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Amarilly Of Clothes-Line Alley Analysis

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Amarilly Of Clothes-Line Alley Analysis
Women are not play things. Women are not worldly. Women are not allowed to vote. Women are completely morally upright. Women are sexually chaste and submissive. Women are center and upholder of the household. Women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were laden with these societal rules, especially in Victorian communities. According to Kyle Potter of Georgetown College, “women (of this period) measured any spiritual exercise by the extent to which it denied oneself personal comforts and pleasures.” Women were also the ones solely responsible for the raising of the children of the family. With all of this weight and responsibility, women were not even considered strong or independent enough to vote in elections or to work outside …show more content…
Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley, a film starring the legendary Mary Pickford, accomplished the task of demonstrating the change women made from Victorianism to progressivism exceptionally well. Amarilly depicted accurately the torn mindset between Victorian values and modern independence. The film showed Amarilly (Mary Pickford) possessing a great deal of agency compared to Victorian women of the period. Also, Amarilly in the movie reflected many of the same aspirations and desires in life that Mary Pickford herself held in reality. Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley offers a porthole into historical moment where the dynamic metamorphosis of Victorian women into modern women was taking …show more content…
A movement was happening from Victorian to progressivism. Amarilly offers us a vantage point into the world of the new woman. The torn mindset of Amarilly between Victorian value and modern self-fulfillment was a reality that was happening in America too. The agency that Amarilly had in the story in being able to choose her own husband and find her own work points to that very same thing happening in contemporary women. Also, the overlapping story of Mary Pickford and Amarilly show that the fictional story of Amarilly was being played out in reality too. The Victorian woman was beginning to yield to a voting, leading, and strengthening new woman known as the modern woman. Amarilly depicts this for us in a unique

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