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Gender Roles: A Literary Analysis

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Quotation:
“Once it was simply assumed that gender was socially constructed but firmly rooted in biological sexual differences. Now there are many feminist scholars who argue that such differences are made important and central because they keep the male-dominant power structure” (Anderson and Young 206).
My Questions:
Why are women portrayed the way they are in the bible of other sacred texts? How did gender roles form? Were roles based on gender simply created to maintain a power dominance? If roles are sent by God and considered tradition, then why have they changed over the history of Christianity?
Reflection:
While completing this chapter on Christianity, I found a common theme on how gender roles or differences are used to justify discrimination and sexism …show more content…

Women are described as temptress, servants to men, evil, simply a body, and more likely to sin. This idea can be seen in the quote, “…Women were equated with the body and men with the mind. This made women sexually dangerous to men. According to Augustin, women are more carnal than men and therefore more subject to temptation and sin” (Anderson and Young 182) It is almost as if they are saying the women have no control over their actions and must be controlled, which hands all the power over to the men. Women were expected to take care of their children, their house, and their husbands.
Women very seldom had leadership roles within the church, such as ordination. However, women were expected to be the first teachers of Christianity to their children. “The home came to be seen as the first site of Christian learning, and it was the responsibility of mother to teach their children what it meant to be a good Christian” (Anderson and Young 192). This fact surprised me because women aren’t seen worthy enough to teach or preach to a congregation, but are given the responsibility to introduce their children to the religion. It is this fact that makes me believe that women being unable to be ordained

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The changes in gender roles weren’t making everyone happy for examples in the story of The Kingdom of Matthias, Robert Matthews started a religious cult in New York during the 1830’s he came to believe that he was indeed not Robert Matthews, but instead he was Matthias, Prophet of the God of the Jews. Matthias was not happy with any of the changes that was happening in the roles of women, and he was not going to support any of it. His wife Margaret was suffering from the person he had become, he was extremely controlling and once told her that, “She had no God, that the husband was the savior of the wife, that as man was not whole without woman” (Johnson and Wilentz 80). Matthias was bitter because the women of this time had changed into

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Always being told the men in the bibles and the biblical stories were the heroes or the good people, while she was also always told that the more inferior and weaker ones were the women such as Eve, who bit into the apple, who was the “first sinner”. In Society around that time and even many years ago, It was extremely common practice in the church and society that the belief was that men were on the top, the strongest, wisest and smartest. And that women were in second place, inferiors, weaker and submissive to all. Almost all feminine figures in the church were seen as inferior to the men, seen as whores, seen as only mothers and wives. So to only see and hear these kinds of things keeps you in this place where all you believe is that you as a woman are inferior to men and others, that you have no place besides being a wife and mother.

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