GENDER AND POWER RELATIONS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF VICTORIAN AND CONTEMPORARY NOVELS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v13.i12.2025.6867Keywords:
Gender Roles, Power Relations, Victorian Literature, Contemporary Fiction, Feminism, Patriarchy, Gender Identity, Literary AnalysisAbstract [English]
The current paper can be considered as a comparative analysis of the novels by Victorian and contemporary authors in terms of representation of gender and power relations in English literature. Being strict in terms of patriarchy and gender roles, being a woman in the Victorian world seemed to be a task that implied to the female gender the passivity and domesticity of a woman that is limited by the powers of the society. By contrast, the modern-day writings are much more indicative of changing gender roles and are questioning established structures of power, presenting not just more subtle but also more varied images of women and men. This paper identifies the transformations attained in gender relations, how inequalities in the system have been perpetuated and how ideas of feminism and postmodernism have surfaced through comparative reading of some of the works in each period. The paper sustains the argument that even though the present-day novels give the voices marginalized more agency, certain power disparities that existed historically can still be traced in the literary texts. This comparative enterprise brings to light the changing discourse of gender and power and expresses how literature is both a mirror and a maker of societal ranges of behavior.
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