It was time of nineteenth century when women writers used to have male pennames for
publication. Theme of marriage and society were prevalent in both American and British
society. It was a microcosm of its own as women readers used to write about their life through
the eyes of women writers. This phenomenon is historical as it stands between Mary
Wollstonecraft, arguably the first feminist thinker and Virginia Woolf, arguably the most
famous one. Changing times in the second half of nineteenth century was affecting the
sensibility and religious clutches on society. It was also affecting notions of patriarchy.
Writings of the time ought to reflect that.
However, author also presumes a gender of her or his own before writing. That makes
her or his gendering of character political and biased. But honest portrayals are important for
examining depictions of women in a particular time. This paper aims to analyse two popular
writers of the age, a female and a male, to understand the changing notions regarding
patriarchy. American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) have been written important
social novels like novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys
(1886). Her novels features cast of female characters from the contemporary times. Arthur
Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, was a British writer writing detective fiction who
used to portray his contemporary society. He also uses female characters in her stories. This
paper aims to study works of both novelist employing methodologies of close reading and
comparative literature to see how depiction of women in nineteenth century America and
British fiction changes and what are the reasons for it.
DEPICTION OF WOMEN IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN
AND BRITISH FICTION
