Women who provide all free labor I a capitalist system in which nothing else is free have to stop being so nice, the truth of the matter is 6 that household chores make women tired an therefore the unpaid labor in homes is a way of maintaining the systems of oppression. This is because women are expected to carry out different tasks in the house which are often tiresome and they do not get anything in return (L'Hirondelle, 004)
Other women used the term "sublime" to describe natural scenes near their homes, areas containing blissful childhood memories. To these women, "nature is a female friend, a sister, with whom they share the most intimate experiences and with whom they cooperate in the daily business of life, to the mutual advantage of each" (Mellor)
"According to the Romantic idea, what defines the poet are mental powers, psychic endowments. Literary production is secondary… by this way of thinking, Dorothy Wordsworth was one of the great poets of the age" (Perkins 479)
The male feels threatened by the natural world because he in fact cannot control it. The "feminine" sublime represents the woman's attempt and ability to co-exist with the natural world in what Carol Gilligan and Nancy Chodorow call an "unbroken continuum that connects them" (Pipkin)
In this novel, Steinbeck depicts women in a supporting role, a role that seeks to maintain the previously described unbroken continuum. He introduces this concept very early in the novel: "The women went into the houses to their work, and the children began to play, but cautiously at first" (Steinbeck, 10)