I Apologize in Advance for My (Slightly) Feminist Rant

Why are all the female characters we read about so weak? They are unable to make decisions for themselves. As Dreiser says, “When a girl leaves home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse” (1). But why are these her only two options? Why does a girl of eighteen, or any age for that matter, need someone to save her? She is more than capable of saving herself. I don’t like the way women are portrayed as inferior to men, sorry my feminist hackles are slightly raised right now and I have to write this post. Sister Carrie, even though she is eighteen and self-absorbed, can make all of her own decisions and does not need saving because she will be just fine.

Also, I found it interesting that, on the first page, Dreiser makes a vague Shakespeare reference. “Unrecognised for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens, then perverts the simpler human perceptions” (1). Which is a lot like what Orsino says to Viola in Twelfth Night or What You Will Act II Scene 4: “For women are as roses, whose fair flow’r / Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour” (II.4). Why do so many people believe that women cannot stay beautiful for a prolonged period of time? We can be beautiful, and are beautiful, until the day we die!! I’m mad and I apologize for my ranting.