earticle

영어

This essay is aimed at figuring out effects of patriarchal culture of the contemporary American society on women’s lives as shown especially in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. A focus will be placed on oppressed and restricted lives of women who are supposed to lead their lives just as mothers in the male-centered society where men control women, and the lives of mothers are tamed by patriarchal values. Mary in Long Day’s Journey Into Night is criticized by her family members because she does not execute maternal roles desired by the patriarchal society and is forced to play just the roles of a patriarchal mother. Her husband James remembers his mother who sacrificed herself to raise her children while working for other families and expects his wife to be a woman with the same kind of motherhood. Mary’s two sons endlessly desire and expect her to take a mother's roles. Mary’s oppression stems from the definition of a woman as one whose gender role in the family is limited to taking care of and protecting children. Amanda in The Glass Menagerie also is bound to patriarchal values and tries to play a mother’s roles for her children’s future. Amanda should take responsibility for her family without a husband. Thinking that women should have economic power, most of all, she actively tries to help her daughter achieve professionalism and economic independence through education. Amanda, however, decides that her physically challenged daughter can not take various roles in the traditional male-centered society and forces her to be an ideal woman as desired by patriarchal society. O’Neill and Williams describe suppressed and sacrificed lives of women due to the social elements, capitalism and patriarchal culture of America, through the mothers appearing in their autobiographical plays. They also show lives and maternity of women who escape to fantasy and the past without adapting themselves to the reality of the patriarchal society dominated by men with money.