relationships appearing to be dragged back into the patriarchy and hardly breaking out of their spheres at all, both writers make small successes. Brontë portrays the acceptability of a homoerotic relationship in nineteenth-century society by providing a female-female marriage (although Brontë frames Shirley as unnaturally masculine in the female relationship, to demonstrate her dissatisfaction with traditional patriarchal spheres) and Gaskell portrays Margaret as an independent part of her marriage, rather than being defined by her husband. Admittedly it is disappointing that neither author goes further in encouraging their protagonist to use female relationships to break out of the patriarchal sphere entirely – particularly considering the changing situation of contemporary women when they are fighting for legal recognition but the slight deviations seen already demonstrate that "in the – past as in the present, marriage and family, gender and sexuality, are far more intricate, mobile, and malleable than we imagine them to be" (Marcus, 262). Word count: 5,249
relationships appearing to be dragged back into the patriarchy and hardly breaking out of their spheres at all, both writers make small successes. Brontë portrays the acceptability of a homoerotic relationship in nineteenth-century society by providing a female-female marriage (although Brontë frames Shirley as unnaturally masculine in the female relationship, to demonstrate her dissatisfaction with traditional patriarchal spheres) and Gaskell portrays Margaret as an independent part of her marriage, rather than being defined by her husband. Admittedly it is disappointing that neither author goes further in encouraging their protagonist to use female relationships to break out of the patriarchal sphere entirely – particularly considering the changing situation of contemporary women when they are fighting for legal recognition – but the slight deviations seen already demonstrate that "in the past as in the present, marriage and family, gender and sexuality, are far more intricate, mobile, and malleable than we imagine them to be" (Marcus, 262). Word count: 5,249
model_ninteenth_century_essay.docx