Images of women in 20th-century american literature and culture : female emancipation and changing gender roles in the age of innocence, breakfast at tiffany's and sex and the city

Abstract

The 20th century has seen much progression concerning women and their sta- tus within American society. Tired of being reduced to the sphere of the home where they were primarily valued as mothers and wives, women have, since the beginning of the new century, more and more entered the public sphere and have fought for their right to be full citizens who should inherit all the rights men have ever since had. From today’s perspective, women have come a long way, but have they yet arrived? What has actually changed? Are to- day’s women really that different from women who lived about a hundred years ago, or are they still akin? What is truly new in the lives of women and what has remained the same? Besides, have things changed for the better or for the worse? In order to answer these questions, I will analyze the depiction of women in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (AI), Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (BAT) and the TV series Sex and the City (SATC). The analysis also in- cludes the film version of BAT since movies in mid-20th-century America were extremely popular; they reached a broad audience and therefore had much influence on people. The movie version is, besides, of further interest because it alters not only the characteristics of the novella’s female protagonist, but al- so parts of the storyline, thus presenting a considerably different image of women only three years after the publication of the novella. Moreover, I chose a TV series as the third object of analysis due to today’s popularity and influ- ence of the medium and of the series itself.