Gender Roles In The Bacchae

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham is a novel where a group of shape-thinkers finds themselves threatened in Waknuk, a community with pioneer beliefs. The different societies—Waknuk, Fringe, and Sealand—differ from each other in terms of their ideal human image and government. However, each society has one thing in common with each other: the notion that they are superior. Subsequently, David Strorm, the protagonist, goes on a journey with his friends to find refuge from Waknuk’s authority, a society driven by fear and curiosity, who wants them hunted. All throughout the novel, women play a subservient role due to the religious traditions and patriarchal structure of Waknuk, as well as how men reduce women to sexual objects.

The Ladies Found Within The Text And The Roles They Play Throughout this year we have read some of the best literature in all of America and have been introduced to some of the most iconic characters. I would like to focus on the women featured within these novels. In Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, we are introduced to Desdemona who is a victim of murder and false accusations.

In the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Oresteia, and Oedipus the King these great works, we can see, the Greeks’ views on gender that Greek was a patriarchal society. In the Iliad, Agamemnon got a fair-cheeked girl named Chryseis as a prize after a war. However, under Apollo’s pressure, he needed to send her back. Therefore, Agamemnon took Achilles’ prize, Briseis, who had been awarded to Achilles because of anger. Agamemnon was angry because he considered beautiful Chryseis as his property and prize.

Importance of Women in The Odyssey In ancient Greece, women are not considered as great as men and cannot qualify as a hero. They usually rely on men and the heroes for help. Women are little helpers, such as Ariadne, or trouble makers such as Medea. They are not considered important because of the men by their side: Theseus and Jason in this case.

Societies are built to be a safe, welcoming and an accepting environment, but sometimes end up to be harsh, cruel and irrational places. In John Wyndham’s novel, The Chrysalids, we are introduced to a world we can never imagine being, yet we live in a world that is actually not very different. David Strorm lives in post-apocalyptic world as a telepathic who is regarded as a mutant and goes on a tough journey with his cousin Rosalind to escape from their non-accepting community. The Waknuk society is indeed very similar to our world considering that today’s society also fears things they do not know about, do not always accept differences and has major issues with dealing with sexism. By comparing Waknuk to our world, the similarities

In Shakespeare’s two plays, Othello and The Taming of the Shrew patterns of domination and submission are explored in relation to the shared issue of gender and power contained in each play. In Shakespeare’s time, women were expected to carry themselves a certain way to maintain the honor of their families. Shakespeare writes Othello and The Taming of the Shrew in the Elizabethan era which readers can see by the way the male figures in the plays see their women as property than human beings. By writing from the Elizabethan point-of-view, it effects the way each play is perceived as behavior previously seen as acceptable may now be viewed as unacceptable from a feminist perspective. For example, in The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio dehumanizes Katharina’s character which results in Katharina’s submission to her husband, Petruchio.

In society, men and women are defined by gender roles throughout their activities and occupations. A doctor is typically portrayed as a man while most women are associated with the household and children. Although still in existence, today these roles are less defined but tend to have similar essence when compared to the past. In today’s society, females work, take part in the government and have a say in public and private decisions. Compared to ancient Greece, women suffered great tribulations and these current activities are unimaginable for a woman under the complete supervision of a male husband.

Ancient plays throughout different cultures in history contained all male cast, failing to even cast women as they were deemed inferior. Tradition held that the culture in western societies restricted women’s roles. Even as female characters were indeed written in certain plays, the role were portrayed by a male. They regarded women being able to portray these roles as dangerous and that having men play them “neutralized” the danger it possessed. The Greek’s and the Roman’s both held these views making it impossible for women to be on stage.

Each female character is treated by men as a possession. However, there are also moments when they are presented as confident and challenge a male authority. This would have been exiting for Shakespeare’s female Elizabethan audience as women

Many female critics have looked towards The Wife of Bath as a feminist role model (Reisman) She wanted authority over her five husbands, “She’d been respectable throughout her life, with five churched husbands bringing joy and strife, Not counting other company in her youth;” (Chaucer, l. 459-461) In Othello, the society centered around the men having all the control over women except in their beds, which was when the women could take control. Othello uses his power to over Desdemona to mock her,“Ay, you did wish that I would make her turn. Sir, she can turn, and turn, and get go on, And turn again.

Therefore, during the 1500s men and boys were required to play women roles. Why did gender matter when it came to plays? What was the importance of the gender role? Women were inferior to men, they weren’t equal. Men felt as though the woman should stay home and take care of the house and the kids.

It may seem like Shakespeare treats his female characters worse than his male characters, but it is his female characters that drive the plot

During the Elizabethan period, the role of women in society was very different from what it is today. According to the system of patriarchal society that dictated that women were inferior to men, they had to obey the male figures in their lives. The woman was seen as the weaker sex either physically or emotionally which meant that it was entirely dependent on her husband if married and members of his family if single. Moreover, in the Elizabethan theater, women were not allowed to play because of this hierarchy. Therefore, they were replaced by men disguised as women.

The Geek society had may guidelines concerning the way men and women were treated and the roles they played within society. “The concept of gender was an integral aspect of this social hierarchy; power was not evenly distributed and only men were allowed to participate in prestige activities such as politics, law, or the military” (“The Ure Museum”). The values of gender roles within the Greek society are expressed in the play Medea by Euripides. Though Euripides tried to show the disparities of how women are treated compared to men, he still uses some of the same stereotypes exhibited within Greek society. Some issues that will be discussed are the way the women are portrayed in Greek society.

A Modern View of Feminist Criticism William Shakespeare 's "Othello” can be analyzed from a feminist perspective. This criticism focuses on relationships between genders, like the patterns of thoughts, behavior, values, enfranchisement, and power in relations between and within sexes. A feminist examination of the play enables us to judge the distinctive social esteems and status of women and proposes that the male-female power connections that become an integral factor in scenes of Othello impact its comprehension. I believe that the critical lens that provides modern society with the most compelling view of literature is Feminist Criticism because it analyzes distrust and disloyalty among relationships, women being treated as possessions