The Sexual Exploitation Of Women Is Made Clear From The Work Of Atwood, Rossetti And Chaucer

Throughout history men have been leading the battles, conquering worlds, discovering new lands, but behind every good man is a good woman! So, as I read this week, I learned an enormous amount of information about the diversity of the different roles women play according to where they might live or what era they grew up in. I will address the rights that women had, how they are viewed in society, the comparison between these women and the ones from the New Testament, the evidence to support my claim.

The lines 809 – 840 of Amelia Lanyer’s poem “Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum” is an argument for why women should have an equal place in society to men’s. The poem is actually a piece of proto-feminist writing using religious examples as a way of getting across the message of equality between the sexes. Lanyer uses examples from the Bible to explain how Eve is not at fault for women having a lesser place in society and why males should have a religious motivation for women being equal with men.

This ideology outlines and endorses separate spheres for women and men, the domestic and public spheres. This idea derived from the natural features of each gender. As women were considered to be physically weaker than men, they were more suitable to belong to the private sphere. As Ellis writes, ‘women’s strength is in her influence’ , demonstrating the view that, though physically fragile, women were morally superior to men.

Gender inequality will always affect the portrayal of women in society, the weaker, unnecessary, and other sex. It is not just a subject of the past, and still holds a name in society. However in the olden eras, the way women were treated and looked at was in a much harsher condition. In Shakespeare’s Othello and Shelley’s Frankenstein, women’s roles in the books are solely based on the way they are treated in their time period. The portrayal of women in these books demonstrate that they can never be in the same standing as men and therefore will never have the same respect as them. In both Othello and Frankenstein women are treated as property, used to better men’s social standards, and lack a voice, which demonstrates that in

These flowers serve as a constant reminder of this fertility-- not just to the reader, but also to the handmaids, whose main purpose is to reproduce. They are everywhere in the setting: a “watercolor picture of blue irises” (14) in Offred’s room; a “fanlight of colored glass: flowers red and blue” (15) at the end of the hallway just outside that room; the bathroom, “papered in small blue flowers, forget-me-nots, with curtains to match” (74); on the dining room table, “white cloth, silver, flowers” (78); the “magic flower,” the “withered daffodil” (115) Offred steals from Serena’s Parlor; the “starry canopy of silver flowers” (233) adorning the Commander’s bed. The flowers serve as hidden, almost subconscious reminders of the handmaids’ sole purpose of fertility; they are usually mentioned offhandedly, as miniscule, unimportant, yet ever-present details. However, they are sometimes more directly noted and compared to ideas of fertility, as in the case of Serena Joy’s

Some critics have advanced the notion that one of the reasons there is such a paucity of women and of strong, beneficent women in particular within this story is due to what they represented in typical Victorian England society. Women were generally viewed as "a social force or a source of authority" which "reinforces this fiction of coherent male identity" (Doane and Hodges 63). This quotation suggests the fact that women were generally the keepers of morality and virtue within Victorian

Many times in literature women and the roles of women are portrayed in a certain light. Today, women are supposed to be viewed as powerful and independent women who do not need to rely on a man. Characters such as Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games and Tris Prior from Divergent emerged to portray powerful women. Unfortunately, this was not always the case and characters in pieces such as The Odyssey by Homer and The Aeneid by Virgil were viewed as women who needed help from men.

As the English Nonconformist minister, Matthew Henry, once said, “Eve was not taken out of Adam's head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him.” Henry portrays a presence of equality between male and female in which Their Eyes Were Watching God does not possess. Furthermore, life isn’t intended to always be fair, and the novel validates that to say the least, yet we see people such as Matthew Henry who recognize the importance of gender equality. In this novel however, women are portrayed as inferior in comparison to men. Their Eyes Were Watching God provides a

Since the early times, women were pictured as “intellectually inferior to men but also a major source of temptation and evil” as well as the weaker sex (WIC). For example, Pandora, in Greek mythology, was a woman who opened a forbidden box which then unleashed sin, plagues, and unhappiness into the world. In the early 19th century, women were only allowed to work in factories or, otherwise, stayed at home and did domestic work; the only professions that was acceptable for them to do was to become a teacher or a writer. In the 1920’s, women gained the right to vote. Throughout history, there has been many issues between the male and female genders, most significantly with the female gender, but, the rights of women have soared since the early times of history.

