Summary and Review of 'The Tale of Kieu'

Throughout this course, we learned that women’s studies originated as a concern at the time that “women and men noticed the absence, misrepresentation, and trivialization of women [in addition to] the ways women were systematically excluded from many positions of power and authority” (Shaw, Lee 1). In the past, men had more privileges than women. Women have battled for centuries against certain patterns of inadequacy that all women experience. Every culture and customs has divergent female

Women have been downgraded and mistreated because of their gender. From birth, Women and Men grew up with very different rules to follow. Men were raised to be the head of the house and do work for a living. Growing up as little girls, women were taught to raise their kids and make food for their families. “Strong family structures were necessary because the family was the basis for all other institutions. The government, church, and community all worked through the nuclear family unit.”(“Gender and

A woman’s role on the other hand does not consist of such significance and does not grant the power that the male role does. Rather, the female role consists of women acting modest and submissively; women are expected to be confined to being in their home, care for their family and depend on their spouses’ or males relatives.

In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam and Laila are learning to live in a war zone when the Taliban gains control of their country. Consequently, the Taliban's laws are one source of major female inequality within

Gladys and her family are Vietnamese, their culture is very different from American culture. The man is the head of the home and controls everything using violence as deemed fit. Women are taught as children to obey the man.

In every society there is a certain group of individuals or institutions that enforces norms onto other people. These groups can range from state institutions, religious communities, the local community, and even people within an oppressed community. In Erika Friedl’s Women of Deh Koh there is an extreme amount of pressure put on women to follow societal norms. The novel takes place in a remote village in Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The previous government was replaced with one based on Islamic law and women are subjected to its provisions, which are often times unequal and creates disparities in society. The women in this village experience pressure from the men in their community, their elders, religion, and even the state. The group of people who exert the most amount of pressure on these women, however, is other women in the village itself. This may appear to be a paradox, women exerting pressure on other women while themselves wanting to break the norms of society to fulfill personal desires, but there are various examples of how the other women in the village exert pressure on certain women. Examples of how other women exert pressure on women can be seen in chapter five, About Telling It As It Is and How Golgol Left Her Husband and Went Back to Him, and chapter seven, The Little Changes That Happened When Simin Became Adval’s Wife. These examples in chapters five and seven will help demonstrate how women in Deh Koh receive pressure from other women.

Based on Lessons for Women, women in the China were taught that they were unworthy, unsophisticated, unenlightened and by nature unintelligent. (Strayer

Women face two key forms of oppression in this world, powerlessness and exploitation. These two forms fall into Iris M. Young’s ideas of oppression in her article “Five Faces of Oppression”. The definition of cultural imperialism and exploitation used in this essay are taken from Young’s essay. Cultural imperialism is where the dominant customs and morals of a society are rendered as the norm and those who are not in the norm are considered others. Exploitation is a form of oppression where a class structure is present and this class structure includes a dominant group of people who are in power of a subordinate group. Two authors, John Stuart Mill and Simone de Beauvoir, talk about how the oppression of women is not due to nature. It is rather, in Mill’s view, due to a premodern law of force which divides men and women between the strong and the weak. Beauvoir sees this oppression of women as a result from socialization, which conformed women to become immanent. Both these authors have reasonable arguments and have a similar understanding that the inferiority of women is not from the simple nature of being women. Other factors come into play when understanding why women are oppressed, and both authors recognize the fact that society and old habits must change for the equality of women and men to become a reality.

As more traveled to America, Vietnamese women were no longer seen as immigrants, but instead as refugees. This shows that women weren’t seen as people, but as helpless foreigners. Because of this opposition, Vietnamese women became intrigued by the way American women fought for equality. However, Vietnam was not very fond of the Americans during this time. Because of this, Vietnamese men did not like the idea of their women going overseas: “They’d rather see their daughters find jobs with Vietnamese men because most of them always looked down on the Vietnamese women who worked for Americans.” Vietnamese women were not only encouraged to stay in a war stricken Vietnam, but they were shunned for seeking or finding work by American men. This played into the long oppression of women and the idea that they should stay home, take care of the family, and listen to their male superior. Finally, there were still gender roles that were defined throughout the world. Women could not catch a break no matter where they moved. Before their migration to America, they already had the long standing notion of women being inferior to men. This made it harder for women to break the status quo in America, even though they knew it was wrong. However, these repressive causes only made Vietnamese women want equality even more.

Gender inequality is one of the central themes in the novel The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan. I think that the title “The Kitchen God’s Wife” itself recognizes that many individuals believe that a woman's role in society pertains to completing domestic chores. Her husband, the God, dominates over her actions in the kitchen. Basically, woman have no position, neither outside or inside the sphere of their home. It is revealed that social divisions between males and females in China continue from early childhood and last until late adulthood. To begin with, Winnie Louie is taught the importance of obeying others, putting others ahead of herself, and maintaining healthy relationships. When she first gets her period, her aunt tells her that a

Despite the fact that the two stories were set in different societies, they similarly present women and hence, it can be asserted that women in the traditional societies and even today face same or related challenges and fates. The Tale of Kieu paints a true picture of how women were regarded and portrayed in the Vietnam and Chinese societies during the early 19th

Throughout history and today, we women are constant victims of stereotyping from our society. Certain “rules” have to be followed and certain “ideal” women images have to be kept. We are raised in a way to fill certain position where the society wants us to be and as a result, the opportunities are always limited for us and ideas of our importance in the society are diminishing. Even though women gained some independence, where women can work and take various position in society, the society’s idea of typical role of women never seem to change.

Although the subjection of women arose the same way as slavery and other forms of oppression, it differs from the fact that it does not occur by the rule of force but rather, by voluntary acceptance (Mill, 1995, pg.16). As mentioned earlier, women were “conditioned” to believe that it was their duty to be obedient to men; that it was natural to live their lives for them. In a way, a woman’s obedience to man

For the most part, women during this time have a very hard time acclimating to society’s standards and being treated as equal, especially by men. Whether they like it or not, the prejudice held against women in the hearts of the patriarchal society pulls them down and makes it hard to be treated equally, even if a person is born in a wealthy, high-class family. The discrimination only gets worse for those

Before examining particular societies, the general notions of patriarchy must be established. Generally, women were considered inferior to men, but each facet of society provides a distinctive insight into gender roles. A fundamental difference between the two genders was that the responsibility of a man was to be a member of the public, whereas the responsibility of a woman was to be in the home. Social norms defined men as “rulers, warriors, scholars, and heads of households” (Ways of the World 59). Even if a man had little