Men And Women In Goethe's The Sphere Of Women

Gender is a social construct created around the idea that the two sexes of male and female define whom we are, what we are like, and how we should live. In our modern world, many people have come to the realization that biological sex and gender identity are two separate categories and often have no impact on personality. For many thousands of years, in various cultures however, there have been defined jobs and lives for men and women. In The Sphere of Women, Goethe constructs definitions of male and female by creating separate lives for women and men and exalting in the personal traits naturally found in both genders. First, Goethe explains the different spheres of life for men and women. Men have, through the grace of their hearts, “placed his wife in the highest and holiest position she can occupy” (Goethe 1). Men grant women the ease of household work and chores to protect them from the dangers and unmoral nature of work. Work was considered corrupt and draining with the introduction of factories in the Industrial Revolution. Gone was the family businesses of farming for survival: an honest job to

He describes the separate sphere of men and women for the purpose of work and then explains how men and women have different personality traits naturally designed to accommodate the spheres. Furthermore, Goethe follows a tradition of pretending that these spheres always existed. That pre-Industrial Revolution lives where exactly like this separate sphere model. Goethe is also an example argument that many anti-feminist groups will unknowingly adopt later in American history, especially during the 1950s in a post-World War II country. Goethe firmly believes that women should stay at home and that “man, on this account, should [not] be the subject of complaint” (Goethe 1). For men allow women to stay in the comforts of home to protect them. After all, it is a big scary world out