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Position of women in literary works
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How are women portrayed through literature
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Chivalric romances are often centered upon the efforts of gallant knights seeking to achieve a concept known as “true knighthood” which involves embarking on quests or adventures to obtain honor, love, and Christian virtue. The brave knights of these stories are met with many obstacles to overcome, commonly in regards to rescuing or protecting a lady. In other words, the typical role of women in this period is that of the damsel in distress or a helpless, dependent lady in need of a hero. However, the stories of Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain, the Knight of the Lion and Friedrich Heinrich Karl La Motte-Fouqué’s The Magic Ring strays from the typical role of women as the damsel in distress.
With each tale, there are different events that occur in order to reach the main topic of these tales. Within the Knight’s Tale, the Wife of Bath’s Tale, and the Pardoner's Tale, Chaucer does a phenomenal job in having these tales represent the societal problems of his era. Geoffrey Chaucer uses the Knight’s Tale to explains how love can corrupt the trust between two cousins. The knight is telling the story of Palamon and Arcita, two prisoners of wars that are locked up in a prison in the city of Athens. One day, the two look outside the prison window and see a fair young lady called, Emily.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late fourteenth century Arthurian Romance Poem. During the time of Sir Gawain, society was dominated by males with women receiving little power. Women were treated with chivalry, but not respected as beings of their own rights. Knights were prided in having the code of chivalry yet were under the assumption woman could not attain much for themselves.
Stereotypical women in the Dark Ages was controversial because they were treated with idolatry and reverence, but were not respected as capable members of the human race. Much of the chivalric code that knights prided themselves on was based on the assumption that women could not achieve much for themselves, and therefore, men had to accomplish it for them. However, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight demonstrates that women possessed the ability to achieve their demands and utilize their influence however they desired. Morgan le Fay, Guinevere, and Lady Bercilak reveal that the accurate power of women is accomplishing their goals by any means necessary, including deceiving men, even in Camelot, a society ruled by men.
For instance, it is one of the only tales that revolves around men. There is mentioning of women, but as Kruger explains it, "... women are evoked only to be excluded" (129). The absence of women suggests infertility, and thus, projects literary barrenness. Moreover, Kruger believes that the relationship between the three men is a parody of the sworn brotherhood and heterosexual love triangles found in the Knight's Tale, which also disturbs the heterosexual model of writing. Chaucer, with this tale, intended to show the dangers of the attachment to the physical and the disregard for spiritual, allegorical interpretation.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s “the Book of the Duchess”, tells a story of a knight’s personal sorrow in regards to something he has lost. At first, the knight shares his story of sorrow to the persona of Chaucer in the form of metaphors. The persona of Chaucer in this paper will be name the narrator. Upon the basic reading of the poem, it would appear that the narrator tries to comfort the knight, but ultimately fails due to the fact he does not fully understand the extent of the knight’s loss. It is not until the knight tells the narrator directly that he has lost his wife that he understands what the knight has lost.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, composed by an unknown artist, is a medieval story that follows the tale of a knight who embarks on a journey after being issued a challenge from a mysterious green stranger. During his quest, Sir Gawain, the knight, stays at a castle in the wilderness and is housed by Lord and Lady Bertilak, both of whom test his chivalric code and his Christian ideals. Lady Bertilak is a seductress and tempts Sir Gawain, though he refuses all her advances, with the exception of her kisses. Lord Bertilak is the mysterious green stranger, known as the Green Knight. Once Sir Gawain completed his task, he discovers that Morgan le Faye, a witch scorned by King Arthur, orchestrated the entire challenge in the hopes of causing King
“There’s nothing remarkable in their making a man foolish, in women winning men To sin, for Adam our father was deceived just so, and Solomon, and also Samson, Delilah was his death and later David Endured misery for Batheba’s beauty. Women ruined them: how wonderful if men could love them well, but never believe them!” (130). Ever since Adam & Eve days, females have been seen as femme fatale. As “An alluring and seductive woman, especially one who leads men into compromising and dangerous situations.
