Throughout the course of human events, many truths have been held self-evident, that all men are created equal. That doesn’t account for about fifty percent of the human population: women. Women have been degraded and treated as evil pariahs, not only in the real world, but also through works fiction. Every culture has evil women or women that are responsible for great catastrophes, while men were portrayed as saviors. Other women still were portrayed as petty and jealous, especially the Greek and Roman goddesses that many feminists look at to show that women were not always treated unfairly. These acts of fiction parallel the views we see in both of the books that we read in our English class. To revisit the ancient women of the world, let …show more content…
us take a look, first, at Joan of Arc. The women that lead the French to their victory over England was later burned at the stake. False charges were drawn up to make sure that she was convicted. While it could be said that this was done because she was an opposing military leader, one must remember that leaders of enemy leaders at time were treated with respect, soldiers were told even not to shoot them while they were on the battlefield. Other examples that were addresses earlier were the Greco-Roman goddesses. All of them, including Athena the Goddess of Wisdom and Combat, had extreme moments of pettiness and jealousy. Two notable examples are when Hera, the Queen of the Gods, struck a woman dead and when Aphrodite turned a woman into the first spider. Hera killed that woman because Zeus, the King of the Gods, had slept with the random woman and that made Hera extremely jealous. Hera also refused the child of that relationship to claim his place amongst the gods. This act was because of jealousy. Aphrodite turned the woman into a spider because Aphrodite grew jealous of the woman’s weaving ability. These traits were definitely passed to the women in Fahrenheit 541. In Fahrenheit 451 we see a dystopian future, a future that lacks education and social interaction. It should be expected that the people we see are a bit unintelligent. But we see a group of men at the fire house. They chat and have decent discussion with each other. But the women in the book are so extremely ditsy and petty that it is beyond explanation. At one point in the book we see the main character’s wife with a few of her female friends. All of the women were so completely devoid of intelligence that it borders on insanity. One of the women even had several abortions because she was too uncaring and petty to want children. All of the women were too absorbed with themselves to care, even about each other, people they called their friends. There was one obvious exception to the rule of women in 451, and that was Clarice McClellen. Clarice was an extremely observant and caring individual.
She held logical conversations and she was extremely observant of the world around her. She was the antithesis of the negative tropes we see in the rest of the women in the book. It was a refreshing picture to see that a character wasn’t blatantly defaming women. The problem with this is that Clarice was killed off very early in the book and we did not get to see her character grow and show off her difference as an individual. To turn back around on my message, the book did have a reason for killing her. It was heavily implied that she was killed off because she was different. The fact that she did not fit into these stereotypical tropes of petty, selfish women was why Ray Bradbury chose to kill her off. It is also worth noting that it is only after her death that we see the other women in the book, and just how degrading they …show more content…
are. In The Wave, we see a large group of teenagers turn into a Nazi-esque group called The Wave. A lot of people joined because they felt left out in other groups, or were tired of competing with each other. A very good example of how this applies to the negative light shown on women in fiction is an exchange between the main character, Laurie, and her previous friend, Amy. Amy became fully engrossed in The Wave and adored the movement in its entirety. This is in stark contrast to Laurie, as she was the first person to openly oppose The Wave. In the exchange between the two, Amy reveals that, in the story, a majority of the girls were being compared to Laurie, and felt that they were competing against her even though there was no real competition. This is just another way of saying that all of girls were petty and a bit self-obsessed. They all wanted to be the best. Another thing that Amy says in this exchange of dialog is that the reason Laurie does not like The Wave is that Laurie is no longer the center of attention and that Laurie does not like that. Assuming that Laurie’s ex-best friend knows more about her character than we do, we as the reader can take that as a fact and see that the author was showing off a trait of self-importance in the main character, a character otherwise shown to be devoid of these negative stereotypes. Laurie was portrayed in The Wave as an intelligent young woman.
