True Womanhood, By The Virgin Mary, Eve, And Noah 's Wife

Femininity is a concept whose attributes are contingent on the culture it is in—what one culture may consider typically feminine traits could largely vary from what another culture views as being feminine. While theater can sometimes subvert theses ideals and present women who function in ways that are not typically feminine, theater can often present idealistic representations of women who exemplify that culture’s ideals of femininity. Take, for example, the female characters in both Guan Hanqing’s Snow in Midsummer and Hroswit’s Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins. While both texts come from largely different cultural contexts—Snow in Midsummer was written in thirteenth century China for a general population whereas Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins was written in tenth century Germany as a closet drama—both texts have female protagonists whose rebellions exemplify feminine ideals of the respective cultures.

Feminist critical lens examines certain texts with a primary focus on both gender’s relationship with each other and how such relationships demonstrate effects towards beliefs, behaviors, and values. This critical lens also examines a patriarchal-centered society and how such society define and interact with women with an emphasis on stereotypes of both genders that are present and evident in the text being analyzed. William Shakespeare’s Othello can be scrutinized through the feminist critical lens. A deep analysis focused on feminism of the play Othello paves way for the judgement of different societal status of women in the period when the play took place, the Elizabethan society. Othello is a best fit that demonstrates how men were

The history of the Middle Ages typically places women in one of two roles; they are either placed upon a pedestal of holiness or reviled as whores and allies of Satan. Historians, Marty Williams and Anne Echols, attempt to combat that idea with their text Between Pit and Pedestal: Women in the Middle Ages. Williams and Echols succeed in showing that the traditional female role did fall somewhere in between, but there was a lot of variety in what was in between. Women were wives, merchants, land owners, and doctors, but where does the "traditional" female fall in this picture? As scholars and historians, we are fortunate to have documents written by a woman in the Middle Ages: the letters of Heloise to her husband, renowned teacher and philosopher, Peter Abelard (referred to as Abelard).

Shakespeare 's complex play Othello holds numerous pressing issues within its intricate layers that seem to leap out to modern society. One such issue seen by many is the representation of women. Women within the play can be characterized as submissive possessions and temptresses. This ideology, though commonplace in this time period, appears controversial to the modern eye as we deconstruct the characters of this play. This dominate patriarchal society present within the setting merely conditions this belief further as it is prevalent within the characters dialogue.

The article, The Cult of Womanhood: 1820 - 1860 written by Barbara Welter discusses the philosophy towards women in America during the mid 19th century. A set of demands and expectations based upon four principles: piety, purity, submission and domesticity were placed on women as well as certain behavioral expectations left 19th century women feeling guilty. It also left women feeling this way during the industrialization period as well as having a huge presence of incompatibility with society. Welter shares her viewpoint that the Cult of Womanhood was an attempt to preserve pre modern values in the industrial age. Men held a dominant place in society and continued to prevent new opportunities for women to explore. Narrow minded

The Cult of True Womanhood was written with a focus on the antebellum period of the nineteenth century. During this time slavery was still an ongoing problem so one can assume that true womanhood didn’t apply to women of color. True Womanhood relied heavily on four points – piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Woman should be piety and

The most prominent woman figure in this play is Linda, but the male characters in this play also give us insight into women’s roles and help feed the feminist analyses

Relations between Men and Women in Genesis            The relations between men and women in Genesis are characterized by deception and lies on the part of the women. Women in Genesis were originally explained as being created as men’s helpers. The women were supposed to be dependent on men and not think for themselves. God explained this by saying, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him'; (Genesis 2:18). However the women in Genesis are always using their femininity to deceive men in different ways not only to help themselves but sometimes their loved ones as well.

For the past two-thousand years, the Book of Genesis has served as work of literature to the western civilization. Whether people believed in the Bible or not, the Book of Genesis tell stories they talk about having good morals, teaching live-learned lessons and overall it gives a glimpse of how the first human being acted when the world was developing and how they handle problems and situations. However, even though the book of Genesis shows a tone of life long morals, Genesis also shows the different sides of humans. Genesis shows how human can be deceitful, evil, and disobedient to authority figures. But these traits with humans were rarely displayed by man, but mostly by woman. In

Throughout many pays and novels, women have had important roles of helping form the main characters, in the way they think, move or change the story. Women have always been subordinate to men all through history, but in plays, novels, short stories, etc, they have been given large enforcing roles, showing the power within women. William Shakespeare and Sophocles use guilt, pride, and influence to demonstrate the importance of the women’s role to support the main characters in both the plays of Macbeth and Antigone.

Women are often held to different standards than men and an ideal woman is hard to describe, even harder to find. This paper will explore the views and expectations of how woman are portrayed in the sixteenth century. In Cinthio’s, The Unfaithfulness of Husbands and Wives, Story Seven, an ideal woman was said to be faithful and a faithful woman would rather commit suicide than to commit adultery (Cinthio 32), while in Shakespeare’s Othello, an ideal woman is said to breastfeed and inquire about useless matters (2.1.159). Cinthio’s and Shakespeare’s use of characterization for Disdemona and Desdemona, respectively, demonstrates that the wives of men in the sixteenth century were to be gentle servants. Cinthio focuses more on the common stereotypes about women, while Shakespeare challenges them.

In the book “Gender Trouble” (1990), feminist theorist Judith Butler explains “gender is not only a social construct, but also a kind of performance such as a show we put on, a costume or disguise we wear” (Butler). In other words, gender is a performance, an act, and costumes, not the main aspect of essential identity. By understanding this theory of gender as an act, performance, we can see how gender has greatly impacted the outcome of the play in William Shakespeare’s Othello. From a careful analysis of the story, tragedy in Othello is result of violating expected gender roles, gender performance by Desdemona and Othello, and the result of Iago’s inability to tolerate these violations.

In William Shakespeare’s tragic play Othello there are numerous instances of obvious sexism aimed at the three women in the drama -- Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca – and aimed at womankind generally. Let us delve into this subject in this paper.

Emilia, in the play Othello, is not a typical example of a female character during the time of William Shakespeare. When one contrasts the time of the Renaissance to the modern day, one must determine the context of the times. A forewarning is that Emilia would not be unusual if one assesses her character by contemporary standards; nevertheless, analyzing the time of Shakespeare, an argument can be made about whether or not Emilia is the embodiment of feminist values. To commence this thought, it is important to factor in that under what is considered feminism today, Emilia arguably would not be within that realm; however, a strong argument could be made that she was the prototype for what will be considered feminism in the future. Emilia’s character is important to the play because of how she responds to the other characters. In Othello, females are not viewed in the same light as males, as the men in the play refer to them as whores and witches. Emilia conveys a message of feminism throughout the play by speaking out when she needed to and by being critical of the horrific actions of the men in the play.

In "Men and Women as Represented in Medieval Literature in Society" by Anita Kay O'Pry-Reynolds-Renolds you can find a different way of how women men were supposed to act during the Medieval time period. She finds evidence from different Medieval works of literatures to help support her thesis. O'Pry-Reynolds uses some details from Beowulf, Lancelot, Knight of the Cart, and Sir Gawain and The Green Knight to show the different gender roles between men and women. The details O'Pry-Reynolds finds from the different Medieval literatures in her essay are not supported in "The Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales and "The Wife of Bath." Anita Kay O'Pry-Renolds "Men and Women as Represented in Medieval Literature in Society" explains how men and