{"id":2277,"date":"2025-03-28T20:32:57","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T20:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=2277"},"modified":"2025-03-28T20:32:57","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T20:32:57","slug":"vanoras-new-womanhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2025\/03\/28\/vanoras-new-womanhood\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanora’s New Womanhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

In \u201cThe Yellow Drawing Room\u201d by Mona Caird, Vanora, the protagonist, paints her entire drawing room yellow. This is met with appalling reactions from a man who is trying to court her, as he thinks that his ideal woman would be better associated with \u201ca nice tone of grey or blue.\u201d During the Victorian era, it was expected that women were subdued (like these colors) and that they were acting in accordance with the wants of the men in their lives. The yellow drawing room introduces the idea of \u201cthe new woman\u201d into Caird\u2019s short story. This is Vanora\u2019s first mentioned deviance from the norm. Throughout the story, we learn of Vanora\u2019s creativity and humor, both of which support her rejection of old norms and reclaiming of her domestic space.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that her main act of rebellion is in the form of a drawing room which is typically used for entertaining and displaying wealth, demonstrates her rejection of the typical hosting and entertaining duties that come with Victorian associations of the domestic home and womanhood. She also rejects domesticity by knowing that she will not be happy in that environment, despite the assumption that that is what all women should need to be happy. She says that \u201cthe threat of being excluded from the realms you mention does not terrify me.\u201d She does not care to conform to the old norms that\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to this, she expresses her personality and uses humor. St. Vincent even says that her \u201cpersonality seemed to enwrap me as a garment.\u201d This shows that Vanora is sure in her identity and personality and she knows what she wants. This is reflected in the reading from the Victorian Web that states that the new woman deals frankly with sex and marriage. Her confidence stands in contrast to the submissive and reserved nature that was often expected of Victorian women. Through Vanora’s character, Mona Caird critiques the restrictive past of Victorian society and advocates for a new role for women.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In \u201cThe Yellow Drawing Room\u201d by Mona Caird, Vanora, the protagonist, paints her entire drawing room yellow. This is met with appalling reactions from a man who is trying to court her, as he thinks that his ideal woman would be better associated with \u201ca nice tone of grey or blue.\u201d During the Victorian era, … Continue reading Vanora’s New Womanhood<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5016,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135984],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277","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\/5016"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}