She had everything going for her. She was not only the smartest girl in the school, but she was pretty, had plenty of friends and her boyfriend was on the football team. This story is as American as one can get, short of her making apple pies every day. We then see her lose all of this because she stood up against The Wave. The group systematically pushed her to the fringe of society. We established that this was a very American trope, but it is not limited just to America. All over the world, all throughout history, we see tales of beautiful young women, especially princesses, losing everything because of some great catastrophe. There is even a story in Japanese mythology of a beautiful princess being struck down by, very ironically, a wave. The wave in both this story and The Wave comes to symbolize change, as the ocean is something that we cannot control. We see beautiful smart young women being knocked down and ruined by the very essence of change. This goes to show that all throughout history, on both sides of the world, women are seen as delicate little things that can be knocked over by the slightest bit of change in their
world. In summation, literature throughout history has portrayed women in a negative light. We see the same stereotypes replayed as tropes. We see these tropes over and over again, especially in the books that we read for our English class. These two pieces of fiction showed just how degraded women are in our society, especially through our literature. The most shocking part is that The Wave is based on true events and these are rather close accounts of how the real events took place.
Looking back through many historical time periods, people are able to observe the fact that women were generally discriminated against and oppressed in almost any society. However, these periods also came with women that defied the stereotype of their sex. They spoke out against this discrimination with a great amount of intelligence and strength with almost no fear of the harsh consequences that could be laid out by the men of their time. During the Medieval era, religion played a major role in the shaping of this pessimistic viewpoint about women. The common belief of the patriarchal-based society was that women were direct descendants of Eve from The Bible; therefore, they were responsible for the fall of mankind. All of Eve’s characteristics from the biblical story were believed to be the same traits of medieval women. Of course, this did not come without argument. Two medieval women worked to defy the female stereotype, the first being the fictional character called The Wife of Bath from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The second woman, named Margery Kempe, was a real human being with the first English autobiography written about her called The Book of Margery Kempe. In these two texts, The Wife of Bath and Margery Kempe choose to act uniquely compared to other Christians in the medieval time period because of the way religion is interpreted by them. As a result, the women view themselves as having power and qualities that normal women of their society did not.
Society continually places specific and often restrictive standards on the female gender. While modern women have overcome many unfair prejudices, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women were forced to deal with a less than understanding culture. Different people had various ways of voicing their opinions concerning gender inequalities, including expressing themselves through literature. By writing a fictional story, authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James were given the opportunity to let readers understand and develop their own ideas on such a serious topic.
...vie, the actresses that played them actually fit the role. Women usually do not have impacts on things, but in this novel, major things happened as a result of these women. These things include dishonest marriages, love affairs, wealth, power, and jealousy. This goes to show that women are not always the innocent ones in novels, or any other type of literature.
Due to traditional stereotypes of women, literature around the world is heavily male-dominant, with few female characters outside of cliché tropes. Whenever a female character is introduced, however, the assumption is that she will be a strong lead that challenges the patriarchal values. The authors of The Thousand and One Nights and Medea use their female centered stories to prove their contrasting beliefs on the role of women not only in literature, but also in society. A story with a female main character can be seen as empowering, but this is not always the case, as seen when comparing and contrasting Medea and The Thousand and One Nights.
...e, women are the weaker of the two sexes. Women are slaves and spoils of war, if they are valued for sex they are used for sex. The universal portrayal of women causes a reevaluation of modern day gender balances by the reader.
Women are considered the goddesses of the world; but it is also true that they are not treated as it. It is human nature to try and separate and sort ourselves out into groups or is it a human characteristics. Women have been being ill-treated for many years and used just as things to fulfil the wishes of men. Considering women as goddesses is not enough to give them full women empowerment in the world. In previous time in history women held no value compared to men; their only purpose was to stay home, take care of the children and fulfill their husband wishes. In the 19th century women were expected to have certain roles to fit into and create a “normal” society.
Violence and discrimination against women shown in Othello is also a global phenomenon that has been present throughout history. The Bible states that “God made the woman out of the man” (Gen 2:22) and is also a similar idea demonstrated in various cultures and religions. Today, the biggest influence on these differences come from the ways that society perceives the...
