In this passage, Miss Du Prel and Temperly are having a discussion concerning the \u201cduties\u201d of women. Miss Du Prel believes that work should be evenly distributed. She doesn\u2019t understand why all women must do the same work despite their different passions and mind sets. Temperly feels that all women should do the same work because it is what they are best suited for. He believes that women are meant to do the household duties because it is what \u201cNature\u201d intended.<\/p>\n
While this text has the ideals of the period in Temperly\u2019s dialog, Miss Du Prel\u2019s dialog attempts to queer gender roles. Miss Du Prel questions the gender roles assigned to women, diverging from the societal norms of the time. Miss Du Prel challenges the ideal that women are meant to do house work as opposed to reflecting on the intelligently stimulating.<\/p>\n
Temperly draws a metaphor that women all want to be \u201cMary\u201ds and not \u201cMartha\u201ds, meaning that women are neglecting their duties as woman to idly sit and think. Temperly is complaining that women are no longer doing their supposed duties around the house. Miss Du Prel views the issue in reverse. She believes that too many women are being confined to their household duties which is making them idle and no women can pursue over means of work.<\/p>\n
Miss Du Prel tries to get Temperly to think of the situation from a woman\u2019s perspective. By doing this, she is also blurring the lines of gender because she is asking a man to view himself in a woman\u2019s position. She is trying to get Temperly to understand the plight of woman, that people who do not identify with them are being allowed to dictate what their rights are, and she wants him to understand that this is not fair. Temperly brings the conversation to Victorian ideals however by suggesting that women should trust men\u2019s \u201cable judgement\u201d (Caird 78). Temperly also uses \u201cnature\u201d as then reason why women are subject to men.<\/p>\n
By questioning her \u201cfemale duties,\u201d Miss Du Prel is allowing there to be a dialog discussing the queering of the Victorian gender binary. She is questioning the expectations placed on women and suggesting that they could do other work as well. Miss Du Prel is challenging the \u201cnorm\u201d through her questioning of the accepted social gender roles.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/vqa.dickinson.edu\/novel\/daughters-danaus<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In this passage, Miss Du Prel and Temperly are having a discussion concerning the \u201cduties\u201d of women. Miss Du Prel believes that work should be evenly distributed. She doesn\u2019t understand why all women must do the same work despite their different passions and mind sets. Temperly feels that all women should do the same work … Continue reading Victorian Queer Archives Project<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111423],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}