God Or Word Of Repression?

We lost the ability to be still, our capacity for idleness. They have lost the ability to be alone, their capacity for solitude. (The end of solitude, pg.4)

Images of confinement and escape in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin. Is shown all throughout the story, Mrs. Mallard felt trapped she did not seem happy at all. The feeling of freedom seemed to take over Mrs. Mallard body. Her exhaustion seems to confine her so when Mrs. Mallard heard the news about her husband. All she could think of is being alone and confining herself in a room where she can express how she truly feels. Mrs. Mallard felt tied down and exhausted from being trapped. Instead of her

The poet orders his listener to behold a “solitary Highland lass” reaping and singing by herself in a field. He says that anyone passing by should either stop here, or “gently pass” so as not to disturb her. As she “cuts and binds the grain” she “sings a melancholy strain,” and the valley overflows with the beautiful, sad sound. The speaker says that the sound is more welcome than any chant of the nightingale to weary travelers in the desert, and that the cuckoo-bird in spring never sang with a voice so thrilling. Impatient, the poet asks, “Will no one tell me what she sings?” He speculates that her song might be about “old, unhappy, far-off things, / And battles long ago,” or that it might be humbler, a simple song about “matter of today.” Whatever she sings about, he says, he listened “motionless and still,” and as he traveled up the

Since the Christian religion was a large and prominent force in the everyday life in the average person in the 17th and 18th century, the Bible was a large influence in how the woman was seen in society as it says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church…” (Ephesians 5:22-23, 33). The Bible is that the woman was ruled by her husband, that she didn’t even have her own head, and cannot think for herself because it was expected by the very faith that she must submit to her husband. The Holy Book also says that the woman was created from the rib of the man, which it is known now as completely preposterous, so it implies that the woman is inferior to man because she was created from man, because heaven forbid that any evidence point towards that it is man that came from a woman.

“The world is still sexist.” — Barbara Broccoli. From the creation story to modern day, women and men still struggle with a power dynamic of inferiority and superiority. The problem of sexism has been ever-present throughout history, and although it has been acknowledged by many, it has not been eradicated or resolved. Although the acknowledgment of sexism has grown over the course of the modern era, it is heavily rooted in society’s developmental process, which makes it continuously difficult to annihilate. Furthermore, throughout many historical texts, women are often represented as objects instead of real people. Within texts, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, the Quran, and the Torah, women are constantly regarded as inferiors instead of equals with men. Throughout these texts, there is a clear separation between the treatment of men and women, with women always being referred to as property.

In the Hebrew Bible, a significant section where this idea can be seen is in the beginning with the story of Adam and Eve, specifically in Genesis 4. When Eve is manipulated to eat the forbidden fruit, it poses the idea that the suffering of humankind was caused by a woman, showing the idea that woman react without consideration or senselessly, when really Eve was only acting on a very human trait, curiosity. When Eve convinces Adam to eat the forbidden fruit, one of gods punishment to Eve is “Your man shall be your longing, and rule over you” (p.97). Or when God describes Eve as “his woman”, God is essentially saying she is not her own independent person and is meant to be owned by men. This passage alone shows that women are viewed as people that were meant to be controlled; that men were always meant to be above them.

All throughout history, women have been thought of to be “weaker” and “not as capable” as men have always been thought to be. Due to this, gender roles were

In the Nathaniel Hawthorne tale, “Young Goodman Brown,” we see and feel the solitude/isolation of the protagonist, Goodman. Is this solitude not a reflection of the very life of the author?

With few exceptions, our male dominated society has traditionally feared, repressed, and stymied the growth of women. As exemplified in history, man has always enjoyed a superior position. According to Genesis in the Old Testament, the fact that man was created first has led to the perception that man should rule. However, since woman was created from man’s rib, there is a strong argument that woman was meant to work along side with man as an equal partner. As James Weldon Johnson’s poem, “Behold de Rib,” clearly illustrates, if God had intended for woman to be dominated, then she would have been created from a bone in the foot, but “he

and obey the word of God just as much as men are, but they still are denied the

For the past two-thousand years, the Book of Genesis has served as work of literature to the western civilization. Whether people believed in the Bible or not, the Book of Genesis tell stories they talk about having good morals, teaching live-learned lessons and overall it gives a glimpse of how the first human being acted when the world was developing and how they handle problems and situations. However, even though the book of Genesis shows a tone of life long morals, Genesis also shows the different sides of humans. Genesis shows how human can be deceitful, evil, and disobedient to authority figures. But these traits with humans were rarely displayed by man, but mostly by woman. In

For most of this society’s history males have been known as the strong and often more powerful sex. For example, in Are Men More Likely Than Women To Become Heroes and Villains?, Alison and Goethals write that, according to Roy Baumeister, psychologist, people from varying civilizations have considered males to be disposable (Alison and Goethals 1). By disposable, they mean that men are often pressured to be the ones to give up their lives instead of women in dangerous situations. Also, from the beginning, males have often been thought of as the dominant and more heroic gender.

The issue of gender has been around since the beginning of time, specifically the idea that women are inferior to men. Men always had a higher status and they held the most power. However, no one challenged this idea because this was the way they knew society was supposed to be during that time and they didn’t have a problem with it. Women were the ones who truly accepted this idea and thus, they followed the traditions of their culture. The texts Agamemnon from Greek culture, The Tale of Genji from Japanese culture and The Thousand and One Nights from Arabic culture all reflect the idea of women being lower than men.

     Since the beginning of the Jewish religion, women have had what seems to be a marginalized role that encompasses almost every facet of life. In many cases within the body of Jewish texts, clear misogynist statements and commentary are made dealing with every aspect of what it means to be female. Within the Orthodox

In Deresiewicz’s speech, he explores how leaders must have solitude, a seemingly contradictory statement. His definition of solitude, however, includes four basic components: introspection, concentration, sustained reading, and friendship. Introspection is something typically associated with solitude, as it is the process of looking into and analyzing one’s self. A leader must be capable of examining their own thoughts and feelings, because if they cannot even understand themselves, how can they expect to share these ideas they are creating with others? Concentration is necessary to complete a task fully and well. Deresiewicz shares a study in which the researchers observed multitaskers to learn how well they were able to process information