A Woman's Place in a Novel: How Patriarchal Religions Exploit, Demean, and Oppress Women. Evelyn West, May 28, 2024. Patriarchal religious systems have long used strict gender roles and norms to maintain power structures which harm and oppress women. Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel “Persepolis” and Margaret Atwood’s critically acclaimed dystopian Sci-Fi novel “The Handmaids Tale” provide compelling examples of how fundamentalist patriarchal religion has oppressed women in both Islamic and Christian societies. While based on different religions, they both share some similarities in the patriarchal sense of their societies. The Patriarchal class system, and the roles men and women are given based on the values of their respective holy texts and teachings. Persepolis shares details about how Satrapi has personally faced gender-based oppression and hate growing up due to …show more content…
They are given the role of the leader. They are the heads of their families, they are strong, they provide for their families, they are the voices of their society. Women are the caretakers of life. They are valued by their ability to live a life of their own, and therefore must take care of their children. An unwed woman is valued for her ability to create a family. She must be fertile, she must be sexual, she must be quiet, she must be submissive, she must give herself completely to the man. Colossians 3:18–19—“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.” This quote exemplifies how in the Christian Bible, the woman is to submit herself to her husband, allowing him to take control and be the leader of the home, the family, and their marriage. In the Qur'an, on the subject of men and women in the family it says, “men are the maintainers of women” (chapter 4, verse 34). In both Christianity and Islam, women are to be submissive in the marriage between men and
In Islam, women are treated with the highest esteem. They are not seen as inferiors or as sexual objects. They are seen to be very important in life as they give birth. The Qur’an mentions how men and women cannot be separate.
The Bible requires that women must remain subordinate to the man who is the head of the family.
Violence against women is not a new social issue and Pamela Copper-Whites’ book The Cry of Tamar does well in bringing this to light not only as a social issue but as a religious issues as well. Tamar’s story sheds light on the violence and degradation of women in the biblical times.
Mahmood, S. (2005). Politics of piety: the Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
One of the most famous contemporary ethnographic studies of women and gender within Islam is Erika Friedl’s Women of Deh Koh, in which her main concern seems to be providing he...
The fate and struggles of these characters address the tragedy of the under representation of women’s experiences, and a fatal flaw of societies which do not grant women equal status. Sexuality, privileging of males in terms of status law (and women’s control over their own choices in marriage), inheritance rights, restrictions on female mobility, lack of representation of women’s experiences, violence against women, the intersection between nationalist/ resistance struggles and women’s rights, tensions between modernization and cultural preservation, the haunting specter of (and the need to divorce their goals from those associated with) colonial or Westernizing forces, etc. are all issues represented in this book, that are major concerns of Middle Eastern feminist scholars and movements today.
Schimmel, Annemarie. My Soul Is a Woman: The Feminine in Islam. New York: Continuum, 1997. Print.
The mistreatment of women in Middle Eastern countries is an extremely disheartening and serious problem. According to the religion of Islam, "Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other. As to women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish...
The duties of husband and wife were explicitly defined and expected to be followed by both men and women. The role of the husband is one of authority and dominance. Women were seen as inferior in their abilities to run a household and make moral decisions. A woman’s role as wife is also clearly defined. In the marriage contract, “. . . the wife must obey the husband. This obedience or submission extends not only to the performance of duties required by the husband, but also to the abstinence from those activities which are displeasing to him. Women who chose to become wives, which is the majority of the female population, agree to submit themselves to total control by their husbands. They move from living under the control of their fathers to living under the control of their
A way of thinking that both men and women should share equal rights in any situation that calls for it, such as politics,economics, and globality-this is the empowering idea of feminism. Satrapi,other girls, and woman live in a country where the inequality of women is much more harsh than what we know of, she faces them first-hand throughout the book, Persepolis, and we see the constant experiences and opinions that not only satrapi has but other females as well.Persepolis creates an half-and-half opinion when it comes to the idea of feminism; women 's opinions are constantly heard from the perspective of satrapi-which is brimmed with feminist views.
In both Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and Elie Wiesel’s Night the authors tell a story of how through adversity, they lose faith in their god. In Persepolis, Marji lives in Iran during a time of revolution. As a child she dreamed of being a prophet and was always very religious. However, as time goes on and her situation becomes worse, she begins to lose faith in her god. In Night, Elie is a Romanian Jewish boy during World War II. He is forced to leave his home and travel to concentration camps all throughout Europe. Elie finds himself in the middle of the Holocaust and he is threatened by death everyday. The horrible experiences he goes through leave him questioning his god. Wiesel and Satrapi suggest that during a time of crisis, one’s
In the long term, the pain caused by animosity is remembered but apathy is often forgotten. Satrapi showed in Persepolis how it can be hard to let go of the feeling of being despised. Despite the graphic novel being published around twenty years after the events of the story, Satrapi still recalls some of the insults thrown the way of her family and friends. Satrapi writes a profound example of this when Mali, a friend of her mother, was insulted in a supermarket. She said, “To have the Iraqis attack, and to lose in an instant, everything you had built over a lifetime, that’s one thing… But to be spat upon by your own kind, it is intolerable!”. Abuse fueled by hate is more memorable than any act of
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. "patriarchy and feminist literature." Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 1 May 2015
Society in western civilization sees Islam's treatment of women as heinous, unfair, and typically cruel. How can one respect a religion and culture that makes their women cover themselves from head to toe in 100 degree weather, walk behind her spouse, enter separate doors of the mosque (if they are even allowed to enter), pray in an closed off area separate from the men, marry complete strangers, and receive little to no education. These few examples and a lot more can surely discourage anyone from even wanting to become a Muslim, especially women. These problems are particularly ironic due to the fact that Islam was the first religion to try to equalize men and women, which is truly hard to believe being that Muslim countries by far treat their women the most unjust. This paper will discuss certain hardships of the women of Islam and further discuss if this is truly a religion that discriminates women and if not where the problem exists. The topics that will be discussed are the problems for women in mosques, and common misinterpretations of rights of Muslim women vs. the laws they actually have.
The oppression of women in the Middle East and North Africa was commonplace, with women often beaten and deprived of fundamental rights. Entrapped by social constraints, there was little hope for opposition, as the patriarchal perspectives of society were enforced by everyone, even women themselves. One of the most prevalent ways was through the use of hypocrisy and double standards to cast an illusion of justice and equality, when in reality, women were disadvantaged in nearly every aspect. The hypocrisy of society is demonstrated in Nawal El Saadawi’s novel Woman at Point Zero, where women such as Firdaus are dominated by double standards. She finds both initial hope and consequent