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Historical Gender Roles In The Rainbow Serpent

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Stories often reveal details of how given societies and cultures were structured. They provide an insight into historical ways of thinking, and how those ways of thinking were then applied. An example of this insight is creation myths. These are stories about how the world was created and how it came to be. Creation myths vary culturally, and yet they all have one thing in common: creation beings. The number of beings involved in the creation of the world ranges throughout different myths, but it’s rare to find an example in which a Godlike figure is not present. Understanding how these figures are written is then a key aspect of studying historical gender roles and norms. There are a multitude of female creation figures. Despite the fact that …show more content…

She made laws to protect these creatures, and of those who followed them, “she turned into a human form, and gave each of them his own totem of the animal, bird, or reptile whence they came” (Oodgeroo, 4). Those who did not follow her laws were turned to stone and acted as mountains and hills for others to use. This story does not place women in a box. The Rainbow Serpent can be a maternal being and kind to those she takes care of, even being referred to as “the Mother of Life”, but she can punish them and exert force as well. Although it would be somewhat of a stretch to call her a feminist figure in creation myths, it can (at the very least) be said that her tale is much more nuanced than that of a typical female creation figure. All of these stories, in one way or another, place value on historical gender roles. They were created under the belief that men are one way, women are another, and that women who did not adhere to this were dangerous (such as Olokun, whose behavior more closely emulated expectations of male dominance). Because of this, all that a woman could be in creation was a mother or a

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