When God Was A Girl Reflection

In the text Mythology by Edith Hamilton, women are portrayed as being property and objects. During this time women were seen to be not as "good" as men. They saw perfection in relationships between men and young male adults as the best relationships to have. However, homosexuality was frowned upon. Men were considered knowledgeable and educated, but women were seen as a burden placed on man by the Gods. When it came to women nothing was valuable about them but their beauty. When a woman was beautiful she was wanted by many men: a man would do almost anything to have the possession of a beautiful woman and have her as his property. It was as if a woman’s role was to only be a man’s beautiful possession and to procreate the lineage of a

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.

In both Indian and Mesopotamian societies, goddesses were very powerful. This can help explain why women were respected, even in patriarchal society. In India, there is a story about how a goddess saved the world. “There is the story of the terrible demon Raktabija (Blood-seed). This demon was, like most demons, causing a great deal of trouble with people and gods alike but even worse was his ability to produce more demons every time a drop of his blood spilt to the ground. Therefore, each time Raktabija was attacked, the only result was more demons to deal with. The gods decided to work together and combine all of their shakti or divine energy and produce one super being that could destroy Raktabija; the result was Kali (in another version only Durga

Zora Neale Hurston is considered one of the most unsurpassed writers of twentieth-century African-American literature. Published in 1937, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God depicts the life of Janie Crawford, an African-American woman, who is in search of true love and ultimately her true self. In the novel, Janie shows us that love comes in all shapes and forms, and love is different with each person you choose to love. In the opening of the novel, Hurston uses a metaphor to say that, while men can never reach for their dreams, women can direct their wills and chase their dreams. Hurston uses this metaphor to make a distinction of men and women gender roles, and Janie went against the norms that were expected of her.

the Goddess believed that the women were good and should be the leaders of the

In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Tea Cake is killed by Janie, which shows, at the end of the book, that Janie is a strong, independent woman who can make the choice to choose herself over a damaged Tea Cake, despite her love for him. Also, during the trial, which wouldn’t have been possible if he had died from natural causes, Janie is accepted by white people, which is an instance of irony with regard to racism. Additionally, Hurston appears to be very pro-women, and allowing Janie to kill Tea Cake is her way of showing sexism does not dictate her anymore. The author chose Tea Cake’s fate to show Janie has arrived at a place where her own self expression and independence can coexist, and ultimately, be put above love in a novel where a primary theme revolves around her attempting to find her independence.

On December 6, 1894 the short story “The Story of An Hour” was published in the weekly newspaper Vogue. The story features the protagonist, Louise Mallard who discovers her husband is dead. The story was instantly regarded as highly controversial because it went against the standards of the 1890’s and features a female protagonist that feels liberated by the news of her husband's death. Although the idea that women were able to survive without men was a foreign concept at the time, the story resonated with many women. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie the female protagonist also experiences liberation through the death of her husband and faces the stereotype of women needing men in order to survive. This stereotype along with many other gender roles/stereotypes are present in Their Eyes Were Watching God and requires Janie and the many other characters to either adhere or break free of the gender roles/stereotypes they come across. Some of these gender roles/sterotypes is that women need to be married in order to be seen as decent and woman should remain quiet and not be outspoken or attract attention. Jaine breaks free of the respective gender roles by her unwillingness to conform to man in her relationships and succeeding in breaking many of the conventional gender roles. Other characters like Jody, Logan, and Janie’s grandmother adhere to the gender roles/ stereotypes and enforce them.

Throughout chapters 5 and 6 of Zora Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” the main character, Janie, goes through what some would call a mental awakening. Janie ,prior to reading these 2 chapters, is characterized as being a naive young woman who is searching for love. Consequently, this is no longer the case, Janie undoubtedly is a generic early twentieth century wife, what is meant by stating this is that Janie has found herself, being told by her husband, unable to “think none”for herself (83).

Two different types of lies, omission and stereotypes, are illustrated by anecdotes. In a widely known story, Ericsson explains the “Sumerian goddess Lilith from Genesis,” and how the omission of Lilith ultimately led to patriarchy. Lilith was purposely left out because she was portrayed as a strong independent woman. By leaving this key person out of the Bible, it resulted in the oppression of women and the dominance of men around the world for thousands of years. It enforced the idea that women are inferior to men, and has caused lasting effects on humanity today. Ericsson also recounts her own personal experience to uphold her claims about stereotype lies. She

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale is a text acclaimed for its ability to speak to contemporary gender and sexual politics. Its plot focusses both on Janie's series of romantic relationships as well as on Janie's individual quest for self-fulfillment and spiritual nourishment. Their Eyes Were Watching God explores traditional gender roles as one of its main themes, specifically the way that stereotypical ideas about relationships between men and women empower men and disempower women. Hurston used the theme of gender roles within marriages to develop the character and the relationships of the protagonist, Janie, with her different husbands. Throughout the novel, Janie is married three times, but in each cases, the issue of gender

In today’s society, we as women often take for granted the rights, freedoms, and equality we share with men that women in the ancient world were not granted. As all civilisations in the ancient world exercised different treatment towards, this essay will illustrate a few comparisons in the status of women during ancient Egypt with women during ancient Rome. Academic sources will be relied on to provide the necessary actualities when one considers ancient civilizations. The legal status of women in society, the domestic atmospheres and roles that each unique region’s women held, and the possible occupations available to these women, will be discussed.

“A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.” says famed writer Charles Dickens. However, in Zora Hurston's novel, Their Eyes were Watching God, the protagonist, Janie, ironically breaks this norm and was in fact married to three men, over a period of time. She is able demonstrate an unheard of amount of independence during her time period. Each marriage was a new experience and endowed her with new lessons. Just like in Their Eyes Were Watching God and even in contemporary life, gender roles will never disappear. Thus, their significant effects on the development of individuals is undeniable. Individuals develop based on experience, and once inundated with various ideas and beliefs

display the power and jobs of the goddesses. The Greek people lived to please the deities

Pomeroy, S. B. (1995). Goddesses, whores, wives, and slaves: women in classical antiquity. New York: Schocken Books.

It is tough to get a clear look into the ways Meyers interprets textual evidence since her focus on women’s religion is often marginalized. Nonetheless, she does with what she has to make a full and convincing argument. Meyers identifies that feminist biblical study is masculinized, so she decides to uncover the role of women in the sanctuary through the Deuteronomic use of unisexual terms such as “you” and “person”. In doing so, she concludes that both women and men were to engage in communal events and offerings (Meyers 2002, 279-280).