Women of the Medieval Times Women have always had a significant role in history even though they were treated horrible in most cases. During the Medieval Times was really the first time women were allowed to become more than just a house wife. The fight for equality has always been a struggle and even in today’s society is still an ongoing battle. Although women of lower and middle class were treated poorly in the Medieval Times, some powerful women held great responsibility and were looked up too by both men and children; despite being admired, “men were thought to be not only physically stronger but more emotionally stable, more intelligent, and morally less feeble” (Hopkins 5). “The position of women in the Medieval Society was greatly influenced by the views of the Roman Catholic Church” (Heeve).
Beowulf and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” are both narratives in which gender acts as an important theme within their individual communities; both have underlying meanings when it comes to defining what the role men and women in a good community should be. Or in other words, both stories paint a vivid picture of the role of women during the medieval time period, by suggesting that one gender had more power over another. However, these two narratives take alternative paths when expressing their views; Beowulf conveys its message through what is missing, while “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” incorporates satire and uses explicit narrative when telling the experience of a woman that is highly different from other women in her time. Furthermore, another difference that is appealing to the reader’s eyes, besides the way the two narratives reflect to women’s role in medieval times, is that men become the hero in Beowulf, while “the wife”, so a woman, becomes the authority figure in the story of “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” I want to first introduce the two main differences between the two narratives and then I will explain how regardless of the differences, both of these narratives’ main goal is to show that women had less power and a good community back that time was male dominated.
In the story of “The Knight’s Tale” narrated by the Knight from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, readers can experience the conflicts between two cousins after facing a similar dilemma. The dramatic tale between the cousins, named Arcite and Palamon, begins when Theseus, the Duke of Athens, discovers them in battle. Because the relatives were on the side of Creon, fighting for Thebes, Theseus decides to capture and imprison them. For many days the cousins are stuck in a lonesome room with a single window, which is where they can gaze upon a beautiful woman named Emily. Arcite and Palamon are instantly overcome with love for the alluring lady.
In the book of Wife of Bath’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer shows the role of a woman being weak creatures while men are economically powerful and educated. Women are seen as inheritor of eve and thus causes
“Courtly love” was a popular type of literature used during the Middle Ages that glorifies the romance between a noblewoman and knight. Like many writers in this time period, Chaucer gives an example of a classic plotline used in “courtly love” in the Knight’s Tale and then succeeds with the Miller’s Tale. Unlike the Knight's Tale, the Miller’s Tale gives the perspective of “courtly love” through peasants. Therefore; the concept of “courtly love” that is praised in the Knight’s tale is also satirized and mocked in the Miller’s Tale. Both tales were written to represent the drastic differences between the social classes of the Middle Ages, and the position of the Miller’s tale being placed after the Knight’s Tale displays Chaucer’s intentions
Throughout history, women have often been subjected to prejudice and an inferior status to men. Due to sexist ideologies of men believing that women are not capable of controlling their own lives, women have often been reduced to the status of property. This concept is prominent in many pieces of literature to demonstrate the struggles women have to go through in a predominantly, male structured world. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, the author illustrates a woman’s battle in an extreme society ruled by men to express the misogyny occurring in the time period when it was written, 1894. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia summarizes Atwood’s story as one that “depicts one woman’s chilling struggle to survive in a society ruled by misogynistic fascism, by which women are reduced to the condition of property.”
In this written text, the emphasis will be on Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and as well as the way Atwood portrays women and how it can be argued to show the oppression of women. The main purpose is to analyze the way women are treated throughout this book and depict why they are represented this way in the society in Gilead. Then, comparatively, observe the men’s domination over women and how they govern this society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are stripped of their rights, suffer many inequalities and are objectified, controlled by men and only valued for their reproductive qualities. The Gilead society is divided in multiple social group.
