Free Difference Between Men And Women Of The Industrialization Society Research Paper Example

In The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, Herman Melville sought to highlight the irony of life from real life experience as one group of people lived off another without giving a care. There is a group of isolated men who are bachelors and lawyers who only indulge in entertaining one another with food, drink and, also accompanying one another at the ‘temple.’ On the other hand is a group of maids with eyes filled with misery because of being overworked at the mill. Several authors have given this article a different view and understanding that perhaps demonstrates how Melville’s article is being repeated today. In his short story, Melville analyzes both the behavior of society, and how they compared to or was connected to the social norms and social contradictions of the industrialization era of the 19th century; a reflection of gender and class biases that showed how life can be unfair.
Industrialization may have seemed like a tool for empowering society but then its ills are reflected in the way the means of production dwells in the hands of a few much to the chagrin of the majority who tirelessly and helplessly work for a few individuals. Summer and winter passed by and all that mattered that work went on and that the laborer did what they knew how to do best, while the Templars also did their bit. It is unfair that sexuality is very prominent in his essay so much so, that it is not funny that the maids are depicted as sexless while the bachelors have been sexed. That insinuates gender imbalance that depicts the maids as inferior to the bachelor's. There is “a more uncertain and fluid relationship between different versions of sexuality” (Allen 2) that depict gender imbalance in the 19th century, and perhaps it is what is reflected today as a few people enjoy, dine and reap from WallStreet when another group of people toils to benefit the few.
The relationship between man and machine during the industrial era brought a lot of good but also damages. That is in reference to the overworked maids who are overwhelmed with their work but who are left no choice, and the other the likes of the nine bachelors who seemingly do not give a care about the workers. But the society went on as if nothing was the matter. Dehumanization is at its best as there is “repression and boundaries that are too rigid” (Kutzbach 2). It is that repression that makes the maids toil without a choice and without questioning the overindulgence of the bachelors.
The worker was designated to work without questioning, not even asking for the respect of their rights. They did not have room to ask any questions, let alone to speak in the entire narration. Inequality shows how the maids are falling deep into squalor while the Templars fall into banquet. Perhaps a reflection of hat is experienced in the current society where the rich continue to be rich and poor becoming poorer by the day. The rich seek to share in their “worldly pursuits that the bachelors share with one another through conversation” (Rodriguez 2) giving them a sense of community away from the squalor of the common citizenry.
Inger Hunnerup Dalsgaard raises the question as to whether subjecting these women and not man into hard labor in the mills was worth it. The entire process was marred by shortcomings and inadequacies that portrayed society as very unfair and gender biased. It is no wonder he states that “massing together large groups of women though necessary for industrialization to work, encouraged latent concerns about gender and virtue” (Dalsgaard 2). It becomes clear that gender imbalance was a common practice at the time because women were deemed inferior but to pile them up in mills and letting men enjoy life from their sweat was not at all amusing. Women may have been inferior by virtue of their gender but treating them unequally was all wrong.
Beryl Rowland, on the other hand, expresses how Melville presented both “biological and social burdens of women” (55) because female subjugation to hard labor is not comparable to the life led by the bachelors. It is clear that at the time men enjoyed a lot of freedom and could go about life with a lot of ease, including the men who were working at the mills. That is unlike women who were only destined to be locked up in the mills. That irony projects the weakness of the industrial revolution and perhaps what is seen in today’s imperialist economies.
Clearly, the economic activities at the time were comparable to societal norms of the time. Women were deemed inferior to men, and the jobs that they were made to do during the industrial revolution are an indicator that indeed they were inferior. Whereas they were away working in the mills, the nine bachelors were having the time of their lives hosting and treating each other to banquets, foods and drinks. They called the shots, and it was their world. Nothing mattered to men, other than letting the laborers do the donkeywork.

Works Cited

Allen, Tom. Melville's "Factory Girls": Feminizing the Future. Word File
Budd, Louis J. & Cady, Edwin Harrison. On Melville: The Best From American Lit. Durham: Duke university Press, 1988. Print
Dalsgaard, Inger Hunnerup. Producing and Consuming Passions: Women Workers and Writing Desires in Melville’s New England.Web. 2009. Retrieved on 4th March 2015. http://www.doubledialogues.com/issue_ten/dalsgaard.html
Kutzbach, Konstanze. None-Sex Model: The Flesh(-)Made Machine in Herman Melville's "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" and J. G. Ballard's Crash. Word File
Rodriguez, Elizabeth. Melville's The Paradise Of Bachelors And The Tartarus Of Maids. PDF File