Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, And John Stuart Mill: The Equality Of Women

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 made an exceedingly great impact on the world’s economical, social, and political spectrum. However, women are still deemed inferior to men in past and present cultures. The inferiority of women has been portrayed through various avenues such as literature and written works. The Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses’ women characters are three perfect depictions of how women in today’s society are dominated, disregarded, and discredited.

Back in the day almost everyone viewed woman to be the person who cleans, cooks, has children, and obeys her husband. Even woman themselves had this view hammered into their minds at such a young age, the views that women are inferior to men. This stigma of woman can be found traced throughout Virginia Woolf’s essay of two meals, a meal for men and a meal for women at a college. She uses numerous composition techniques and effectively disperses them throughout her narrative. By doing so, she accurately demonstrates her views on society’s stigma of a woman's role in an eloquent manner.

As the perception of women changes constantly, society is the only factor in creating their ideal image. These societal views are the basis of their treatment, with the expectation that it is beneficial for them. However, societal expectations of women in the Elizabethan and Victorian eras severely limit their freedoms and rights. William Shakespeare’s Othello and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein portray most women in their typical roles. Both authors depict the level of injustice in society’s treatment of women through the passivity of women causing their deaths, the silencing of vulnerable women and the portrayal of women as more humane than men.

In the chapter titled “History” within the book called The Second Sex, Beauvoir talks about various of events and changes along with encounters that provided opportunities to seize greater freedom for women as a collectivity. For instance, when women were able to leave their homes and actually take an outside job, it allowed women a bit confused as to what roles she needed to partake in. Given that men were always gender-policing women to fit the ideal role, the women found it difficult to transitions and thus loose a sense of self along the way. De Beauvoir also states that gainful employment can stop the cycle of dependency on man and thus allow the two genders men and women to see each other’s as equals. It is within the book The Second Sex that De Beauvoir tries to understand the imbalance of gender roles to help her understand this she turns to the biology, psychoanalyst and the historical materialism. In her findings, she reveals that although there are some physical differences between women and men there is no proven facts that women cant do the same task as men in a workforce.

The next requirement for being a “true woman” was submissiveness. According to society men were superior to women by “God’s appointment.” If they acted otherwise they “tampered with the order of the Universe” (Welter 105). A “true woman” would not question this idea because she already understands her place. Grace Greenwood explained to the women of the Nineteenth Century, “True feminine genius is ever timid, doubtful, and clingingly dependant; a perpetual childhood.” Even in the case of an abusive husband, women were sometimes told to stay quiet

Throughout history, gender roles have been an important barrier in society. Women are forced to satisfy expectations established by men and society. “My Last Duchess,” by Robert Browning, focuses on the powerful Duke establishing certain expectations of the Duchess, and attempting to control her. Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, concentrates on Laertes establishing certain expectations of Ophelia, and seeking to control her. A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf, centers on societal expectations of Judith, and her father trying to control her. In all three texts, men have the ability to control women and have the freedom to do as they please. Women must conform to the expectations of faithfulness, attentiveness, and chastity.

In the modern world women work, vote, run for office and the list goes on. In most aspects, women are equal to men. However, this was not always the case. In centuries past, women were not viewed as being equal to men socially, intellectually, or politically and were thought incapable of accomplishing anything of value. Consequently, many cultures held the view that women were possessions whose only purpose was to be subservient to men. The view of women as mere objects is evident in various works of literature throughout the ages. Two classic works of literature that exemplify this are The Thousand and One Nights and Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of

Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex suggests that to resolve the tension between bad faith and authenticity, people must regard women as subjects and not objects. They must also collectively fight against the idea of womanhood in order to remain authentic to themselves.

Her book states these issues clearly and, as women’s appearances are often a core aspect of their portrayals in popular culture, such discussions are incredibly relevant to both real women and fictional characters. In many situations, women are perceived based on their worth in motherhood, domesticity, and passivity. Although the women’s movement have made much progress, Wolf states that “after the success of the women’s movement’s second wave, the beauty myth was perfected to checkmate power at every level in individual women’s lives” (125). The beauty myth, or the idea that women should conform to typical ideas of beauty to achieve their own self-worth, turned women into “…a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control” (Wolf 120). With all of these pressures to conform and the associated issues that are placed on women to identify with these standards, even with all the other benefits of the women’s movement, women still had to “…remain vulnerable to outside approval…” (122). The problem has grown so widespread that it did not just hold up the powers

From the continental European perspective shared by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, two groups would have stood out as the most historically marginalized; women and Jews. For much of European history, both Jewish people and women were denied the rights and privileges afforded to even the least privileged Christian men. They could not hold their own lands, were barred from all but a select few professions, and lived with the constant threat of organized violence ready to be turned against them if they ever stepped out of line. In a sense, both woman and Jew are used as an other for their outgroups, male and Gentile respectively, to define themselves apart from. Accordingly de Beauvoir and Sartre manage to illustrate substantial similarities between the two groups in their respective analyses that greatly affect their ultimate treatment, even as through their limited scope and personal biases. Chiefly among these similarities is how both the idea of “woman” and “Jew” are created classes, social constructs made in bad faith. While there will obviously be female humans and Jewish people, the identities of woman and Jew exist only because those who were not female and Jewish have labeled them as such. “If the Jew did not exist,” writes Sartre in Anti-Semite and Jew, “the anti-Semite would invent him.” (8) However, one key difference exists between the two: Jews present a hidden and existential threat to their foes that women never will. Even the most strident opponent

Throughout history, women were “conditioned” to believe that it was their duty to be obedient to men. That it was their “nature to live for others….and to have no life but their [men’s] affections” (Mill, 1995, pg.16). Thus, it seemed natural that women were to be subservient to the needs of the men in their lives. They gave up their lives in order to serve and be accepted by them. Mill, however, claims that this was not the case. The subjection of women was not brought upon by natural development, but rather, through customary power relationships that went on to become institutionalized in the same way that slavery was.

In the chapter of her book The Second Sex entitled “the Woman in Love,” Simone de Beauvoir characterizes the romantic ideal of the relationship with a man as a woman’s purpose as a form of self-deception (translated here as “bad faith”). The self-deception de Beauvoir describes is based in the thesis of The Second Sex. This is the idea that women have been deceived into believing that they are second-class humans. Western culture, according to de Beauvoir, teaches us that women are missing some elusive element of the self that endows men with freedom- a concept essential to the existentialist definition of the conscious being. Therefore, a woman can never find fulfillment as a thinking person as

Feminism, in theory, binds women from all over the world. They come together to protect their rights as equal human beings. For such a long time, men have dominated over women, looking down upon them and perceiving them as lesser beings. Feminism has allowed women from all cultures and races, to come together to fight for their rights. However, nothing is ever as simple as one may hope. Feminism constitutes women from all over the world, making it difficult from time to time to understand and empathize with each other due to different cultures, races and religions. Teresa de Lauretis (2014) says that “the identity as a woman of color is one not given but acquired, attained, and developed out of the specific historical experience”.

Composed by four distinct chapters, “The Subjection of Women”, offers its readers with precise arguments demonstrating Mill’s liberal feminism and his commitment to gender equality. In the first chapter of his essay, John Stuart Mills challenges the common notion that women are by nature unequal to men. He argues that “… From the dawn of human society, every woman was in a state of bondage to some man, because she was of value to him and she had less muscular strength than he did…” alluding to the idea that women have always been conceived to be physically and mentally less capable than men, and therefore needed to be taken care of by the stronger gender. As a result of these primitive