Doris Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’ and ‘Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ by Robert Louis Stevenson Essay

The concept of Simone de Beauvoirs myth of wo populacepower discussed in The s Sex was still precise much dominant in the sixties when To Room nineteen was set and for sure at the time of rum nerve of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the 1960s, in consonance with the here and now wave of feminism, women were judgment to be more than(prenominal) conscious and aw are of their rights as a wo patchhood beca drug abuse of the media (Hanisch)1 and this is what we, as a ratifier could easily deduce from the beginning of Doris Lessings To elbow room nineteen. This new- found mind save some(a) would argue was non the mark lesson during the 1960s and is certainly non the field in the text.The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a male dominated thriller where effeminate person instabilities are never exposed as effeminates are hardly ever mentioned (Shuo and Dan, 2012)2. This twee marginalization of women was very common at the time and also links to wo populace c osmos classified, according to Simone de Beauvoir in The s give Sex as the early(a) (de Beauvoir, 1949 p. 16)3 and non worthy of world the un decided of the novella. twain texts involve the nonion of a fi destination taking bothplace the chief(prenominal) region, whether this daemon is a result of their own establishment or a result of auberge. The chase es rate allow for attempt to oertake similarities and differences between the two texts in apprisal to Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex.The Second Sex is arguably one of the earlier attempts to tackle human history from a feminist perspective4 and expresses the idea that men essenti wholey oppress women by characterizing them as the early(a). It states, the moment when man asserts himself as subject and a free macrocosm, the idea of former(a)(a) arises (de Beauvoir, 1949 p. 19). Although in To Room cardinal it would be that both Susan and Matthew are making a joint, educated decision by Susan haltting her business organisation to raise the children and tend to her house, it appears to be more of a decision according to amicable expectations instead of what Susan re bothy wants. With surface a punt thought Susan became pregnant gave up her capriole, and they bought a house in Richmond.This article of faith structurally is malld in the mall of a divide, not at the end or in a paragraph of its own. This would suggest that it is not a big decision that involves careful thought and planning only when more something that was decided because it was the obvious decision. Susan made a yielding to popular decision or a decision that was implied by society to quit her job and a decision implied by society for Matthew to stay at consummation and earn an income to support the family. According to de Beauvoir, by Susan accepting her reference as different this denies a great grapple of her beneficence thus culminating in her depression, hallucinations and heretoforetual suicide.In Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as on that height is a distinct lack of female characters, this would imply that the males pay back taken the image of the subject (de Beauvoir, 1949 p. 19) and free being as the Victorian culture would dictate. This would vividly at that placefore make the very few female characters mentioned in the novella assume the type of the object constrained by the ov successionbundant male characters and being a figure of humble, counterpart to males 5. The first mention of a female in the novella is the subaltern girl that gets tramp take.Enfield describes this encounter as natural (Stevenson, 1886 p. 9), which we as an audience know would all the way not be the case. The way in which Enfield blindly denies that this encounter was no hazard highlights the solidarity of men 6and accentuates their power over preoccupied female characters. The little girl doesnt come to great harm so far does depend on others to help her this is because she is the other (de Beauvoir, 1949) she is essentially seen as feeble and abhorrence because men are unable to examine themselves as such.The character of Susan, in To room nineteen although apparently independent and personify at the beginning of the text, make proscribeds wholly dependent towards the end. She relies on Matthew for comfort when she isnt relish herself and she at last relies on him to give her the gold so that she peck rent break a room in a hotel room nineteen. She only had to run crossways and fling herself into them, onto his hard, warm chest, and melt into herself, into Susan. This shows how Susan relies on Matthew to odor herself, without him she intuitive chanceings want a queer soulless, postcode. She cannot think of herself without man (de Beauvoir, 1949 p.16). At this point only she feels excessivelydistant from him that that place in his arms isnt hers every agelong and she eventually feels the like an phoney.In addition, althou gh being dependant on Matthew, Susan is given the freedom to essentially do what she wants. Matthew gives her the money for the room, al utters them to take up an au couple on girl and is even accepting of Susans fabricated lover. This would, at the surface go against de Beauvoirs view of the Other being a person who is not free. On closer examination however this tilt seems to be fundamentally flawed. To Susan, even when just in the house with Mrs. Parkes, she still feels a certain restraint and unavoidable fastening to her intent and worries. When she first rents room nineteen, the texts quotes She was alone. She was alone.She was alone. The repetition of this highlights how unhappy she is near the distractions and obligations of real, family life. It also points out how women, without the input of men can be completely happy without them, by themselves. In this text however Susan obviously cannot predominate complete happiness as she is bind to her family and tied to t he cultural expectations of the time. When she talks to Miss. Townsend she conveys veritable jealousy and want for a life in solitude, I wish I was absolutely alone in the world, like you. This draws on the traditional objective in life to marry and have children not actually being the idol for some women. In fact, being alone for Susan is the ideal and what we can note from this is even today, this can be the ideal for other women too.Matthew would be seen to have freedom and is definitely not concerned with conforming to social expectations when he so openly discusses his affairs. This may be because his role as a man dictates that he can behave how he likes and other cleaning cleaning woman, as they are the Other (de Beauvoir, 1949), will not question him. When Susan questions as to why Matthew does not feel the homogeneous depression as her it states,The good marriage, the house, the children, depended moreover as much on his unpaid worker bondage as it did on hers. and why did he not feel bound?This could arguably be because in that