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Which quote are you responding to?

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Tess grows up in an environment where she is forced to be a strong figure in her household, raising her siblings while her father is an alcoholic and her mother is passive in her duties.

Initially, Tess takes up a subservient role among men. However, she grows in her own strength and confidence in order to stand up against the man that lead to her ruin. Alec's rape causes her to lose Angel as well as her innocence. By killing Alec, she demonstrates her strength. Additionally, she stands up for herself to Angel in a letter to him, knowing she is not at fault for not being the "pure" woman Angel imagined her to be.

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Shelley displays man’s fear of independent female will by describing Frankenstein's hesitation to create a female counterpart for his creature because she may become even more strong and powerful than the male creature, as well as fearing the power that comes with female sexual freedom.

Shelley also explains the power nature has to resist man’s control, showing the strength of women in a patriarchal society. She does this by showing that Victor's attempt to defeat the laws of nature by creating his creature only ends in self-destruction, shown as physical on page 51 as well as mental on page 156, and ultimately lead to his early death. She also does this by chasing Victor with natural storms that demonstrate her power over him.

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"Every day seemed to throw upon her young shoulders more of the family burdens" (26)

"I have killed him... I owed it to you and to myself, Angel." (310-311)

"Oh why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do not deserve it. I have thought it all over carefully, and I can never, never forgive you!" (288)

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"I was now about to form another being, of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness... one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror" (163)

"My enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade; than an artist occupied by his favourite employment. Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree” (51)

“Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish, and every word that I spoke in allusion to it caused my lips to quiver and my heart to palpitate” (156)

“I might be driven into the wide Atlantic, and feel all the tortures of starvation, or be swallowed up in the immeasurable waters that roared and buffetted around me. I ... felt the torment of a burning thirst; ... I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave”  (169)

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Only seventy years later, Thomas Hardy continues to develop the idea of female strength in male-dominated societies with his Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

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Over two hundred years after Shakespeare demonstrated the strength of women King Lear, Mary Shelley worked to accomplish the same goal in her novel Frankenstein by demonstrating the consequences of attempting to control or defeat nature, which Shelley portrays as female in the novel.

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Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein” (1988)

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Cordelia shows strength by staying true to her own beliefs instead of caving in to her fathers' wishes in order to appease him. This leads him to disown her, but she accepts this over having to betray herself. The second quote is almost a threat that foreshadows the result of forcing others to lie for personal gain.

Although Goneril and Regan are considered antagonists in the plot, they still demonstrate their power when they take each others' hand as a symbol of the strength that women can have in unity, standing in opposition to lear. He loses his hundred knights, which represent his independence and power, to his daughters. This shows their strength, even though it may be used for a malignant purpose.

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“Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave / My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty /According to my bond; nor more nor less” (1.1.90-92)

“Time shall unfold what pleated cunning hides; / Who covers faults, at last shame them derides" (1.1.281-82)

"If it be you that stirs these daughters' hearts / Against their father, fool me not so much / To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger / And let not women's weapons, water drops, / Stain my man's cheeks!" (2.3.271-75)

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In King Lear, Shakespeare demonstrates the strength of women through Cordelia, Lear's daughter, as well as her two sisters, Goneril and Regan.

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Throughout history, women have taken up subservient roles in society due to social influences. Yet, through literature, authors, ranging from those of the seventeenth century to those of the nineteenth century, have given power to women by demonstrating their humanity in a time in which it was often undermined by considering them lesser than their fellow man. Shakespeare's King Lear, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urberville's empower women through times of oppression by demonstrating their strength. By reading novels such as these, men and women alike grow in empathy for women, understanding their strength by placing themselves in the lives of oppressed female characters.