Ann Heilmann's Analysis

In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorian ideals still hold sway in America. Women are subjected to a restrictive androcentric society that expect them to abide by the “codes of moral propriety” (Heilmann 88). Therefore, the role of maternal figure and obedient wife forced upon them leaves little or no room for female self-determination. Until 1978, as Ann Heilmann explains, the patriarchal order even deprives American women of legal rights over their own bodies (88). In other words, men literally own their wives’ body, and as such, there is no threat of legal actions hanging over
them