Connection on Readings Blog Post

In Thomas Carlyle’s Captains of Industry, government is brought up a lot in the first few paragraphs. In summary, it states how government can help but cannot do it all, and how government is a direct symbol of the people. My first thoughts while reading the assigned passages for Tuesday were woman and gender roles. I tied this to Carlyle’s excerpt because of the connecting aspect “government”. Specifically in this weeks readings, how women were treated under the government, as Marineau speaks a lot about. The governments actions were unfair and unjust towards women. It is clear that the principle of equal rights stemmed from the governmental authority and people the women didn’t have much influence over it. Harriet Marineau’s voice in this piece discusses discriminatory ways women were treated and emphasizes that freedom was her right that she was not collecting on. Mill speaks on government in Martineau’s piece when he sates, “one thing is pretty clear; that all those individuals, whose interests are involved in those of other individuals, may be struck off without inconvenience…In this light, women may be regarded, the interest of almost all of whom is involved, either in that of their fathers or in that of their husbands.” Gender roles is something we talked about discussing early on in class with Victorian Literature, so it is interesting to start to see the small pattern between pieces come to light. Here, women representation is being dictated be men. I am interested to see the themes of equality overall, not just with regard to women of this time, but also race, as we spoke about race aspects in Thomas Carlyles Democracy reading.

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