The book is written for modern Americans, and modern Americans would find it in severe distaste to see a girl being blindly obedient to her father even when what he asks of her goes against her own wishes. Modern Americans want to see a strong female character that fights the norms to do what she wants. This is something that is highly valued in modern American culture. For instance, the suffragettes are highly respected historical figures because although it went against all cultural norms, they fought for what they believed in. Similarly, Birdy fights for what she believes in; the right to pick who she marries: I saw Shaggy Beard’s messengers in the yard, talking solemnly to each other.
Gender Roles plays a huge part of the novel, Possessing the Secret of Joy, by showing the reader how women are treated unfairly and what this treatment can cause to the women. In this novel, Alice Walker portrays how society sees men as the dominant gender and how women are merely sex slaves and servants. The main reason for the female circumcision is to satisfy the men in the tribe needs. If it were up to most women, they would not go through this ritual, but unfortunately, they need to, according to the Olinkan tribe. The women get this done to their body so they are “cleansed”, so a man is able to marry them.
‘Athenian men’s relations with their wives were dominated by fear’ (30 marks) Women would’ve caused many fears for men as they played a major role in the upkeep of the oikos and furthering the family line. On top of worrying about betrayal or falsified sons, men would have to stay wary and alert in case any passing bachelors decided to seduce their wife. However many of the sources are court cases and the sheer purpose of them is to expose domestic problems, this means we need to be careful when generalising to Athenian men. They are all also written by males which may mean the sources could just be overly paranoid and lack credibility. And as always with ancient texts you need to take into account what time may have done to it.
And what is a greater crime than making women hate themselves for reasons that they cannot change? The “anti-narcissism” that men have made consists of women not liking anything about them and wishing that they were the opposite sex just to get more respect. They don’t have any self-respect for themselves because of the nonsense that the “dominant” males have fed them their whole lives. This makes everything hostile for women and while men are busy controlling what the rules are and what can be published, women are struggling with this internal conflict that they’ll never get far in life because of their sex. Cixous boldly declares that women have been “kept in the dark.” What is this darkness you may ask?
They are driven by instincts which are not within their control” (R86). Woolf elucidates that the character of men is to take power and act more aggressively than women, and this has given them an advantage in their excursion to becoming the privileged sex. Betty Friedman addresses the reality that fulfilling their traditional maternal roles of raising the children and tending to the household doesn’t satisfy some women, however, they are ashamed of this personal problem, lacking the confidence to enter the male territory where these women feel they may find something more meaningful. Women are limited by the inferiority put upon them by society as well as themselves. Women are kept from growing and learning, “education for women has become so suspect that more drop out of high school and college to marry and have babies…women so insistently confine themselves to one role”(R89).
and this is shown on the essay when she writes this ”If, by chance , I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one” Really, is sad but is the truth, men do think women’s are objects they can’t take and leave when they want and demand things and expect to received without giving. As I read the essay it was stupid to see that they didn’t realize that all the wife’s duties could also be done by men, like cleaning, working, taking care of the kids, and of course pleasing their wife’s when she
Life Without Love or Independence? In Jane Eyre and Hard Times, women are portrayed in a negative light throughout their respected novels; females are represented as being second class citizens to their male counterparts, and are unable to have a thought of their own. The traditional views of Victorian era gender roles are both enforced through the outside portrayal of the women that do not fit the mold of the ideal Victorian women yet is also subverted by the feelings the women feel when they left their bonds, or the consequences of living in the suffering of the gender misogamy they endure over their lifestyle. By expressing the men through traditional Victorian masculine characteristics such as being powerful and dominant to their meek and loyal female counterparts, the novels establish early on the barrier that the protagonists struggle with merely being female. In the novels, women are treated like second class citizens when compared to men and are expected to be content with this Victorian idea of patriarchal domination.
The stereotype attached to feminism isn't considered beautiful by our cultural standards and as a result, this stance becomes unappealing to women because the worst thing you can call a woman in our culture is ugly. Why do businesses fear feminism? The main reason that businesses fear
The Invisible Cage Pride and Prejudice In the nineteenth century society, the options of choosing husbands for unmarried women are limited due to the reason that the society has prescribed a set of values for them. The English society associated the entrance of a woman into the public with a reprehensible loss of femininity. Jane Austen, the author of the novel Pride and Prejudice herself suffers in this era by not allowed to be acknowledged as the author for her books. In Jane Austen's book Pride and Prejudice, she depicts how young men and women behave in the society and how they set up their life and social position for their own desires. With this background, Jane tries to deliver the message that the people were restrained and they suffered by the rules set by the society such as family reputation, women’s position, and class division.
Depicting women as unnatural entities, voiceless and agent less, to their male counterparts destroys any shot of redemption for the fairer sex, so Conrad aligns all the women in the narrative with unreality to evolve the importance of separate realms. By holding ignorant ideas, such as Marlow's aunt, or exotic appearances, such as Kurtz's mistress, the women are discounted as impractical, or if they hold some merit, they are viewed as eerie. Either way, they are made of none of the material found in the world of men, and so disaster befalls the men that dare breach the boundary between the worlds. The first women that Conrad's main character, Marlow, recounts are the two knitters at the Company office in Brussels. The younger one greets the men who come in for examinations before they leave for the "unknown," African wilderness, creating the illusion of a comfortable environment in what is otherwise an unsettling experience (Conrad 8).