Role of Women

Side by side with history, the role of women has evolved overtime; slowly working away from their often subjective role in society. This essay will analyze the role of women in some of the older works in history such as Beowulf and will continue throughout history discussing Oedipus, Things Fall Apart, Pride and Prejudice, and futuristic novels such as 1984.

One of the first literary works in history, Beowulf, portrayed a very subjective role of women. The book was written between the eighth and eleventh century and is one of the first known literary works to this day. In the book, the woman either had the role of hostess, peace keeper, or monster. As the role of hostess, the woman's duty was to be the best server to the husband and guests as she could be. Women were used as peacekeepers if they were seen to be very desirable and then were traded off to allies or between two nations that were undergoing conflicts with each other as a means of keeping peace or showing close ties. Additionally, the women could be seen as evil, someone who was mischievous or promiscuous who roped innocent men in and caused infidelity. In addition, the book does little to even mention women and throughout the book there is little done to discuss them as any type of leading characters. Overall, they are disregarded and the book focuses more on just one character, Beowulf, and his heroic accomplishments (White). The only time a woman's role is really even mentioned is when it is used to enhance or describe a particular story. The only important character in the book who is a woman is Grendal's mother, but that does little to credit the book because she is not even a real woman with real woman features. Instead, she is a horrible beastly monster. The role of women did however progress and eventually women were actually featured as leading characters that gave books and plays character and better story lines such as the plays of Oedipus.

Oedipus was written by Sophocles between 430 and 420 BCE. Throughout the plays, women have various roles. The book starts out with the first woman, Oedipus's mother and wife, being seen as a fool because she married Oedipus not realizing that he was her son and failed to connect the dots that were very obvious. This portrayal provided irony as well as a negative view of women as unintelligent beings. Throughout the rest of the plays women mostly had a caregiving role such as Oedipus's daughter taking care of him after he was blinded. In the last of the three plays (Antigone), Oedipus's daughter even takes the role as the rebellious main character. This gallant role is still put down by the male leaders of the time in the book, but it was a big step away from how women were portrayed in Beowulf because women were mentioned more and had leading roles that different from societal norms. Also, due to the fact that Antigone was written closer to the end of Sophocles' life, it could be said that the role of women was progressing in his own society or he disagreed with the conformities that women were supposed to adhere to such as not speaking out against their male counterparts.

Things Fall Apart, written by Chinua Achebe, was very similar to Oedipus on the basis of the themes of exile and pride, but was very different towards the overall treatment of women. Even though the book was written after Oedipus, in Things Fall Apart women were treated with more cruelty and subjectivity most likely due to the fact that the two cultures that the books were written in differed. Things Fall Apart is solely based on African culture where tribes have great prominence and men may have more than one wife. Just as in Beowulf how women were given as peacekeepers, in Things Fall Apart women were sold by their fathers as wives to men and often went to the highest bidder or the most prominent community