The Myth Of Eternal Women

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Acoording to Simone de Beauvoir, writer, activist, and social theorist, history has shown that men have always held positions of power, and to this day, that has not changed.(193) The myth of the Eternal Women is one created by men wherein women are viewed as angelic, motherly, virginal, nurturing objects, but at the same time, as irrational, overly sensitive, deviant, passive, and Other.(Beauvoir, 316) As Other, a woman is defined in relation to man and not an autonomous being. This immense contradiction becomes an impossible ideal that traps women into trying to fulfill certain expectations that they will never be able achieve. This myth of the Eternal Feminine, of the Other, is one that continues still today. In the early 19th and 20th centuries we see the first wave of feminism beginning to emerge as a reaction to gender injustice seen in french and American constitutions. Women of that time were primarily fighting for their right to vote, and although that finally came in 1920, they were still seen as property. Relegated to labor in the house with no independent existence apart from her husband, she was almost on the same level as a slave. It was also during this time that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels noted the impact that the the rise of capitalism and the shift to private property ownership had on the lives of women. As men became the primary wage laborers, women were restricted to the home making it easier for their spouses to control them. As the men inherited more and more wealth, so too …show more content…

She can cook, clean, be a mother, and at the end of the day, still have time to fulfill her husbands wants and needs.

During the 1960’s-1980’s in what is known as the second wave of feminism, women, no longer willing to be complacent in a patriarchal society, started challenging their

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