However, though Stott acknowledges the reality of female oppression he also argues that our response to the abuse to complementarianism is not too go to the other extreme but to rather determine what a faithful and biblical understanding of complementarianism is. Stott argues that Christianity from the days of the Old Testament has challenged the cultural view of women in which it has existed. With books like Esther and Ruth and heroes of Israel being women and men, the old testament unashamedly saw the equality of women. We also see the affirmation of women in Jesus ministry on earth and in Galatians 3:24 which speaks boldly to the equality of both male and female.

‘What writers tend to demonstrate in texts which explore relationships between men and women, is that women have always been relatively powerless and the victims of society’s double standards’ Compare and contrast the extent to which this interpretation applies to your chosen three texts.

In the garden, there are tulips which “are red, a darker crimson towards the stem…” (Chapter 3). One can unequivocally interpret the tulips as a symbol for the handmaids, as the colour of crimson red indicates. Red is the colour of blood- the colour of a woman’s menstrual cycle, and the colour of the womb. This, no doubt, alludes to fertility and reproduction- everything that defines the handmaids. Furthermore, flowers are often used as metaphorical subject matter in art as symbols of the female genitalia. This female sexual metaphor once again reiterates how the handmaids are being used as political instruments for reproduction. Indeed, this is not a novel idea. In China, for instance, their One-Child Policy introduced in 1978 has only just been reinstated as a Two-Child Policy in January 2016. This is proof that Atwood’s rule to only include things in her novel that have happened before was followed

Women have been treated and portrayed similarly throughout history-- Made to be housewives and handmaidens to men of all ages and expected to be the “perfect woman”, a standard image created by--shocker--men. In fifth-century Greece, the “perfect” woman was expected to obey her husbands at all times. The “perfect” English Renaissance women was meant to be seen, not heard. The “perfect” woman of the eighteen hundreds was given novels to read. Novels that held lighter topics than the newspapers of the day, such as intemperance, nothing too heavy because “once a woman starts reading, she starts getting ideas” (indirect quote from Beauty and the Beast). The tables began to turn in 1848, when the first women’s suffrage movement convention was held in Seneca Falls, when women began to realize what Emma Goldman voiced years later in 1915. The “perfect woman” image began to crumble. Skirts became shorter, topics became heavier, women started thinking, forming ideas, becoming more outspoken, creating their own image, without the aid of men. Slowly, they climbed their way up, proving to be more independent and more than what men thought them to be. How women were viewed as by a society, and their evolution of independence, has bled through in literature, especially through female deities in ancient mythologies. Over time, goddesses of different mythologies have grown bolder and more powerful as the world finally noticed that women were actually people, not pretty trophies. Greek,

Today, women are treated with a respect and love that past generations would have dreamed about. Simple privileges like being allowed to have a job and get an education are taken so for granted, because fortunately it is all this generation has known. Women have always been strong capable beings that are fit to do a job that is typically given to a man, and probably with more efficiency. Figuratively in the poem Parlement of Foules by Geoffrey Chaucer and quite literally in the Speech to the Troops at Tilbury by Queen Elizabeth, women hold a powerful role in the writing and/or execution of these works through leadership roles and also through sexuality. Women are wonderful creatures and are capable of incredible things, yet the fact that a

The defining factor in social order has often rotated around gender. At birth, we are separated into the roles we play in our society, and in return, society shows us what our futures may behold. Since the beginning of time, two sex classes have coexisted together, complementing each other to create a sound society. But slowly, a male supremacy developed, reducing the female class. Women were slowly subjected to the power of men, and forced to do the work of the subordinate. The womanhood and femininity that was traditionally valued became “regulated to the marginal position of ‘other’.” Because of this, the commonality that men control all aspects of a woman's life has become ever present in our literature. Whether blatantly seen in Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To his Coy Mistress,” or mercilessly disclosed in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet and Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, these ideas of socially imposed restraints and common degradations of women are quite evident.