Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Crux: Ein Roman
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love early feminist fiction, stories of marriage and choice, and novels of ideas set in the American West.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
The Crux is a novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first printed in monthly parts in her own magazine, The Forerunner, in 1910 and published as a book in 1911. Gilman wrote it as fiction with a purpose. She believed that women had been kept ignorant and dependent, and that this left them unready for the biggest choice of their lives, which was whom to marry. The book follows a young woman from New England who goes west to Colorado and meets that choice there.
You get a short, clear novel that moves quickly and argues as it goes. It has a heroine named Vivian Lane, a small Western community of mostly women, and a love story that carries a hard question about what a woman has a right to know and what she owes herself. Gilman is best known for The Yellow Wall-Paper and for the utopian novel Herland, and this book belongs beside them. Let us begin with where Vivian starts, at home, and why she leaves.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A daughter at home with no futureFree
- 2Colorado offers a different kind of life
- 3Admirers gather around a young woman
- 4Love meets a hard question about truth
- 5What the novel says about women and marriage
- 6A novel built to persuade
Punkt 1 von 6
A daughter at home with no future
The story opens with Vivian Lane in a New England home, where life has been shaped around one expected outcome. Girls of her class and time are raised to wait, to be pleasant, and to be chosen. Vivian is young, thoughtful and bright, but nothing in her upbringing has given her a trade, an income or a wide view of the world.
Gilman uses this opening to set out her main complaint. A girl who has been taught only to please is poorly prepared to judge a husband. Marriage is her one road to a place in society, so she must treat it as a prize and a duty at once. The pressure does not come from villains. It comes from kind, ordinary people who think they are doing right.
This was a settled belief in the America of 1910, and Gilman had argued against it for years in her nonfiction, most of all in Women and Economics. In the novel she lets the argument live in a household. The mother, the neighbors and the family habits all push in one direction. Vivian feels the narrowness even before she can name it.
When the chance comes to leave, it matters a great deal. Vivian is not running away from a cruel home. She is stepping out of a pattern. The reader senses at once that this small move will test her more than any family quarrel could.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Questions about Crux: Ein Roman
What is The Crux by Charlotte Perkins Gilman about?
It is a novel about Vivian Lane, a young woman who leaves New England for Colorado and must weigh love against what she comes to know about marriage, health and a woman's right to make an informed choice.
When was The Crux written?
Gilman published it in monthly parts in her magazine The Forerunner in 1910, and it came out as a book in 1911. It is a work of fiction, though it carries her real social arguments.
What does the title The Crux mean?
A crux is the central point on which a matter turns. In the novel it names the hard question at the heart of Vivian's courtship, the point where her feelings and her judgment meet.
Is The Crux a feminist novel?
Yes, in the sense that it argues for women's independence, education and frank knowledge before marriage. Gilman was a leading feminist thinker of her day, and the book puts her ideas into story form.
Is The Crux hard to read?
No. It is short, with plain prose and clear scenes. The story itself is easy to follow.