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The Portrayal Of Women 's Crime And Punishment And The Communist Manifesto Essay

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The Portrayal of Women in Crime and Punishment and the Communist Manifesto Women are discussed and or portrayed in both “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky and “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In “Crime and Punishment” there are several female characters, many of which play large roles in the main characters’ story. However, women are only mentioned a few times in “The Communist Manifesto”, but it is essential to the point the authors are trying to convey. Each of these literatures see women and different ways, some more positive, negative, and or diverse. Nonetheless, I believe both pieces of literature see women as vital or essential aspects of society.
The Communist Manifesto tries to explain the goals of communism as well as the theory behind it. It focuses on how class struggles and the oppression of one class by another are a problem. Women are not mentioned throughout the book except for when the bourgeois are discussed. Marx and Engels state,” The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex” (pg. 73). The communist are worried that as modern industry grows the work required could be done by women and

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