Obstacles In Hercules: Gender Stereotypes

In our current world, gender expectations apparent in our society be traced back to ancient mythology. Women of today find inspiration in beauty and fashion often unknowingly form ancient cultures. Similarly, popular masculine attributes are relatable to the myths of heroes and important gods. Basing current social standards upon mythological texts however creates problems. In striving to achieve such physical greatness people of this era are attempting to reach the impossible: to become a god or goddess of immortal standards themselves. By relating ancient myths to that of the current media, one can view the effect that the ancient world has upon the social standards apparent in our society today.

The Greco-Roman society was a very patriarchal society. This is reflected throughout the myths in classical mythology. By looking at the classic mythology we will see that the roles women portrayed are very different than women's roles in today's society. Although there are a few similarities to women's roles in today's society, their roles are more like those women in the past. We can see this by looking at the attributes of Greco-Roman female gods and looking at the roles women play in the myths. By comparing the roles of women in the myths with women's roles today we will see that the roles have many differences and few similarities.

Imagine you are left by your husband after he leaves to go to war and you must protect your kingdom and yourself. How would you handle the situation? In Homer’s The Odyssey a wife is left alone to raise a child and to protect others from taking her husband's position on the throne until Telemachus is old enough to take it himself. Penelope must give her son experiences that normally a father would give a son, along with having him grow up to be fair and just. Telemachus and Penelope push through the hardships without a husband, father, and a ruler. Penelope raises telemachus while persevering through sexism, abuse, and loneliness.

The #MeToo movement has brought the most recent revelations of misogyny in modern society. Sexism has been present throughout history, and the Greek society in Homer’s The Odyssey is no exception. It tells of the hero Odysseus’ journey back to his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemakhos, on Ithaka, including his delays by the nymph, Kalypso. Throughout the epic, Homer portrays that society’s perceptions of female inferiority lead to harsher expectations of and stereotypes for women, as shown by the powerlessness, sexual double standard, and seductive stereotypes of women.

Homer’s The Odyssey has various examples of sexism and misogyny. Sexism is prominent in daily life and can be dated back as far as The Odyssey and other epic poems of the like. One of the first instances of sexism is when the suitors storm Penelope’s house, demanding her hand in marriage. The suitors forced themselves on Penelope in the sense of barging into her home and staying, harassing her mentally. More proof of sexism is how Athene babies Odysseus throughout the entire novel and he acts as if she is required to do so. At the end of the book, the maids that slept with the suitors are murdered unfairly. In Homer’s The Odyssey, women are thought of as stepping stools and are held to much higher expectations than men; examples of this are the suitors wanting to marry Penelope for her riches, how Athene consistently helps Odysseus with little gratitude, and

In Homer’s famous series of books, The Odyssey, our godlike Odysseus goes on a remarkable adventure. Throughout the journey, he does not only meet new places, but he also gets to know mortals, immortals, and its stories. These anecdotes all present similar gender expressions, which are not very different from the ones we have set in the modern society. Many of the stereotypes seen in the book can still be seen in the 2000’s, but in the book the examples of the men being represented as the powerful and dominant figure, and women being showed as passive and obedient towards the males are way more obvious .

Traditionally, women are depicted as weak and vulnerable. However, in the epic, the Odyssey by Homer, women are depicted as loyal, persevering, supportive. Homer depicts Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, as loyal by showing her pine for Odysseus even though he is rumored by many to be dead. Next is Calypso, a woman who wants Odysseus to be her husband so bad, that she keeps him hostage as a form of her perseverance. Lastly, Homer shows Athena, the goddess of wisdom, as a supportive character to Telemachus in more than one way. Homer wrote the Odyssey, against normal stereotypes of women, and made women seem loyal, persevering, and supportive.

In her illuminating commentary, “The Temple of Zeus at Olympia, Heroes, and Athletes,” Judith M. Barringer introduces Olympia and sets the scene of the famous ruins in ancient times. She forces you to imagine the reverence one would feel by simply visiting the Temple of Zeus.   When peering into the temple, many would have first focused on the labors of Herakles that were portrayed before turning their attention to the magnificent, gold and ivory adorned statue of zeus, implying that these representations were quite exceptional for their time. When viewed, they gave off a sense of being larger than life.

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.

Have you ever been told you couldn’t do something because of who you were? Have you ever felt inferior to someone else for something that was out of your control? Women have always rebelled against their traditional role in society. An illustration of this is how women have succeeded in a male dominated field such as science. We today have evolved greatly socially from the periods of ancient greece, Renaissance Europe and 1930s America. The literary pieces, The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet, and To Kill a Mockingbird help show what roles each gender has been playing across antiquity. Women have been suppressed throughout history being thought to be the inferior gender.

Our cultural norms come from books, art, and stories, passed down from ancient times. When one’s sources are biased, then one’s culture and way of life are biased; this is how sexism was created, and how it still exists within our society today. In The Odyssey, Homer’s sexist portrayal descriptions of characters, and powerful diction perpetrates misogynistic gender norms that still influences our actions.

In the ancient epic story of Noah the scripts say that god saw very evil thoughts of human being, and their soul was being misguided from what god wanted it to actually be. The situation God saw made him want to destroy all of human beings. When God wanted to do this he saw Noah, and he took into consideration the promise he had made to man as well as how Noah was a faithful individual of gods word. Many things would take place including the specific instructions of the way the ark would be built, as well as the choosing of specific animals and the length of how long the flood would last. Therefore, he chose him to build the ark and save all of the animals regardless of their gender. In this story the gender does influence the story, but not much since god chooses a man to build the ark, and be the chosen one. There seems to be no racism or discrimination of gender, which is just what god had chosen at that specific time. Less racism of gender influence, is seen since god let Noah as well as him 7 other family members which four of them were females including his wife, and three

Odysseus' values and character traits serve as a paradigm of the ideal Homeric Greek man. The "god-like Odysseus" is crafty, valiant, wise, and eloquent. He gains much of his knowledge through travel, the meeting of different cultures and peoples and learns from suffering and mistakes. He is an aristocrat and a warrior of all warriors. We first learn of many of these traits in Homer's Iliad. Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek army always calls on Odysseus for assignments that required someone cunning and brilliant. Agamemnon sends Odysseus to ask Achilles to return to the army and sends him with Diomedes into the Trojan camp to attain information. Odysseus has to be sly and quick so the Trojans do not catch him. Homer describes

The role of women in ancient Greek life was insignificant compared to that of Greek men. A woman's job was to take care of the children and to cook and clean unless she had servants or slaves that would do it for her. Yet, in Greek mythology, women were often written as major characters. Well-known Greek plays contain many well-written, complex, female characters. Female individuals in Greek mythology were often seen as very powerful and fierce and were depicted by “her wits, her beauty, or her bad deeds.”

Televisions and movies through their visual effects help define ‘a real man’. During advertisements, there are some particular aspects of man that are portrayed. A man who fails to have certain forms of male features may not be shown on TV or may not be considered for a film (Cohen & Hall, 2009). Moreover, the marketing companies have started to objectifying men in the same manner women have been objectified. The fitness of a