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Riane Eisler
Riane Eisler lives a lifestyle based on eco-feminism. She believes that we all live in a sexual and social equality and harmony in nature. In her book The Chalice and the Blade, she states ‘that for a millennia...prehistoric societies worshipped the goddess of nature and spirituality, our Great Mother, the giver of life and creator of all.' The societies that believed in this one creator were structured and peaceful, much like the societies we are trying to create in today's world. The ancient cultures did not treat earth as an object for ‘exploitation and domination' and believed in gender equality and respected women for their feminie values and life-giving gifts.
Approximately 3,500 years ago, there were many different groups of civilization around the world. Within these different groups women held important positions such as priestesses and craftspeople. They were not male dominant and tended to be quite peaceful. Eisler mentions the Gaia hypothesis in her article stating that ‘in essence it is a scientific update of the belief system of Goddess-worshipping prehistoric societies'. Gaia is the Greek name for Earth and this hypothesis belief is that the Great Mother gives us all life and life's necessities.
When Archaeology was just beginning scholars found evidence of societies where men were not superior to women, therefor they assumed that men had been inferior to the woman. This opinion was not based on evidence, but what Eisler called ‘the dominator society world view'.
These Goddess worshipping societies believed that spirituality and nature were one. In Minoan, Egyptian, Sumerian and various other ancient cultures, women became priestesses and served the Goddess. These cultures all gave their Goddesses
Throughout history, women have been mistreated as the weaker gender. It has been evident throughout the epic of Sunjata, the history of Greek society as well as Indian society. It is evident today with the social classes we have formed that there are predominant gender roles in our society; history as we know tends to repeat itself.
There was a time (not so long ago) when a man's superiority and authority wasn't a question, but an accepted truth. In the two short stories, "Desiree's Baby", and "The Yellow Wallpaper", women are portrayed as weak creatures of vanity with shallow or absent personalities, who are dependent on men for their livelihood, and even their sanity. Without men, these women were absolutely helpless and useless. Their very existence hinged on absolute and unquestioning submission…alone, a woman is nothing.
Ancient Sumerian was one of very few societies where the relationship between a man and women had great emphasis. However, women are a greater addition to society because their femininity reflects their maternal qualities and with these maternal characteristics come great wisdom and power. Although all women have wisdom and power to aid men, the strength of their abilities depends on their social role in society.
Every culture has some form of higher being, to be a model for their behaviour, as well as to look up to. In Greek times, these were the gods and goddesses who made their home on Mount Olympus. Women identified with the goddesses because they shared some feminine attributes. Goddesses were a “symbol of motherhood and fertility, but also of strength, wisdom, caring, nuturing, temperance, chastity, cunning, trickery, jealousy, and lasciviousness” (Clarke, 1999). However, not all of the goddesses possessed all of these attributes. The goddess Aphrodite, for instance, was not nurturing, nor was she very caring.
In Hanna Rosin’s article, ‘‘the end of men”, the author begins by stating that women are taking over today’s society, while the position of men have become a thought of the past. The author recognizes the negativity of having girls as firstborns. In the article, the author states, “Many wives who failed to produce male heirs were abused and treated as domestic servants; while some families prayed to spirits to kill off girl children” (Rosin). In this article, the author gives light to how the preference of having males has decimated from the minds of people and how it has been erased from society. And, goes as far as insinuating that women have overtaken the place of men in today’s society and are seen as equal. However, I disagree because I believe that men just want to keep women down and it is demonstrated through discrimination at the workplace, depriving education, and violence towards women.
