What was the expected role of women in Shakespeare’s time?
Women were viewed as property in the Elizabethan Era. Virginia Woolf wrote of the inequalities that women experienced but made it so that it did not lean too far to one-sided extreme feminist view. If she had, people may have not read what she had to say. She described how at a young age of thirteen to fourteen girls were sent of to be married. The family or in other words, the father, decided who his daughter was to marry. There was no dating her father’s choice and then if she did not care for him, have her father choose another. His first choice was her final choice. This is very disturbing to think that a woman had to obey every man in her life and all huge decisions that impacted her, were made by others. Divorce was not even a possibility while a woman’s husband had the “right” to beat her if she did not follow his orders or just because he felt like it. There would be no one to turn to and no one to save you. Feelings of helplessness would consume the women, I’m sure.
Women complain of inequalities today, but I am glad that we have made it as far as we have from this narrow thinking. It is a scary thought to have my father’s choice of men be who I ended up being smacked around by. Virginia Woolf made these happenings real by writing of them.
4 comments:
I agree with what you said, because I'm glad that things changed also because girls father are not suppose to choose who the daughter date becasue it's her choice. This proves how men think they were in control that they can do what they want without asking a woman's permission.
Good job! You mad good points. Basically men were not fair to women.
Excellent summary, woman did have very few rights back then and all their choices were made for them.
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