Patriarchy
Patriarchy is social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line. Broadly control by men of large share of the power. In today’s essay I will be analyzing patriarchy in detail, and comparing the lifestyle of Nora Helmen, Oseki Harada and Damini from Broken Ties. In detail I will explain how men in these plays/novels played a huge role over the control over women, and how it shows how man dominated over women by controlling large share of the power. How do husbands compare and share the same dominance over women? Are these men oppressors? Are these men aware of their situations and their wife’s situation? Do I agree with these oppositions against women? Or do I support men as being oppressors? In a comparison to husband’s dominance over their wife’s were different in many ways such as A Doll’s House and The Thirteenth Night, where Oseki was being abused by her husband.
Let us begin by first analyzing what is patriarchy? Patriarchy is a family, group, or government controlled by man or a group of men. Patriarchy is perfectly represented in “The Thirteenth Night” as Oseki is being abused by her husband who has the complete control over her. But in the novel of Broken Ties patriarchy is represented differently as Srivilas’ does not have complete control over her, but instead supports his wife on what she is struggling. A Doll’s House on the other hands is presented closely to Oseki’s situation; as Helmer “pinches her ear, and calls her by pet names, such as Squirrel, and Mouse, and Bird”; Helmer’s names for his doll-wife range from “little spendthrift” and “little lark” to “sulky squi...
... middle of paper ...
...t were given that women could not divorce or had to obey their husbands. The text questions that are being asked here reveal injustice by showing what type of people these men were, and how patriarchy gave them the right to dominate over women for centuries.
Legacy of patriarchy still lasts over many countries, where women do not have the right to choose their husband, nor can they divorce them if they are being abused by them. A Doll’s House, and The Thirteenth Night precisely represent how women were treated before the late 19th to 20th century before women got their rights. For centuries women were abused and treated bad, but could not divorce nor could leave their husbands because they were under complete control of their husbands. As of today many parts of the world granted the rights to women to choose what is right for them if they are being treated badly.
It was the research of Dobash and Dobash, a husband and wife team from Wales, that first posited that “intimate partner violence is the result of male oppression of women within a patriarchal system in which men are the primary perpetrators and women the primary victims” (McPhail, B. A., Busch, N. B., Kulkarni, S., & Rice, G., 2007). According to Lawson (2012), feminist theories treat the problem of intimate partner violence as fundamentally related to the patriarchal domination of men over women. Historically, patriarchy was the dominant social structure from early Greek and Roman civilizations where women were considered to be the property of their father, if unmarried, and their husband if married. As such, women were often beaten, burned, and killed for not being obedient to a man’s
The article “Spousal Abuse” discusses that Victorian perception of religion, domestic principles, and laws allows men to justify “wife-beating.” Domestic violence during Victorian times is mainly attributed to the idea that the man is the ruler in all worlds. The man’s responsibility of being a protector is the main idea in contributing to domestic violence.
“Grandpére,” Anna’s husband, reveled in the “man’s pleasure” and beat his wife whenever he so desired (Lee 131). Traditionally, in patriarchal societies, the man was the head of the household. He was the one with all of the power, his desires and decisions were law. Anna’s husband embodies this traditional, powerful role of head of the family. He viewed both his w...
The movement for female right is one of the important social issue and it is ongoing reaction against the traditional male definition of woman. In most civilizations there was very unequal treatment between women and men with the expectation being that women should simply stay in the house and let the men support them. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, and Trifles, by Susan Glaspell, are two well-known plays that give rise to discussions over male-female relationships. In both stories, they illustrate the similar perspectives on how men repress women in their marriages; men consider that women should obey them and their respective on their wives is oppressed showing the problems in two marriages that described in two plays. Therefore, in this essay, I will compare two similar but contrast stories; A Doll's House and Trifles, focusing on how they describe the problems in marriage related to women as victims of suppressed right.
In Hugo Schwyzer’s article “Janae’s Legs” he discusses the concept of homosociality and reveals the male-centeredness of patriarchy. Although he does not make this exact claim, homosociality is one of the reasons behind the continuation of patriarchy. Schwyzer defines homosociality as “the idea that men are raised in our culture to be more eager to please other men tha...
All throughout the early part of history women were portrayed as the inferior sex, because at that point in time, women were seen as beings only born to have children. Men didn’t think that women were capable of being anything other than a typical housewife. It was unthinkable that women would actually need an education, let alone earn a living, or become a leader. These ideas are revealed all throughout classical literature. Rarely was a woman seen as doing anything but being dominated by males in some form, whether she was a man’s submissive devoted wife, a sexual object, or a woman being punished for wanting her freedom. We finally begin to see women trying to break free from these traditional expectations and barriers through the lives of Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, John’s wife in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Louise Mallard in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, and Songlian in Raise the Red Lantern by Su Tong.
