We have, more or less, as an audience become used to the idealized depiction of women. Often, particularly in classical styles, they were portrayed as reclining nudes who were there for the viewer’s pleasure. With averted eyes, they touched themselves sensually, typically innocent and oblivious that there is someone painting her for all to see. When they weren’t sexual-fantasy fodder, they were servile and obedient–particularly […]

Germania, written by the Roman Cornelius Tacitus in 98 A. D, is a historical work on the warlike Germanic tribes located north of the Danube and the Rhine rivers. Anthropology is the study of societies, cultures, and origins of human races. In Germania, Tacitus describes the inhabitants, customs, and society of these Germanic tribes giving valuable anthropological insight. Tacitus specifically describes the role women held […]

Timeline The steady change in their position can be highlighted by looking at what has been achieved by women in the country: 1848: Jyotirao Phule, along with his wife Savitribai Phule, opened a school for girls in Pune, India. Savitribai Phule became the first woman teacher in India. 1879: John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune established the Bethune School in 1849, which developed into the Bethune College […]

Diego Velasquez and Jan Vermeer were two of the most significant artists of Western Europes Baroque period.  When I first began this research, I envisioned talking only about the many differences in their works. I have since learned that they share many things in common. In this paper will use two works of art, Velasquez Las Meninas (The Ladies in Waiting) and Vermeers Woman Holding […]

Equality has been a controversial issue ever since time began. Whether it be race, sex, or religion, it has always been an unsettled topic of concern. Equality between men and women is often brought into society. I think men and women should be treated equal from all perspectives. Gender is what makes women different from men, but does not make women incapable of compiling valuable […]

Sympathy is defined as having feelings of sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. In a novel, sympathizing in a character allows the reader to relate to them. In Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”, there is no female character with whom we can sympathize. However, at various points within the novel we do offer our brief condolences to each character. Throughout the novel Daisy Buchanan appears enigmatic to […]

“Rachel Weeping for Her Children”: Black Women and the Abolition of Slavery by Margaret Washington Photograph of Sojourner Truth, 1864. (Gilder Lehrman Collection) During the period leading up to the Civil War, black women all over the North comprised a stalwart but now largely forgotten abolitionist army. In myriad ways, these race-conscious women worked to bring immediate emancipation to the South. Anti-slavery Northern black women […]

What would you do if you were given what you thought was the perfect life and it suddenly seemed to turn upside-down? Would you jump to your death or climb back up? “The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window” by Joy Harjo is a poem about a women who is lost in this big world we live in and trying to find herself while […]

At the beginning of the twentieth century British women were seen as second-class citizens. This started to change in 1900, as women desired the right to vote and they were prepared to do anything it required to obtain it. Their goal was prolonged because of the many hurdles along the way and they didn’t get the vote for many years. Many of the hurdles they […]

The oppression of women as women PHIL 202 – Assignment 1 26/01/2012 The patriarchal society in which we live has systematically oppressed women for centuries. It is not until extremely recent history, with the Women’s Liberation Movement, that women have been able to take meaningful strides towards a more equal and just society. We have come a long way since that time, women can now […]