2017 has been a landmark year for the cultural discussion surrounding sexual assault and sexual harassment. Perhaps most notably, the recent “#MeToo” movement has contributed to the toppling of powerful sexual predators in Hollywood, the media, the government, and more. Clearly, sexual assault and harassment have been and are still huge problems in our society, but people are talking about it, and that’s an important first step. The silenced have been given voices through this movement, and survivors are starting to be believed and to make real change.

The female characters in the novels of Thomas Hardy are not always completely perfect, but he does fashion them to be something of the ideal woman. He even has a “type” that a majority of those female characters fall under: the born and raised country girl with a touch of class and culture. His wife Emma is said to have believed that Hardy “loved the women he imagined far better than any real woman” (Tomalin), implying that he would rather disappear into the fantasy worlds of his novels and spend time with his characters than be present in England with Emma.

The 1934 film Imitation of Life, directed by John M. Stahl, is an extremely progressive film for its time period. The four main characters are all women, with two of them being women of color, and the storyline follows the two main characters as they build a wildly successful business from the ground up. Bea and Delilah may triumph together as business partners, but in spite of this they are never really on equal footing. Their daughters, Jessie and Peola, are afforded the same opportunities because of their mothers’ success, but the girls still lead lives that are vastly different in terms of success, happiness, and self-fulfillment.

In the plays The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest by William Shakespeare, the characters of Leontes and Prospero both direct the plot of their respective stories because of their lack of trust in others. Leontes has a paranoid fear that his wife is unfaithful, and his emotional outbursts in retaliation for the imagined affair affect both his family and his subjects. Prospero, too, acts in retaliation, but he works instead towards correcting the situation that led to his banishment. His strategy involves seizing control of his daughter and everyone else on the island over which he has given himself dominion. These two father-daughter relationships parallel the ruler-subject relationships in both plays. In The Tempest, this is because of Prospero’s need for control. In The Winter’s Tale, this is because Leontes places his own emotions above all other considerations.

In the novel Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, the main character Antoinette loses her sanity due to issues with identity and sexuality that her husband, Rochester, ultimately exploits. Due to cultural and racial divisiveness, Antoinette never developed an identity or sense of self, but she forms a pseudo-identity in being sexually attractive to Rochester, and she gives him everything that she has. Rochester, filled with unfounded suspicion and paranoia, destroys this through manipulation, taking away all she has left and making her into his “marionette.” His refusal to accept blame for these actions and their consequences suggests sociopathic tendencies.