Gender Issues In Lysistrata

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Human beings are amazing creatures. Our history has shown spectacular and shameful events from day one. Throughout the course of history we have seen both war and peace. More war than peace, but the point still remains. That we, as a human race, have accomplished many wonderful intellectual break-throughs but we have also done very stupid deeds. Its amazing how a creature of such great intelligence could separate, segregate, discriminate, dehumanize, and enslave members of its own human race.

The world as we speak is existing because of gender issues. Going back to days of Adam and Eve. When God asked Adam not to eat from the apple tree, it was Eve, with her feminine lure, who was able to convince Adam to disobey Gods rules and eat the apple. Yet when God came to punish Adam for disobeying the rules, Adam pointed to Eve and blamed her for luring him into the sin of eating the apple. Yet in reality it was the serpent, which was the devil, that lured them into eating the apple. But of course Adam, being male had to blame Eve, the female. Which is typical male behavior to blame the woman, my sister says. In general men don’t take responsibility for their actions. Michealangelo has portrayed all this on the Sistienth Chapel. He has painted a picture that is portraying God punishing Adam for eating the apple. In this painting Adam loses his masculine image by pointing to Eve and blaming her for the problems that were caused by eating the apple.

Men threw out history have always been perceived as strong, powerful, heroic beings. Men are depicted as fighters, providers, and of course first class citizens. While woman on the other hand have always been perceived as weak, fainty, delicate homemakers, and unintelligent. Their main purpose in life is to cater for the men, and take care of the house and kids. And of course they were perceived as second class citizens.

The focus of this paper is to analyze the gender issues and differences that existed in all three plays. I would like to relate and compare these issues to our past as humans and to our modern day present.

We see a wide array of controversial gender issues arise in Lysistrata. This play starts off by showing the main character as a strong independent woman. The beginning of the play focuses on Lysistrata resentment and anger toward the woman of the town. She sees her ow...

... middle of paper ...

...uff and leave the town, with out ridicule and hardship. They seemed to be “stuck';, in the sense that is very hard to leave a small town.

The role of the women was to get married, stay home and take care of the kids, while the man provides and puts food on the table. This view is still somewhat shared with our society today.

In conclusion it would be safe to say that all three plays relate gender issues to their time set. We can see many similarities within all three of these plays, and we can also see similarities that arise with our culture today. Even though today women are not treated as bad as they were. It is sad to say that even in the year 2000 women don’t have equal rights and don’t get equal treatment. Women still make .70 cents to the dollar as men. Their role is still to be the homemaker. And they hold such a small percentage of any policy making position. To think of all the lost talent and all the advances that could have been made to help our society is truly a sad and inhuman thought, that can get any one angry with our history. If one was to really think about it, the human race has not made much progress with the treatment of women.

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