Free Athenian Women Essays and Papers

Treatment of Women throughout Othello Lamentably, sexism raises its ugly head even in such an unquestionably great tragedy as William Shakespeare’s Othello.  Let us pursue a study of the problem in this essay. In William Shakespeare: The Tragedies, Paul A. Jorgensen describes the sexist “brothel scene” in Othello: The “brothel scene” (4.2), sadistically cruel because in it he talks to Desdemona as to a whore, is yet full of tearful agony and even ardent tenderness. It redeems him

Othello: the Discrimination Against Women Yes, even in Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello there is considerable sexism.  Let us root out and analyze instances of obvious sexism in this play. Even the noble general yielded to the sexist remarks and insinuations of his ancient, thus developing a reprehensible attitude toward his lovely and faithful wife. Angela Pitt in “Women in Shakespeare’s Tragedies” comments on the Moor’s sexist treatment of Desdemona: Desdemona has, therefore

Male View of Hysteria Presented in The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" has been viewed as either a work of supernatural horror or as a feminist treatise regarding the role of women in society. A close analysis of Gilman's use of symbols reveals "The Yellow Wallpaper" as her response to the male view of hysteria from ancient times through the nineteenth century. " In "The Yellow Wallpaper" Gilman questions the validity of Hippocrates's theory of

Shakespeare and the members of the Elizabethan era would be appalled at the freedoms women experience today.  The docility of Elizabethan women is almost a forgotten way of life. What we see throughout Shakespeare’s plays is an insight into the female character as perceived by Elizabethan culture.  Shakespeare’s female characters reflect the Elizabethan era’s image of women; they were to be virtuous and obedient and those that were not were portrayed as undesirable and even evil. When one considers

Room of One's Own in 1929, the 80 plus year period brought tremendous change to literature and for women authors. In the early Victorian era when women writers were not accepted as legitimate, Emily Bronte found it necessary to pen her novel under the name "Mr. Ellis Bell" according to a newspaper review from 1848 (WH  301).   According to The Longman Anthology of British Literature, "Women had few opportunities for higher education or satisfying employment" (1794) and the "ideal Victorian

Shakespeare and the Feminist Manifesto "Unruly women," "outlaws," "the female Wild," "the Other": these are some of the provocative terms used by feminist scholars in recent years to refer to Shakespeare's heroines. They have helped us to take a fresh look at these characters while we are reevaluating the position of women within our own society. But are Shakespeare's women really unruly? It would be anachronistic to believe that he created rebellious feminists in an age that had never heard the

of storytelling and turning it upside down in order to dig through to its core - its very essence - and fill it in with her own art.  The resultant caves are denser, more detailed and, consequently, often darker than the literary creations of other women writers of her time.  To craft them, Woolf manipulates both the direction and span of time, includes literary allusions, and crafts her sentences so as to better develop her characters' relationships to her themes and each other. In A Sketch

is truly outstanding: a work that exposes the gender stereotypes of its day (1936) but that moves beyond documentary to reveal something of the perennial antagonisms of human nature. From the story's first sentence, upon the introduction of two women of "ripe but well-cared-for middle age," it becomes clear that stereotypes are at issue (Wharton 1116).  This mild description evokes immediate images of demure and supportive wives, their husbands' wards.  Neither woman is without her "handsomely

of The Awakening, Mr. Pontellier poses the question, "If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it?" (Chopin 7). He reflects the general belief of his time that women should be mothers who give up themselves for the more important needs of their children. He believes that women should be self-sacrificing beings who never take and always give. He thinks, just as other men believed during this time period, that she should be the "angel of the house," catering to his every

available to women. With the emergence of an industrial working class that arrived from the farms and countryside new theories and ideologies about the political economy began to appear. Karl Marx, a political philosopher during this time, introduced the idea of "alienation of labor". His theory proposed that labor has the ability to create a loss of reality in the laborer because the laborer himself becomes a commodity or object due to the nature of work. In terms of the roles of women it can be