The Spinster Assumptions of "Our Friend Judith"

Women of a certain era were judge to perform a number of societal tasks, not the least of which was to marry and depress a decent housewife, ever present in the home, cacography and butter only to serve her husband. The women who did not marry, who startd al 1 and remained individual and thus depressed were seen as outcasts. In Our patron Judith, the protagonist is in many ways viewed as the latter, a poorly appareled abnormality that relies on her uncle for support, living in a sort of unfortunate apartment by herself. The contradiction, however, is that Judith, remote her stereotypical old maid counterparts, chooses to remain in this condition. She is an intellectual, a poet with fans that she simply brushes aside, and an occasional lover, carrying on relationships until she grows weary of such interaction and then returning to her anterior state. With this in mind, Judith becomes neither a spinster nor a romantic, but instead simply a woman who has freed herself o f both societal constraints and expectations. In the beginning of the story, the vote counter seriously ponders Judiths affirmable role as a spinster, not only citing that Judith rarely goes out to socialize, but also creating a metaphor amidst the narrators older aunts that live to trainher, al ace and unmarried with many cats, and Judiths living situation.

These points promptly become invalidated, however, proving that in many ways Judith is not at all one of your typical English spinsters. (Lessing 142) The first contradiction to this view comes when the narrator is describing Judiths apartment. As she scan s the bookshelf, the narrator notices a numb! er of books with clean romantic inscriptions. She also notes that Judith cant be expected to read novels (145), so their presence in her apartment is patently symbolic of a prior affair, and concludes that from the maturate of fifteen to cardinal (Judith) had been the beloved young companion of one elderly literary gentleman, and from twenty-five to thirty-five the...If you want to get a replete essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

If you want to get a full essay, visit our page: cheap essay