Alexander Pope and Women Essay example

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” – Confucius. Beauty has had a specific image or ideal for the past 100 years from the help of pop culture and advertisements that women are constantly viewing daily. We can go through the different ideas of beauty through idolized women in the past who were often considered to be the ideal beautiful. With the help of makeup and the aid of different styled clothing, women were able to fit in to form into the ideal beauty.

While on the way to venerate Saint Thomas Becket’s remains, the entertainment of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims falls upon the requiting of stories between the different estates. However, this requiting quickly turns malicious, the Host’s simple proposition evolving into an aggressive show of social dominance that includes the boasting of both literal and metaphorical rape. The normalization (or, borderline reverence) of aggressive manliness contributes to the creation of both rape culture and compulsory heterosexuality. Consequently, when a man does not dominate a woman—or, does not use his masculinity to humiliate another man—he is seen as weak or effeminate, subsequently placing his sexuality under scrutiny. Such is the motive behind John and Aleyn’s rape of the miller’s wife and daughter—to make Symkin seem weak, and to gain a reputation of superior masculinity. Thus,

Prior to and throughout the late middle ages, women have been portrayed in literature as vile and corrupt. During this time, Christine de Pizan became a well educated woman and counteracted the previous notions of men’s slander against women. With her literary works, Pizan illustrated to her readers and women that though education they can aspire to be something greater than what is written in history. Through the use of real historical examples, Christine de Pizan’s, The Book of the City of Ladies, acts as a defense against the commonly perceived notions of women as immoral.

The medieval church taught that women were inferior to men and that they should be compliant and obedient to their fathers and husbands. Men look down to women as their respect for their ladies are limited as in Canterbury Tales were these women start out as beneath men. These same men who feel the need to arrogate women of their dignity find their fate is later put into the women’s hands. Although a women is taciturn and does not speak out to the men and talk of their animadversion toward the men’s behavior, these same ladies have the power to then decide how these men should serve their punishment for their sacrileges and unruly decisions as in the “Wife of Bath’s Tale”, were after his life was saved by an old lady, in return this old women requested to him to “take me as your wife” (p.138). A women’s love and passion should be approached with appreciation and admiration otherwise being inconsiderate and impassionate will turn a women against a man.

During the medieval times, Marie de France, unlike the male writers of her time, wrote courtly stories that depicted women who were predominantly featured in the primary roles with empathy and questioned the sexist predicaments women were often subjected to. Women often times struggled to find their voice, but her stories told the perseverance and progress within those constraints. Instead, she wrote of men idealizing wealthy, powerful, independent, beautiful women. She inserts the thoughts and feelings from a woman’s perspective. In a sense, giving women the voice they strived to have heard in a male dominated time period. As Damon stated in the article “Marie de France: Psychologist of Courtly Love,” “Contemporary readers might have noted that the characters departed occasionally from the established laws of courtly conduct; none the less, as all such departures were towards reality, they were welcomed.” She opened the door for women’s self-expression and individual achievement. Marie de France’s popular adulterous love stories bring about many fascinating ethical questions.

The central message of this work is that society is obsessed with appearances. The point the author is trying to make is beauty should not be the most important trait of a person. In today’s society everything is based on looks, people are more concerned about a person’s outward appearance. People strive to

“The courtly lady…possesses a curiously hybrid gender. While maintaining stereotypically female sexuality, she also holds, in principle at least, the status of a feudal lord.” Burns’ statement insinuates a reversal of power dynamics between man and woman in the courtly love lyric, implying that the woman’s stereotypical beauty and sexuality in courtship, is a gateway to subverting and overpowering the lovesick male, making her a superior lord. The Amour Courtois lyric is deemed inconsistent with the representation of woman as an empowered “feudal lord” due to the sheer objectification of femininity and beauty. Poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Dunbar commend a woman’s aesthetic appeal or satirise the lack of it, thus elevating medieval misogynistic expectations of physical beauty as a feminine necessity that objectifies women under the control of man’s advances. Throughout courtly love lyrics female beauty is a purely frivolous and superficial trait lacking predominant depth, to render woman as a “lord” would be poetically conflicting as the only power exemplified by female subjects in courtship is through the idolisation and sexual lust of the male devotee.

