting is that all of Austen’s female characters have a voice, and strong opinions. Catherine in Northanger Abbey frequently discussed her views and opinions not only with her friends, but the man she loves Henry Tilney. While it is not different to us today, having hints of feminism in Austen’s writing had huge implications. How might have society viewed her writing in her time as opposed to now?

Our modern Jane Austen is Tina Fey, who is constantly making fun of how women act and the expectations of women. This video is a spoof of how women are portrayed in our modern television shows, and how they portray unrealistic expectations of how women should act. Sound familiar?

http://www.hulu.com/watch/10233?playlist_id=1113

The News Today?

I find it so ironic that after we read all about Postman's ideas of a media saturated culture, that the President of the United States went on a talk show to promote his new campaign of not increasing student loan rates.When I first saw it as a preview on Yahoo! (yes, that is where I get all my up to date news), I thought it was a joke. Why would the President be on Jimmy Fallon? Our generation is so consumed by our television shows and Facebook, that the President felt that he had to go on a talk show to get the news across. Is this really what our culture has come to? That our own President has to "slow jam" the news to us on talk shows? Personally, I find it a little pathetic. Is it so hard for us to keep updated in the news today that we expect it to come to us, instead of us going to it? We are so hard to keep interested, that the news has become even more entertaining to keep us watching. I think Postman would have had a nice laugh over this.
Read more about this at http://bpheitmeier.wordpress.com/  "Slow-Jamming Ourselves to Death?"

What can we learn from books?

We can advance our vocabulary by reading challenging books, which not only help us project our own ideas but also allow us to enter into a new reality different from our own. They lead us into our imagination, to search for something that is better, or even to show the restrictions that our reality gives us. When someone reads Harry Potter, they are allowed to look at a different perspective of life, but they also realize that they cannot live in a world of magic and the ability to fly or cast spells. Reading gives us truth and hope, and it opens our eyes to what we are and what we can become. Although wit is not our reality, we can learn things from books to apply to our reality. Harry Potter can teach lessons of friendship and of loyalty, or of determination and bravery. Reading inspires people to do things they would not normally do, one book that really inspired me in an odd way was Frankenstein. Although the story is about a monster that destroys everything his master loves, it showed me that you have to look past what people look like and what they wear, and to really get to know people and understand them before you make judgments about them. I was able to put myself in the shoes of the monster, which had such a kind and loving heart, but since he looked like a monster, he was treated like one. It is a completely fictional novel, but I was able to learn a valuable lesson from it. What more can reading do to make small changes that can have huge implications?

(Here is a video of Harry Potter World, a way that we can link our reality to the novel's reality) 

                I believe another reason reading is so important is because it develops our deep attention, which is important especially in college. The ability to focus for long periods of time has gradually become lost, and I believe a factor of that is due to how much time we spend on social media and television. If we could take the time to put down our phones, and choose to read a novel, our study skills would greatly enhance. I don’t know what the magic formula is for us to change our new found media culture, but if things keep going the way they are, what will happen to books? Will they disappear completely? Too much is at stake if we let that happen.

The Destruction of Words

“We're getting the language into its final shape -- the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words -- scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone.” (Orwell Part 1, Chapter5)

One of my favorite novels is 1984 by George Orwell. This book is significant because it shows the change the technology brings, and one part especially is the decline of vocabulary. In this future world, the people are forced to eliminate words they have previously used and adopt these new simpler words, and even created a new language, “Newspeak”. This leads to a huge connection between new media such as Twitter and Facebook, and how we speak in conversations. We have begun to adopt a new  language, people are starting to use “lol” as a word or phrase when speaking, and using shorter or simpler words. The reason for smaller and less depictive words in the novel was to limit the thoughts of the people, and to be able to manipulate them. When we destroy our vocabulary by using shorter or quicker phrases, we are limiting our ability to speak for ourselves. It prevents us from having our own voice; instead it becomes the same as everyone else’s. The only way that we can regain our ability to create complex sentences and thought is to read books that support it. In the world of 1984, the government used the new language as thought control, where no one could come up with anything significant because they were unable to produce a significant thought. The implication of this is how much we could lose by limiting our ability to project our own ideas. This lack of intelligence may lead to regress in our culture, to where we cannot keep up with progress and decline in new ideas and the advancement of our world. Isn’t it a scary thought that our future could change based on something so small, so little thought of as vocabulary? What would be left our language, so full of irony and wit, if we let it go to waste by forgetting it?

 “It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words… Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten” (Orwell Part 1, Chapter 5). The worst part to me is that we are not only accepting it, but also encouraging it. The novel was once thought of as prophetic, but I believe that we created a self-fulfilling prophesy. We have let ourselves watch TV or stay on Facebook instead of reading a novel. We have chosen to take the easy way out and make our language shorter and easier, instead of letting it challenge us. 

                                              12:30 to 15:25 on Video