Even women, who were always viewed inferior to men, would be more fortunate if they were an aristocrat. In Western Europe, women could have power if they were upper-class aristocrats, monarchs, or members of the royal family. In China, women of upper classes would get their feet bound, which would deepen their reliance on men. Additionally, for both China and Western Europe a patriarchal society was at large. In China, though, the patriarchy was of Neo-Confucianism, which kept women away from education, civil service, inheritance, and other rights.
Curley’s wife, who walks the ranch as a temptress, seems to be a prime example of this destructive tendency—Curley’s already bad temper has only worsened since their wedding. Aside from wearisome wives, Of Mice and Men offers limited, rather misogynistic, descriptions of women who are either dead maternal figures or prostitutes. Despite Steinbeck’s rendering, Curley’s wife emerges as a relatively complex and interesting character. Although her purpose is rather simple in the book’s opening pages—she is the “tramp,” “tart,” and “bitch” that threatens to destroy male happiness and longevity—her appearances later in the novella become more complex. When she confronts Lennie, Candy, and Crooks in the stable, she admits to feeling a kind of shameless dissatisfaction with her life.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, women felt discriminated against by men and by most of society. Men generally held discriminatory and stereotypical views of women, which made many women dissatisfied with their lives and made them, feel their lives were unfulfilled and spinning out of control. Discrimination spurred women to take action. Women began to revolt, they began expressing the feelings they had bottled up inside all along. Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening, which helped other women to know they were not alone.
The victim loses all of their control to their abuser who isolates them from friends and family leaving the victim feeling alone. Dr. Walker state that the battered is typically women and the batter is usually the men even though there have been cases where women have been the batter and the men have been battered. Because of her theory has received many criticism for being a feminist and accused of trying to breakup marriages. In my opinion I do not think she is being bias, I just think that Dr. Walker is simply going by the statistics. There is a high percentage of women who are abused by their spouses, this does not mean that women do not abuse men, it just means that men are typically the abuser.
In a Midsummer Night's Dream women were treated differently by men than the average way they are in present life. Although women liked the fact of having freedom and power, they really didnt. On the other hand men held the power and were able to do many things that women couldnt. It was looked at that women were supposed to get married and that that was one of the biggest achievments in her life while men go on and do greater things. Women were looked at as the weaker sex compared to men.
Many turned to prostitution to make ends meet, or joined convents to work as servants for the nuns. The attitude towards women, their treatment and their rights, underwent many changes during the Renaissance. During feudal times women were given more liberties and enjoyed freedoms. They could own land and had many of the rights men had. However, this period where so many great changes had been made in the church, in literature, and in all other artistic areas, women took a big step backward in their fight for equality.
Obedience to their fathers and their husbands was also a big factor back in this time. Although the expectations of women in the early nineteenth century were shifting, their status within a patriarchal society remained the same. Politically, they were absolutely powerless. Because of the social expectations that tied female dependence on men, single women and widows were the most vulnerable. They were extremely limited on occupational choices as well.
With the time, there has been some changes and efforts made by the society as well as government can be seen in upbringing women status. However this is limited to certain developed countries; if underdeveloped countries are compared, there still has been no change in status of women. For example, in certain Asian countries they still practice the dowry system, the literacy rate of women is very low in many of these counties and domestic violence is very high. The world is expanding in every field and is getting more and more beautiful. But on the base are moral values ‘every human’ can be marked zero and the hearts of ‘every human’ is getting more and more awful.
Courtney Dobronich Ms. McPherson English 1020 13 March 2012 The 19th Century’s Oppression of Women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells the story of a skilful woman whose talents and thoughts are suppressed by the dominance of her husband and society. The husband’s efforts to oppress her in order to keep her within society’s standards of what a proper wife should be, only lead to her psychological destruction. The narrator in the story is a genuine symbol of all women in the mid to late nineteenth century. At the time, men and women were placed into two very separate “spheres” in which each included their own certain roles and expectations. Society’s demanding gender roles and domestic spheres influenced the women’s oppression, which gave rise to male dominance and the negligence of women’s health, happiness, and rights as individuals.
The Loss of Subjectivity: Lady Macbeth as Unconscious of Macbeth Among most female characters in Shakespeare’s works, Lady Macbeth, who has been attracting attention and debates for centuries is ambiguous in identity and subjectivity. Her fascination lies in the masks beneath which the evil and good counterparts with the other self restlessly seek to hide or show: she is the dedicated wife, sacrificing her womanliness to help realize her husband’s ambition; she is the “fiend-like queen” (V.viii.35)[1], possessing the cruelty of a man, but is born as a woman. However, it is this mysterious woman that lacks the most fundamental component of her subjectivity, a name. As the only female protagonist in The Tragedy of Macbeth[2], she does not have a name of her own unlike Ophelia (Hamlet), or Portia (The Merchant of Venice), or Desdemona (Othello). She is the Lady Macbeth: she, lacking subjectivity, is not defined in her own right but a reflection of Macbeth’s mental status.