Portrayal of The Ideal woman (Response Essay)

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            Tomlinson’s short story The Inexperienced Governess depicted the situation of how woman should be on 1850. There were still so many restricted rules of an ideal woman should be, which were made by the civilization themself at that time.

            To make it easier, let’s look at these list of how a woman should be,
1.     A young woman expected to be timid and reserve, when meeting another people for the first time. A young woman should have ease of manner, and expected to have diffidence. (p.4)
2.     They were expected to have interests on some general subject. But, it means that they couldn’t speak their mind freely on some subject. They expected to have broad knowledge and have feminine skills such as sewing.
3.     It’s not common for a woman to exaggerates her emotion, women were expected to be calm. For instance, in a conversation, they shouldn’t using sudden exclamation. A woman couldn’t expressed their emotion too much.
4.     The speaking tone of a woman, as the point above stated that they couldn’t expressed their emotion freely, so the they musn’t speak loudly or otherwise. If they speak and laugh loudly, it was considered that she has no manner.
5.     A woman shouldn’t be too comfortable and relaxed as they speak with everyone, especially with men. A woman should keep her pride.

Meanwhile, those five criterias of ideal woman collided with how a real woman lives,

1.     It is depends on a woman to be shy or not, it’s also a matter of social speaking skills.
2.     It must be exhausting to just listen to others people opinion, so some real women are clear about what subjects they don’t like and like.
3.     To be calm all the time, is not easy. People tend to have differents emotional skills. Some people just couldn’t keep calm all the time.
4.     How people speak reflected how are their emotion, so it is depends on the emotion. It’s also depends on each indivduality.
5.     It’s a matter of speaking skills, it doesn’t mean that every women are flirting whenever they talk to men, it’s just the judges from the surroundings.

As we can see, an ideal woman is a figure set by the civilization, especially by media nowadays. But, everything is depends on the individual itself, we couldn’t actually labels of how an individual should be.

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