symbols and stereotypes

Symbols and stereotypes

When reading through some of the stories and poems I've read regarding women in Literature there have been some major common trends that I have noticed. Most of them are also very common in the real world even today in our society of supposed gender equality. Many of them can be can and are considered insults by modern women. We wouldn't consider them to be of a very educated 'view', yet we can still find them in pieces of literature that have been written by educated women. They can get away with it because they are describing the hardships that women have gone through in the past. Even though, if any of them were to be used in a more modern piece of work then the author, especially if he was a man, would get absolutely slaughtered. 

            If I was a stereotypical 50's man, which for the record I'm not, then the words that would come to mind when talking about women would be; wife, mother, cleaner, cooker, ditsy etc. and the themes that I would think of might be; flowers, gossip, families, nature, simplicity etc. While the authors don't tend to go as far as call a women a ditsy so and so, they still use a lot of these ideas when describing women. In "A room of her peers" the main women in the story is said to be 'like a bird', 'real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery.' If the author had decided to say this directly instead of through a character then it would be considered an insult in the eyes of the reader, since 'Bird' is often used as a term to insult women. But because it is said by a friend of the characters it makes complete and utter sense. The author does use a pet bird being kept in a cage and then killed as a metaphor for a wife being kept in a semi abusive marriage until her soul was destroyed.
             Another commonly used piece of symbolism for women is that of flowers. In 'The Handmaids Tale' by Margaret Atwood, flowers are used throughout the story in connection with the two main female characters. Offred, The Handmaid, talks about and is linked with flowers on multiple occasions. However, it is the Commanders wife where the biggest traditional stereotypical comes in. In the very early stages of the book we learn is that it is the wife who is in charge of the garden and takes good care of it because it is one of her few outlets for power. In many other stories, this would be considered distasteful, but somehow it fits in perfectly with the rest of this highly thought of book.