Women's Rights and Freedoms: Entering into a Happy Marriage

Since Dracula was written in 1897, I wanted to talk about women’s lives during that time. During that time we see that women had very limited freedoms and were typically expected to stay in their homes to the housework. “Not only was it their job to counterbalance the moral taint of the public sphere in which their husbands laboured all day, they were also preparing the next generation to carry on this way of life”. They were expected to be mothers, which meant having children and taking sole care of them. They also were expected to do anything their husbands said. At the time, men saw women as lesser than them, which led to men everywhere expecting submissive wives. Women lived in a man’s world.

Women’s society given goal was to look for someone to marry, have his child, and then take care of the family for the rest of their lives, all from the home of course. Contrary to today’s society, women who did not follow this cycle were looked down on and seen as lesser by society. Women did not have the right to ownership of the home, money, or anything else of value. Women did not even have ownership of their own bodies.For women in this time period, divorce was not an option. Marriage was final and there was not any way to get out of it even if that meant living an unhappy life. There was even chance of being punished by law for divorce. All of these societal rules meant women had no rights or freedoms with their bodies. They had their voices in the matter taken away.

In this time, women were not allowed to partake in their own activities that did not involve looking after her family. Because the husband was the only source of income, he was the only person who could make her secure in a monetary sense. This caused women to feel that if they left their husband or never got married in the first place, they would be “unprotected”. Women felt complicity dependant on their husbands which led to the creation of a cycle that future generations to follow.

Due of the adversity these women faced, there finally came a time where they decided to make changes. The women began to rise up and start social movements to improve their lives and gain the rights they deserved.

Towards the end of the 1800’s, women won their right to vote in the United States. This amendment caused for many changes in what women had a say in. They won the voice they had been lacking for so long. This allowed them to seek an education, which led to them being able to make money to support themselves. From this started independence and separation from men. Marriages were mostly out of necessity and men wanting to show off their wealth and status. Women were expected to follow exactly what their husband said just for the chance at a happy marriage, but because of their new rights and freedoms, women were able to get out of their unhappy marriages and into better healthier ones.