Female Characters

As my last blog post for 20th century literature I wanted to talk about the female characters in the books we have read. The first book that we read that had a female as a main character was Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. While she may seem like a just house wife who’s only role in life is to be a hostess (as her fried Peter Walsh says) I think she is much more interesting than that. In the book Mrs. Dalloway talks about how her parties are much more than a frivolous celebration. The parties are a place where she can bring together interesting people. In our next book The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemingway Bret is the only female in the book that has a significant role. I think she is a very strong person. She served as a nurse in the war and helps lots of wounded soldiers. Then she was married to an abusive husband and served the horrors of that. A lot of people criticize her for her sexual promiscuity, but I think she is free to make the decisions that make her happy and she should not have to be pleasing everyone. In The Stranger by Albert Camus there is no major female roles because the main characters are mostly men. There is the character of Raymond’s girlfriend and I admires her for surviving Raymond’s beating. In the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafga Gregor’s sister finds a job when Gregor turns into an insect. To go form an easy life at home to working is a big step for her and I think it is admirable how she was able to step up. In Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys Antoinette is taken from her simple life at her family’s estate to having to flee from her home in a fire. She then marries a man from Britain without knowing him at all. While their marriage seems fine at the beginning it then deteriorates to it ending when she is locked in an attic by her husband. She then sets his manor on fire and jumps from the window. In The Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Milkman’s two sisters First Corinthians and Lena might not be the most important female rolls in the book but I think they are admirable because they spend their teen years raising Milkmen something that they do not want to do. They raise him even though he never thanks them for all the sacrifices they made for him.