The bible has been the center of many debates and has been used correctly and incorrectly. My objective in this paper is to illuminate the many flaws in the century-old yet ever present interpretation of the bible that suggests women are lesser than men. I will also commend and explain the use of the bible during the civil rights movement.
In history, the role and status of women have fluctuated incredibly. At first, matriarchy was dominant in Greece and other realms. Women who are like mother earth and nature were the idols of fertility. They symbolized both beautiful and fertile side of nature. But after monotheist patriarchal religions began to dominate, the women lost their high times and treated as second creatures of nature on which Engels commented that it was the historical defeat of women-kind. This mistreatment was so violent that women are equally treated with satan in religious stories. Afterall, the word `Eve' comes from `Heva' in Hebrew. After Eve's seduction, all sins belonged to her and her kind . Because they were the redlection of men's lusts and vices on the mirror. Whenever men looked at them, they saw their feeble and lustful sides. Thus to be purified of these, in history, they ceaselessly made women their own scapegoats. A women can give birth to a male but the male cannot give any right to her in exchange of his life. Actually the women kind is so sensitive and vulnerable that they do not even attemt to extort what should be given. Still men are indebted something to all women. That is `respect' for all over the world. Ýf ever this is to be attained, the women will serve a better world to all men kind.
Feminism is the belief that women should have political and social equality that is equal to the male society. Feminism is also the belief that women should receive the same opportunities as men in their personal decisions involving their careers, politics, and expression. It is thanks to these beliefs that many authors base their works on feminism. According to Anne-Marie Kappeli, feminist texts reflect the author’s views on women in society. In addition, most of the authors who write feminist texts are women. Feminist texts often relate to the oppression of power towards women and they also point out the unfairness and deficiencies of equal opportunity in society. Feminism also is used to create an interesting story. It is typical that in feminist stories, the main character is often a heroine who struggles with the oppression of the male society.
Women of these times were obviously not equal to their male counterparts. In modern days however, women are thought of as equals in society. The problem is that they are still not being treated as equals in a religious aspect as well as many other aspects. Elizabeth A. Johnson draws attention to how, despite being considered equal in Genesis, women had their worth ignored “Consistently subordinated and demeaned in the theories, symbols, rituals, A large wave of pro women thinking has arisen in the form of feminist theology. This line of thought draws from Genesis and the idea that men and women were created equally.
Gender inequality will always affect the way women are portrayed in society, the weaker, unnecessary, and other sex. It is not just a subject of the past, but still holds a name in society, however in the olden eras the way women were treated and are looked at, in a much more harsh condition. In Shakespeare’s Othello and Shelley’s Frankenstein women’s roles in the books are solely based on the way they are treated in their time period. The way women are portrayed in these books, demonstrate that they can never be in the same standing as men, considered the second option, and therefore will never have the same respect as men. In both Othello and Frankenstein women are treated as property, used to better men’s social standards, and lack a voice,
From the ideas pushed across in these books through characters and relationships we can see women being pushed down as the inferior sex to men. In the grand scheme of all the novels it creates the image of women not being as powerful as men. These stories greatly reflect the real world and how in the past women have been viewed inferior to men. They show how society affects individuals minds to believe this is true and we often fall subject to this evil without a second thought. The future only holds one path and as a society we should aim for direct equality among both males and females.
In works of literature all over the world, we see a common theme of feminism. Feminism, alone, is a huge movement in society today. Feminism is the act of fighting for women’s rights. Feminist want women to be equal to men in a social, political, and economic way. People who are interested can take a look back to the 1800s and see how much women have changed in stories and works of literature. In the 1800s women also didn’t have most of the rights they have today. As we take a closer look at the years and time passing by, we can comment on what was changing during that time. There is a correlation between the Women’s Rights Movement and the amount of women getting punished and recognised. Women writers were becoming more and more common as
The role women play in today’s society is a drastic change from the previous role. Women used to be confined to the superiority of the man. Physically, mentally, and emotionally abused, belittled, embarrassed, and silenced. These are just a few examples of the emotion from the isolated treatment of the past. A woman’s role in today’s society is more valued than ever before.