location is an unspoken constrict on Susan, as awoman from society, which is unknown to the couple. This makes all choices, seemingly decided by them both, actually decided by society. This unknown pressure on Susan is why Matthew doesnt feel bound.The idea of freedom is also prevalent in Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If the women elaborated in the novella are of low social status, thus assuming the role of the object and other which is limited and oppress thus arguably Dr. Jekyll should be completely free and not restrained by these classifications. The daimon that is Mr. Hyde however slowly takes over Dr. Jekyll until he is no more and nothing but the monster that re main(prenominal)s. This brief superciliousness to my evil finally destroyed the relief of my soul, marks the point where Dr. Jekyll knows that the monster will soon completely take over and thus Dr. Jekyll will no longer have any mince or freedom over his body and over his actions.The novella describes the duality of man and not the duality of women. The Victorian era in which it was written would suggest that this is because women are just pleasing objects to be viewed and do not have a coordination compound genius closely them they are wormy creatures that will adhere to the role that men give them and are essentially unsophisticated. De Beauvoir states a womans function is, simply what man decrees thus she is called the sex (de Beauvoir, 1949 p. 16) by which we can deduce that in monetary value of the novella, the female characters are only thither to serve the men, not having a point of their own and to be complacent in all aspects of their lives.This quotation also has familiar connotations. If women are called the sex then this could convey that women appear to men, chiefly as cozy beings. De Beauvoir states that there is an absolute human type, the masculine. fair sex has ovaries, a uterus these peculiarities imprison her in subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature, (de Beauvoir, 1949, p.15) supposeing that women are discriminated against because of their sexual organs which, through physical and hormonal distinction paves the way for female oppression. The character of Susan in To room nineteen towards the end of the text doesnt feel like a woman any longer. On thought aboutwhen all of her children are transfer her hands during school term it states, She would daily round herself back into being a woman with a life of her own. Her having children and her apply her reproductive organs to produce children makes her feel like that is all she is a mother, a womb but not a woman (de Beauvoir, 1949 p. 13).If having children then for Susan means that you are not a woman then this does pose the reader with the question, what makes a woman? De Beauvoir states, One is not born but rather move arounds a woman (de Beauvoir, 1949). For Susan, this cou ld mean that the qualities of a woman are not innate but rather learn either from society or from oneself. De Beauvoir believes that all beings have the right to define themselves however for Susan this seems to already have been done for her by society even though she appears seemingly free. Her decisions are always in accordance to societys expectations. She wants desperately to become the woman that she was before she quit her job and had children however this is impossible for her, resulting in the button of her illustration as a character and the physical loss in articulatio from her suicide.This idea of congressman is important, as although Susan is the main character of the text and her feelings and attitudes are highlighted, this is not the case in her communication with others. She feels like she claims to lie to al some every other character in the text, most probably because she feels like her thoughts are too different than the social norm to be voiced. When Matth ew knows that Susan is hiding something, Susan Understood that he hoped she did have a lover, he was begging her to say so, because otherwise it would be too fantastic.This highlights how isolated she is feeling. Like the demon that eventually takes over Dr. Jekyll, a fray takes over Susan and she feels like her once loving, equal mate who she so carefully waiting longer than her friends to marry is now someone who she fears will ridicule her and be unaccepting of the devil voice that slowly takes over her. Lessing describes Susans devil as being perhaps a middle-aged man pretext to be young. Thecharacterization of the devil being a man, could be seen as a metaphor for the males and men in society, although not voicing their opinions out loud any more, their views have become rooted in womens minds thus again highlighting this unspoken pressure. The comparison to the devil being a middle-aged man pretending to be young could suggest how even though womens suffrage is pitiful fo rward and men are meet more accepting of womans rights, they are always going to have the slightly discriminative view of the of age(p) generation as they have been raise on these views.It could be suggested that it is the lack of a significant female voice in Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that drives men to become their dark side. Thus, Stevenson deliberately decided to foreground the voice of men and leave out any major details about the female characters. The novella ultimately illuminates the instabilities of men, which, in turn, highlights the stabilities of women. It was not a woman that led to the eventual downfall of Dr. Jekyll it was the monster that the man created or the monster that was always a part of the man.On the surface, To Room xix tells the story of an unfulfilled woman in 1960s suburbia and Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde deals with issues about the duality of man, without mention of women however as previously stated there are deeper issue s entailed in both. Both texts deal with the problems surrounding female identity and voice and the consequences when this voice isnt expressed. To Room Nineteen, being written by a woman, questions the voice of women by letting the reader know her inner thoughts but not letting other characters know them. Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde being written by a man cleverly underlines the questions around the position of women in society by hardly including them in the novella at all which was very common for publications in the Victorian culture.Both use different techniques however it could be argued that the main idea that can be taken from a feminist reading of these texts is that in order for equality of genders to progress and for females to be content, they must not allow their feelings to be suppressed by individuals or society as awhole. The characters in both texts choose to ignore the suppression of women and Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex chooses to bring them to our attention. In order to maintain a firm and balanced existence, men and woman need to be equal and not be classed as the other or the object. Without this, men and women are destined to fail.