Men had far more power than women and took advantage by making them do everything from cooking, to cleaning, taking care of the children, and much more. This demonstrates the struggles women faced during this time period due to men acting more superior than women. Leonce “looks at his wife like a valuable piece, with suffered damages” (p33). He only holds on to Edna because he views her more like a possession than caring about her true self. Leonce uses Edna to make himself look better, rather than helping her with the damages she faced with. Woman require “psychologist to deal with” (p220). To men, women received impossible to deal with and for someone to understand them they need a medical professional. Men think they come off much more superior than women. In the role of society, “Mrs. Pontellier, not a mother-woman” (p43). A mother-woman someone who constantly there for others in time of need, they only worship their husbands and the holy spirit. But Mrs. Pontellier does not fit this role in society; She refuses to occupy the role and rather put herself above her family. She fights back towards the rights that women supposedly supposed to do. She does not appreciate only to do a couple things when she could do so much

In the Regency era, beauty was tied to what the rich could attain. Pale skin and plump figures were prized as they indicated a person did

The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas is classified as a hagiography on the martyrdom of two important Christian women. Though this source contains bias, being written by a supporter of the two martyrs, important information lies in the typical Roman Christian’s perspective on religious women. Perpetua, in contrast to Lysistrata, does not derive her power and

In addition to bravery, independence is also a trait shared by many female characters. For example, Ruth risks her own safety to travel alone at night to her father’s cemetery, just so that she can connect with the dead one she loved. Ruth and Macon’s daughter Corinthians developed a relationship with Porter, a tenant of her father’s property. Following her own will and relying on her independent judgment, Corinthians led her hair loose and went to bed with him, swearing that she would not “collect her hair into a ball at her nape” for anything in the world (202). The exertions of bravery and independence from the female characters might not be as drastic and thorough as Jake’s converting wasteland into farm and Milkman’s heroic quest to the South, due to the confinements black females faced in in the 20th century America, they nevertheless reveal the frequency and intensity of women declaring independence in Song of Solomon. Since Wang argues that Pilate differentiates herself from the female cast due to her androgynous nature that integrates masculine and feminine qualities, the critic implies that other female characters display only “feminine” attributes. However, Wang reaches such conclusion by assigning gender to neutral traits like bravery and independence, establishing a premise according to the stereotypical gender codification that invalidates the critic’s conclusion about the Lacanian androgyny in

An unlikely candidate to dispute the unfair, misogynistic treatment of women by men and society, Christine de Pizan successfully challenged the accepted negative views that were being expressed about women by the all-male literary world of her era. Part of Christine’s uniqueness stems from the time in which she lived, the middle to late 1300’s. The lack of a positive female role model to pattern herself after made Christine a true visionary in the fight for the equal rights of women. Her original ideas and insight provided a new and more intelligent way to view females. Pizan’s work, The Book of the City of Ladies, provided women much needed guidance in how to survive without the support of a man.

Arcangela Tarabotti, a Venetian nun and Early Modern Italian author, spent the vast majority of her life in an Italian convent writing texts centered on issues of forced enclosure and the patriarchy. Throughout her lifetime, she published five works, but one of her most poignant, Paternal Tyranny, spoke to these issues in a uniquely powerful way. Indeed, Tarabotti focused on three significant main points: the hypocrisy of putting daughters in convents, the problems with male patriarchy as a whole, and her own interpretation of the Bible. These points were presented with the help of several rhetorical strategies throughout the novel, such as, her ability to turn around popular claims about women and apply them to men, her strong use of references to the Bible and popular literary works, and her use of parables throughout the work to clearly give examples of her arguments, and many more. By exploring each of her arguments , we can see how she used these various rhetorical strategies to her advantage.

Alexander Pope's mock heroic epic The Rape of the Lock appears to be a light subject addressed with a satiric tone and structure. Pope often regards the unwanted cutting of a woman's hair as a trivial thing, but the fashionable world takes it seriously. Upon closer examination Pope has, perhaps unwittingly, broached issues worthy of earnest consideration. The Rape of the Lock at first glance is a commentary on human vanity and the ritual of courtship. The poem also discusses the relationship between men and women, which is the more substantial matter in particular. Pope examines the oppressed position of women. Infringement on a woman's personal space, her person and her pride by an aggressive male (the Baron)

In Isabella Whitney’s “I.W. To Her Unconstant Lover,” she adopted a female persona that attempted to rework the notion of constancy, or faithfulness, in failed male-female relationships of the Elizabethan era. Where women are often accused of being unfaithful, the speaker of the epistle “writes” to her unfaithful male lover and holds him accountable for their failed relationship. By analyzing Whitney’s “I.W. To Her Unconstant Lover,” this paper will argue that Whitney’s persona, I.W., challenges the misogynistic conception of female faithfulness because she uses rhetorical devices — like metaphors and allusions — to shift the blame onto dishonest male lovers, whose actions have a negative impact on the constancy of virtuous women. The speaker’s use of metaphors and Greek allusions fundamentally allows her to rework the idea of female inconstancy, which, in turn, absolves her of fault for being abandoned by her ex-lover and presents her as an intelligent and virtuous woman to her English audience.