The Effects of Socioeconomic Status on Women Writers: Past and Present
Date
2021-03-01
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Southern New Hampshire University
Abstract
Since the beginning of recorded history, women have often been relegated to the roles of wife and mother. As such, the workforce has been largely a male-dominated arena; exceptions given for occupations that men viewed as too feminine, such as nurses and educators. Despite many women having had equal abilities to their male counterparts, professional writing was generally reserved for men. Looking back through the ages of British literature, one thing is glaringly obvious; women who were set on having writing as a career were prepared to assert themselves against the patriarchal views of society. Despite their assertion of their abilities and worthiness, there were— and continue to be— outside factors that would determine the success of female writers in England from the nineteenth century all the way through to the modern era. This thesis aims to show how these outside factors, specifically gender and socioeconomic status, have affected women writers throughout multiple centuries. It is not enough to study only the literary works of these prominent female writers, but this thesis also considers the circumstances of their personal lives as well. While there have been many studies of the lives and works of British female authors, there have been few that consider the effects of gender and socioeconomic status, while also spanning centuries to include women writers from vastly different societies. By applying both the feminist and Marxist lenses of literary criticism to the lives and works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Virginia Woolf, and J.K. Rowling, this thesis asserts that while women’s socioeconomic status may have an effect on their becoming a successful, published author, it is not the only determining factor. All of these women were born at different times in British history, under different reigning royal families, within different social classes, and with different hardships to be faced— yet they still have all become wildly successful in their own rights.
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