Week 4

It is not a surprise to me to find that, a century and a half after Cummin's The Lamplighter was published, our expectations about the roles of women in society has progressed as far as it has. Women are now allowed to vote, most hold jobs even after they marry, and there is now less importance put on being a mother and having children. Some women choose to focus on their careers and never marry. Others may choose to marry young or stay at home and not work. The important thing is not that a modern woman does one or the other, it is simply important that that she have the option, and the ability to make her own choices. It's not that expectations are any different. The ideal role of a woman (in the eyes of a man) hasn't kept pace with progress. The difference between these two texts is simply the number of options available to either girl in their own time.

The first thing I noticed about the video prompt was the theme song singing "smart girls have more fun." Obviously, the message of this show is not going to be the same message should, for example, it had been produced under the values system of the 19th century. Amy Pohler features on her show different girls with different talents and says that they are all equally valid ways of living. In The Lamplighter however, as in our other readings, we are shown that girls of that time were all brought up and prepared and trimmed and shaped to fit the mold of what women were supposed to be. We can see from the examples of Nan Grant (and Gerty on occasion) that having a temper or being strong willed was a bad thing: it makes you kill kittens or gets you beaten.

However, we are encouraged to like Emily Graham and Mrs. Sullivan. Both represent the virtues Gerty should strive to embody: selflessness, piety, motherhood, and beauty. Both women are easily distinguished from Nan Grant, who was ugly and mean. Now of course modern women are told how to act and behave as well, but we really have the freedom to choose from many "socially acceptable" models to choose from; no one is going to alienate a woman in this day and age for reading books, playing soccer, or becoming a lawyer.
Gerty is simply encouraged to "be quite a nice little housekeeper."

In the prompt video, the little girl Ana says "don't think about what you have to do to get people to like you or to have more friends. You probably want people to like you for who you are." While this is a very common line of thought today, it was not the case in Gerty's time. To be a proper young woman Gerty is supposed to know how to clean the house, make toast, pray to God, and all these other things that are just expected of her. And she is taught that that is what she wants. Her opinion doesn't really matter. Amy Pohler's show is all about asking young girls their opinions which shows the difference between how many more options Ana has growing up in the 21st century even at such an early age.

Women back then had fewer options because they simply had fewer rights. Nowadays when a woman can do just about anything that a man can (at least in our country), there exist multiple ways in which she can choose to express herself without fear of social rejection.