“Women have the domestic lifestyle and men have the public lifestyle” (McKee 9). McKee explains how women are given their roles to take care of children and the home because of the title of a mother. Women weren’t considered emotionally stable to be the provider in the family in the nineteenth century. (9) McKee defines the term masculinity as being characterized by dominance and aggression, whereas femininity being passive and submissive. “During these time periods if men or women switched these traits it was known to be unacceptable and inappropriate” (McKee 33). The role of the wife in Ibsen’s “A Doll House” shows how the female tried to take dominant trait and it backfired on her. Nora also held a secret from her husband, due to the anger it would cause. Which fits the masculinity description as being
Women fed into the patriarchal system unintentionally. Society raised them to act and think the ways they did. Women were encouraged by example of their mothers to be submissive to male direction. For example, Mrs. Beauchamp at first hesitated to help the poor, sic...
Jo G. Holland’s article, The Feminization of the Community Corrections Work Force, was published in Corrections Magazine (Holland, 2008, pp. 44-47). It discusses issues related to women in the corrections profession, including historical male domination, barriers for women, and the challenges ahead.
explores not only the way in which patriarchal society, through its concepts of gender , its objectification of women in gender roles, and its institutionalization of marriage, constrains and oppresses women, but also the way in which it, ultimately, erases women and feminine desires. Because women are only secondary and other, they become the invisible counterparts to their husbands, with no desires, no voice, no identity. (Wohlpart 3).
In every society, the difference between genders leads to different roles and lifestyles depending on the culture of each society. While there may be similarities between gender roles among many societies, the explanations tend to be different from culture to culture. The society depicted in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is reminiscent of an Ancient Greek or Roman society, where the men are considered to be strong warriors and breadwinners, and the women are looked at as objects, whose main duty is to tend to the children and obey the husband without a question. While at first glance, the Shakespearean play Tempest seems different from Achebe’s book, in reality, similar themes lie at its center, including the abuse of women and male power dominating throughout the play. While the only female character is a young girl, who is a puppet of his father’s will, she has courage to be honest and to stand up against her father on more than one occasion, exhibiting an innate female power like Ekwefi in Things Fall Apart. Hence these two works, while written three hundred years apart and showing two societies at the opposite ends of colonization, illustrate that the gap between them is not as big as one would think when it comes to society’s gender roles.
For thousands of centuries literature has been used as a clever device to show the negative outlook in which society has on women at that time. The common theme of men exploiting women for personal gain and using their heavy-handed power to make women feel inferior can be seen in writings from the ancient Greeks all the through authors of the 20th century. Writers and intellectual thinkers such as Plato, Peter Abelard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henrik Ibsen, and even women such as Virgina Wolfe, and Fatima Mernissi have all written about the struggles caused by domineering men which women have fought against for so long. It is not until the late twentieth century that we see a positive almost spiritual view of women from the stories told by Gao Xingjan in his book One Man’s Bible. The 1994 publication of Fatima Mernissi’s memoirs of her girlhood in a harem spoke powerfully in favor of women shedding prescribed gender roles in favor of embracing their own identities. It is books such as Fatima’s and Gao’s which will help carry out feminist movements into the 21st century.
Women are looked at as less than males, and males are to be far superior because society thought male to be the better gender. “A Doll's House,” by Henrik Isben describes the sacrificial role of nineteenth century women , men in society and in the household.
Women have always been essential to society. Fifty to seventy years ago, a woman was no more than a house wife, caregiver, and at their husbands beck and call. Women had no personal opinion, no voice, and no freedom. They were suppressed by the sociable beliefs of man. A woman’s respectable place was always behind the masculine frame of a man. In the past a woman’s inferiority was not voluntary but instilled by elder women, and/or force. Many, would like to know why? Why was a woman such a threat to a man? Was it just about man’s ability to control, and overpower a woman, or was there a serious threat? Well, everyone has there own opinion about the cause of the past oppression of woman, it is currently still a popular argument today.
Violence against women appeared from a long time ago and happened in every country. It caused pain in both mental and physical for women. There were so many people trying to stop this problem but it was still not completely fixed. There are many reasons that lead to this issue all over the world. After many surveys and investigations, we realized that the main reason is Discrimination and Unequal power. Some legends and stories in the past made people think men’s role is more important than women’s role in society. And because men are stronger, more active than women so they can do more work. This also makes people think men deserve more rights than women. They soon forced on human’s mind that men are also...