Gender Roles of Men and Women in Literature

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In the earlier years of literature and life women's roles within society were at a minimum and woman were shunned upon by men. They are also suppressed, unequal, and seen as the minority in the population. Within these three poems; "Goblin Market", "MacBeth", and "Sir Gawain and The Green Knight" the position of women and lack of power is displayed in broad context and is projected out to the audience, they also show the way woman are used for one’s self pleasures. Gender behavior is remarkably swayed by social factors than by natural differences, like how humans naturally are supposed or how they want to respond to certain thing. Gender roles of men and woman heavily depend on culture, race, location, religion, location, a stance on politics and so many more circumstances. The way society is determined is by your outside forces, the trend. It is basically what everyone expects you to do, to be, to look like, to marry and so forth. Believe it or not, when you learn to read, you are also learning your culture. As a child the first few books you read are set up to give you a vision of the ideal boy and the ideal girl and what to expect from them. This doing can shape the way you look at life as a child and you will grow off of that very platform and extend the branches. What is old English literature book without a woman either being stupid, sexual or trying to mock a masculine quality figure of a hero? Exploring these three works of literature, you can also gain a sense of where you came from and how you think subconsciously. Most people don’t realize that who they are today, and how they think today is based upon their past. Men and women both play important roles no matter what they “rank” in society in English Literature. To c...

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...aking of virginity than how would you figure that drinking the fruit juice off of her sister’s face would make everything better? This notion does not make sense when you take it a level further. Sex is a misconstrued theme in this poem and is just a misinterpreted fairy tale. Strictly speaking, it is not intelligent to assume that eating fruit at the Goblins Market is the equivalence to having sex with the goblin men. The impression of a "Goblin Market" is a woman’s perspective of their ideal type of world. In the poem we never get acquainted with any “real” men in the tale and the only accusation that a real man does exist in the work is in the end when it says that Laura and Lizzie become “wives” (Line 544). That is the only instance that we hear of a man’s existence in the poem. This poem shows how literature can compose of a fantasy for women directly from men.

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