The Bestselling Novel: Currents in American History and Culture

Charlotte of Montraville

The fact that women are expected to follow a certain set of rules in order to save themselves from the ‘doomedness’ that awaits them otherwise, roots from the role that society and its perspective plays with regards to the lives of these women. In the novel, Charlotte Temple, the protagonist, Charlotte, is introduced as a, “A tall, elegant girl [who] looked at Montraville and blushed” (p. 7), giving high importance to the fact that her appearance, to Montraville, was what appealed to him the most. The story informs its readers of Charlotte’s harsh reality as she loses to the norms of society by being impregnated by a man who gave up on her. In the narrow eyes of the society, Charlotte eloping with Montraville, and then having his baby despite his absence in her life is what caused her ‘doomedness’. Society, as depicted in Charlotte Temple blames Charlotte for being careless and losing her honor.

This is related to the novel, Tess of the D’Ubervilles, by Thomas Hardy, which is a massive nineteenth-century British novel.

In the novel, the protagonist, Tess, is defeated by the power of the society, as she fights against the societal norms to give birth to her illegitimate baby, who was a result of rape. The man who raped her was Alec, a rich and educated man, who seduced Tess by persuading her to work for him as long as he promised to help her family cope with certain issues. This indicates an element of victimization, as the female protagonist is viewed to be helpless and incapable of taking matters into her hands, due to which she is left seduced and abandoned by any man that she trusts. Tess and Charlotte face similar issues, as a consequence of defying the female norms that society entailed for them.

Coincidentally enough, both Charlotte and Tess are bound by the terms and conditions that society imposes on them. From wrongly deciding to keep their illegitimate babies, to being with men they were not legally married to, forced upon them a lot of shame and humiliation from the harsh eyes of society. Both Charlotte and Tess experienced the same consequences from their surroundings, which led to their eventual deaths, though in different terms. Both the texts focus on the beauty of the women being the reason for them being seduced and eventually doomed, raising the issue of how society emphasizes on the beauty of women rather than their critical thinking of worldly situations.  

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