Mythology was very important to the men and women of ancient Greece. They worshipped the gods and goddesses, wrote poems about them, and based a great deal of art work off of them. The people of Greece looked to the gods and goddesses for help in all aspects of their lives; including health, agriculture, and war. Reading about Greek mythology can inform people about the society of Greece itself because the Greek gods were created by the people of Greece. Three main goddesses who were worshipped by the Greeks were Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. These three goddesses represent three different types of women in Greek society. Sarah Pomeroy, author of Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, believed that “the goddesses are archetypal images of human females, as envisioned by males” (8). Pomeroy understands the significance in the differences between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, and what those differences meant for the women of Greece who were required to follow three important rules. The first rule was for the women to live a life of domesticity and motherhood. This was very important to the men in the society. The women were the only ones able to bear children. Also, if they were forced to stay in the house, men could keep a greater control on their wives, and not have to worry about them having affairs. The second important trait was virginity until marriage. Its importance to the Greek culture lied in the fear of a woman’s power. The men of the society felt it best that a woman remained a virgin until she was married; however this same attribute was not required of a man. Their belief can be explained by this quote written by P. Walcot in the article “Greek Attitudes Towards Women: The Mythological Evidence”: “The Greeks believed women...
Henrik Ibsen once said, “A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.”(Notable Quotes) Ibsen’s statement exemplifies what life was like for women during ancient times. In many of the organized ancient civilizations, it was very common to find a primarily patriarchal civilization in government as well as in society. The causing factors can be attributed to different reasons, the main being the Neolithic Revolution and the new found dependence on manpower it caused. As a result of this, a woman found herself to be placed into an entirely different view in the eye of society. In comparison to the early Paleolithic matriarchal societies, the kinds of changes that came about for women due to the introduction of agriculture are shocking. Since the beginnings of the Neolithic era, the role and rights of women in many ancient civilizations began to become limited and discriminatory as a result of their gender.
During Othello’s soliloquy in Scene 3, ll. 299-318, Shakespeare uses the literary devices of imagery, symbolism, and antithesis to develop the state of mind of Othello during this strenuous time in his life. Othello, who seems to intrinsically believe that as a public figure he is fated to be unsuccessful at marriage, is torn between his love for Desdemona and the possibility that she is having an affair with Michael Cassio. This particular passage comes at a juncture after he denies that this could be true, and before he is finally convinced of his wife's infidelity.
The idea of gods and goddesses began as far back as the ancient Egyptians, but the ancient Greeks were the first group to form a religion based on gods and goddesses. They believed that the gods and goddesses were not different from humans. Some of the few ways humans were different from gods were that the gods were stronger and lived forever. Since the Greeks believe in many gods, they are Polytheists.
Myths reveal to us the experiences of women living in the patriarchal society and we gain the symbol value accorded to women and we came to realize what the term "Woman" meant to the ancient Greek man.
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,
During this time period, the men would work to support their family. Additionally, the woman would stay at home and care for her husband and children. This society thought of women as weaker than men. They were often treated as possessions of their husbands, “This concurs with Othello 's own insight when he describes murderous jealousy as innate in the husband-wife relationship which posits the wife as the exclusive possession of the husband and is thus at odds with the human condition wherein one can never know another person 's inmost thoughts and desires” (Vanita 342).The language Shakespeare uses in the play supports that men seemed freer than women. When Brabantio speaks of his daughter he describes her as obedient. Likewise, Desdemona obeyed Othello’s orders and stated she is indeed obedient to him. When Othello was convinced Desdemona was cheating on him he proceeded to murder
Images of women, mostly old statuettes representing women whose wombs and hips are extremely exaggerated, all dating to the Stone Age, outnumber images of men throughout evolution and history. This has led to speculation about the place of women in society and religious faiths. Some have argued that these female figurines signify, or once signified, the existence of a prominent female deity identified as the “Earth Mother” or the “Mother Goddess”, it was been suggested that, unlike today, women played a considerably more important, if not dominant, role in Paleolithic society and that possibly, a matriarchy existed.
Men and women were not seen as equal human beings; instead it has been obvious that men were more likely to be on the upper hand. In 1987, it has been recorded that
Women have always been essential to society. Fifty to seventy years ago, a woman was no more than a house wife, caregiver, and at their husbands beck and call. Women had no personal opinion, no voice, and no freedom. They were suppressed by the sociable beliefs of man. A woman’s respectable place was always behind the masculine frame of a man. In the past a woman’s inferiority was not voluntary but instilled by elder women, and/or force. Many, would like to know why? Why was a woman such a threat to a man? Was it just about man’s ability to control, and overpower a woman, or was there a serious threat? Well, everyone has there own opinion about the cause of the past oppression of woman, it is currently still a popular argument today.