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Comparing Quran And Ovid's Metamorphoses

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Essay 2: Views On Women

Over many epics, across different cultures around the world, the role of woman is widely shaped differently throughout all of these written works. Most of these differences derive from cultural aspects that are worlds wide in conflicting views and beliefs. One view point that is interpreted differently in epics is the role in which women portray and how women are viewed in society. When comparing and contrasting the Quran and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we find conflicting opinions on how these woman are portrayed and how cultural society treats them in a gender role-ruled culture.
When discussing the role of women in the Quran and the Islamic culture, women are seen as obedient and servants to their husbands. When looking at the Quran, the holy book itself outlines the word of god for the Islamic culture. This holy book also describes many roles and qualities a person …show more content…

The women in this epic are shown as either one extreme or the other with no in between. Either obedient virgins who run from the gods in the fear of getting raped, or vengeful and malicious women who are in the hunt for revenge. A prominent theme in metamorphoses is that these women in fact do not have an in-between state, just one extreme or the other. Ovid also uses this as a great contrast between different female characters in each of his books. This can be seen in the contrast between Io, the water nymph who is taken and raped by Jove against her will, and Juno the vengeful goddess who takes her revenge on Io. Metamorphoses portrays women as very sexual creatures and are blamed because their beauty attracts the Gods ‘attention. In this epic, women have more of a stronger portrayal an independent presence. This epic doesn’t portray very many obedient female characters, rather it displays defiant ones. When compared to the female presence in the Quran, Metamorphoses had drastically different views on

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