Gender Stereotypes In Lord Byron's The Corsair

Gender stereotypes has been around for many decades, and have been passed on from generation to generation. These gender stereotypes play a big role in how people are looked upon in society. The ancient Greeks portrayed masculinity as being brave, strong, powerful, superior to women, and in no way feminine. Some of these male expectations are still maintained in society today. In the book “The Odyssey of Homer” written by Richmond Lattimore, there are many of the male expectations that the ancient Greeks said to be true can be found in this book.

All throughout Illyria, there is romance, passion, royalty, and an immense amount of gender stereotypes. William Shakespeare imagines the kingdom of Illyria to have very traditional norms for both women and men in his play Twelfth Night. In Scene 2 of Act 1, Viola, recently rescued from a shipwreck, hears about a duke named Orsino and instantly comes up with a plan to get closer to him. Her plan is to disguise herself as a boy who she will name Cesario and become one of Orsino's’ attendants. Right off the bat, we begin to see gender stereotypes. Why must Viola become a man in order to work for the duke? Elizabethan society “molded women into the form of the dutiful wife and mother” (Elizabethan Women). Viola could not have served duke Orsino as a woman because as a woman she was expected to work at home and be either a “dutiful wife [or a] mother”. Scene two prepares the audience for the idea of gender throughout the rest of the play. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is very traditional play due to its ideas of gender stereotypes in Elizabethan society.

Stereotypes are commonly held generalized beliefs that most or all individuals sharing a given trait also should or do share other attributes assumed to be associated with aspects such as race, religion, and physical attribute. While stereotypes can erroneously shape people’s views of others, they can also influence the stereotyped individuals’ behavior as people often attempt to conform to these flawed images, especially in regards to gender stereotypes. Shakespeare’s great play Othello uses its main characters to embody the characteristics of the stereotypical females and males according to society’s liking. The stereotypical woman is loyal and faithful to her husband, while the male stereotype possesses strength, control, and dominance.

Gender stereotypes are not a modern notion and as such expectations and limitations have always existed for both men and women. Fortunately women, who have formerly beared great burdens of discrimination, now have very liberated roles in society as a result of slowly shifting attitudes and values. Shakespeare was integral in challenging the subservient role expected of women in the 16th century. Throughout the play, ‘The Merchant of Venice’, women are expressed as powerful characters who behave, speak and live in a way that breaks away from the conformist role of females during the 16th century. Therefore, the submissive stereotype expected of women in Shakespearean time is confronted and defied through

The Taming Of The Shrew by William Shakespeare is an introduction in the everpresent battle of women to be loving and caring wives, while at the same time holding on to our independence. Its plot is derived from the popular 'war of the sexes' theme in which males and females are pitted against one another for dominance in marriage. The play begins with an induction in which a drunkard, Christopher Sly, is fooled into believing he is a king and has a play performed for him. The play he watches is what constitutes the main body of The Taming OfThe Shrew.

An expecting couple awaits to discover the gender of their baby. The nurse announces that it’s a girl. The couple is extremely excited, but do they truly grasp the weight of what this implies? Gender is not simply a physical trait, as it affects nearly every aspect of a person’s life. Stereotypes repress the potential in all men and women. The same stereotypes are found throughout literature such as Medea by Euripides, Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, “Sonnets” by Shakespeare, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Frederick Waterman’s “The Best Man Wins”. A common thread between these pieces is that power can be gained by those who are suppressed by defying gender stereotypes and social hierarchies.

Imagine this, you go on a one man trip to go to Europe for a month, at the end of that month you hear from your best friend on a text message that a group of eighteen men are in your house stealing and trying to get your wife. Would you go back and fight them, or just try to talk it out? All I know is that will a group of eighteen men, they're not going to want to negotiate.

Lord Byron, a romantic author from the 18th century was a man who was considered as a “player”, a man who was always with multiple women. In his lifetime Byron wrote many stories, three of those stories were, She Walks In Beauty, Apostrophe To The Ocean, and Don Juan. In those three stories Lord Byron indicates very important messages for each.

Although Medea, like many women, gives up her family, home, and body for her marriage. Medea feels that “of all things we women are the most unfortunate creatures,” (8) and further discusses the difficulties and unjust situations women face such as “for there is not easy escape for a woman, nor can she say no to her marriage” (8) and how men do not use the same rules. For example, Medea feels that “what applies to me does not apply to you” (9). She seems envious of the freedom men possess.

Women are perceived as the gender, that in which is not superior. In the epic, tributed to Homer, The Odyssey, traditional gender stereotypes of a patriarchal society are enforced. Men dominate women in a sense of roles, influence, power and relationships. In ancient Greece, the dominant role was played by men. The society, culture, government and occupations was organized and driven by men, women having little to no role in how to society functioned. Generations adapted these ways and depicted myths that in which represented this type of society, as seen in the Odyssey.

Sexism is the stereotyping and discrimination based upon gender. Typically steered towards women, it has played a large part in not only our society today but in the past as well. In the play The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare, it is shown in the treatment of the women by their male counterparts. It is most prevalent in the way that fortune-seeking Petruchio goes about taming his aggressive and sharp-tongued wife Katharina. By examining Petruchio’s actions and Katharina’s reactions towards his efforts at taming her, once can see that the play is indeed sexist.

Sheryl Sandberg once said, “We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women's voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.” The Odyssey incorporates an epic adventure with family drama. The book is staged in ancient Greece 20 years after the trojan war. The Odyssey is narrated by Homer, the first person to write down the adventures of Odysseus. The epic poem focuses on Odysseus’s journey home and what is happening to his family in Ithaca. Overall The Odyssey is a journey about gender stereotypes and how some women defy those gender stereotypes. Homer uses many traits of characters to address this everyday life topic. He specifically Athena’s wisdom, Circe’s strength, and Penelope’s cleverness to convey the theme though gender stereotypes often elevate men, women have prized traits as well.

It is a well-known fact that the past has not been kind to women’s potential. With stereotypes of virtuousness and what it means to be a proper ‘lady’ still persisting today, it does not have to be imagined how strong of a code it was earlier in history. However, works such as William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” demonstrate the few instances of a female character standing out from the traditional mold of their time. Despite adhering to society's norms at the end of their stories, the female perspective adds credibility to the gender's portrayal while breaking down gender stereotypes. By allowing the female characters to take an active role in the patriarchal society, it enables them to show themselves as potential equals to men.

I highly recommend this book to others because of the message it conveys. Bryce thought Juli was annoying just because of how she could never leave him alone even when he told her to go away and how she has this strange obsession with chickens. The thing is, Bryce didn’t see how brave and amazing of a girl Juli was. Yes she never took no for an answer, but only for the right reasons because she stood up for what she believed in, like when she was trying to protect an old Sycamore tree from being cut down or when she gave the Lowsky family free eggs, even when she just could have sold those eggs for profit. This book portrays a strong female lead and also has a moral to the story, never judge someone before you get to know them. The Lowsky

Author J.M. Coetzee wrote the novel Disgrace in the year 1999. A work of blunt sexuality and exploration of societal restrictions, the book follows protagonist David Lurie, who is a professor of romantic literature at a university in Cape Town in a post-apartheid torn South Africa. The novel touches upon the growing idea of using carnal sexual desires to as a means to no longer feel perpetually unfulfilled and to show male dominance through David’s many affairs, and then contrasts and emphasizes it through the plights of Lucy, David’s daughter, as well as David’s own idolization of Lord Byron; all of these concepts and issues combine together to highlight the idea of manhood and power relations between genders.