The Individual And The Environment Essay Example for Free

The Individual And The Environment EssayThe turn between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries brought wondrous changes for the American monastic order, and these changes are cogently reflected in the works of the most important writers of the time. In the light of Frederick Jackson Turners theory of the significance of the frontier in the American history, one could argue that the multiple changes that took place at this time were determined, in ingredient, by the closing of the frontier in 1890. The ever expanding frontier had functioned as a catalyzing element for the shaping of the American culture, with its main characteristics, pragmatism and idiosyncraticism. The frontier, as the limit between wilderness and civilization, may have indeed contri thated to the development of pragmatism, unless as the closing of the frontier affected the followe cultural epoch. After the Civil War and up to the World War I, the American economy develop immensely, to the point that T he United States was among the grandest world powers at the beginning of the twentieth century. This was due especially to the ever increasing industrialization of the country, to its capitalism, but also to the great number of immigrants that arrived during this period.While frugalally the changes were indeed positive and influenced the future of the nation, their social impact was more dramatic. As the main literary works of the time fate it, the individualistic suffered inevitably from alienation, and was overwhelmed and oppressed by the major social and economical fluctuations of the time. Civilization however desired begun to feel as a threat for the individual who lost his sense of identity and mat as a wheel in few greater mechanism. The literary works of the time revealed the pressure that the surroundings now exercised over the individual.This pressure was stock-still heavier for women, who began to feel that they were non even part of the tumultuous activity of th e epoch, since they could not even play an active part in the changes they witnessed. One of the most important writers of the time were thus the early feminists, such as Charlotte Perkins Gil cosmos, Kate Chopin, and a little later, Edith Wharton. Their novels put the American discriminating society on display, and point to the sex stereotypes that trapped the women into immutable and pre-established social roles. Gil public (2000) discusses the place of the women in society in her work, Women and EconomicsIn spite of the power of the individual will to struggle against conditions, to resist them for a while, and sometimes to overcome them, it remains true that the military personnel creature is affected by his environment, as is every early(a) living thing. To take from any community its male workers would paralyze it economically to a far greater degree than to remove its female workersThis is not owing to lack of the essential human faculties necessary to such achievements, no r to any inherent disability of sex, but to the present condition of woman, forbidding the development of this degree of economic ability. The male human being is thousands of years in advance of the female in economic status. Speaking collectively, men produce and distribute wealth and women fulfil it at their hands.As Gilman suggests, the woman was in no way able to participate in society, and was taken to be a mere recipient of what the man would provide her with. She also infers that this role is not necessarily the natural role of the woman, but actually the one that was forced on her after many centuries of gender discrimination. The women appear to be even more trapped in their environment at this point in American history.Another salient writer of the time, atomic number 1 Adams in his book authorise The Education of Henry Adams constructs a very telling image of the American individual crushed by civilization and by his social circumstances he represents the dynamo as a great force and a symbol that replaced in the American culture the missing pieces of tradition which were view by the Europeans, such as Venus or the Virgin. The image has feminist implications as well, as Adams (2001) compares the sexless energy of the dynamo with both the Virgin and Venus, symbols of the woman in European traditionAll this was to American thought as though it had never existed. The true American knew something of the facts, but nothing of the feelings he read the letter, but he never felt the law. Before this historical chasm, a mind standardized that of Adams felt itself helpless he turned from the Virgin to the Dynamo as though he were a Branly coherer.Stephen Crane also creates a memorable image of the cruel universe, which seems to care nothing for the individual existence, and which binds everything to its general laws, not minding the separate lives of the race but only the systemA man said to the universeSir I existHowever, replied the universe,The fact has not created in meA sense of obligation. (Perkins, 1999)Kate Chopins The Awakening is perhaps one of the most remarkable works of her time for its audacity, and it accurately gives a view of the individual in general oppressed by the social, inescapable nets and alienated from his primitive, natural state, and even more emphatically, reveals the condition of the woman, which is even worse. The imagery of the novel is fraught with opposite symbols of freedom versus entrapment, and of the human and natural individual, versus the touched and artificial society.Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of the story, is the character who undergoes a true awakening by the end of the novel, both as a woman and as an individual who lastly escapes the laws of society and returns to the purity of the natural impulses and natural feelings in a human being. As a married woman and mother of two children, Edna is supposed to guide in the role of the perfect mother as society required, which is person ified in the novel by Edna s friend, Mrs. Adele Ratignolle.The frequent fights that Edna has with her seemingly perfect husband show up even better her pre-established role as a self-sacrificing mother, who is supposed to think of nothing else but childbirth and all the other things related to nursing. From the start, even before her awakening Edna feels the oppression of her environment, although as yet she is not able to pinpoint it to a specific causeAn indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish.(Perkins, 1999)This unconscious feeling is not fully understood even by Edna herself, since the women were not used to thinking and feeling as individuals, and to dissent in any way from what was already prescribed as their imposed conduct. Chopins insistence that Edna did not fit in her society and that she did not fit the mother profile is very significant, as it points to the sense that w omen have to be regarded as individuals who are entitled to their sustain inner lives, and not limited to their nursing activities, that would eventually efface any trace of their personalityIn short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The mother women seemed to course that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who adore their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.(Perkins, 1999)The awakening of Edna is exactly her realization that she is a passionate human being, and moreover an individual who can relate to her environment as she chooses, and not on the basis of some foreordained laws of behaviorMrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her localization in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individua l to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eightperhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually joyful to vouchsafe to any woman.(Perkins, 1999)Chopin is sharply ironical in the commentary she makes with regard to the unexpected wisdom in her character for centuries women had been discriminated as individuals and as rational beings who could legal expert for themselves. The main transformation of Edna consists thus of her flaunting of all the social law, and willingly giving in to adultery to escape from the tyranny of her own husbandTo-day it is Arobin to-morrow it will be some one else. It makes no difference to me, it doesnt matter about Leonce Pontellierbut Raoul and Etienne (Perkins, 1999)However, in the end, before she drowns in the sea, undoubtedly a symbol of liberation, Edna achieves more than asserting her own rights and independence as a female. When she faces the sea, that is her freedom, she turns her back to the entrapping civilization and artificial society and is elated when she discovers her own nakedness, a symbol of the primitive and natural state of manshe stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her. How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky how delicious She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known.(Perkins, 1999)Thus, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, American books displayed the rupture between the individual and his environment, and the alienation of the human beings in the midst of the overpowering civilization. This marked the beginning of the modern, urbane era, in which the developed society is clever to destroy individuality and the basic and natural humanity of every man.Reference ListAdams, Henry (2001) The Education of Henry Adams. Bartelby.com. http//www.bartleby.co m/159/25.htmlGilman, Charlotte Perkins (2000) Women and Economics. The Celebration of Womens Writing. http//digital.library.upenn.edu/women/gilman/economics/economics.htmlPerkins Charles and Barbara Perkins (1999). The American Tradition in Literature Vol. 1. New York Mc-Graw Hill College