Men - Women relationships: Feminine Screams of Revolt and Complaints and Male Oppression

Feminine Screams Of Revolt and Complaints vs Male Oppression

The first and most well known women’s screams of revolt against marriage and male oppression appeared relatively recently. Listen to some of them:

‘Tis hard we should be by the man despised,

Yet kept from knowing what would make us prized;
Debarred form knowledge, banished from the schools,

And with the utmost industry bred fools.
Mary Chudleigh, 1656-1710, English poet, Poems, The Ladies defence.

A woman can hardly ever choose… She is dependent on what happens to her. She must take meaner things, because only meaner things are within her reach.
Mary Ann Evans (George Elliot), 1819-1880, English writer, Felix Hold

But we may ask: why have these complaints appeared just two or three centuries ago. And why don’t more echoes of the feminine revolt and oppressive situation exist? Or why didn’t Heloise – so cult, so intelligent – turn against Abelard and his cold logic when he demanded her to shut up?

There are many explanations to those whys, of course.

In the case of Heloise and Abelard there is a powerful smoke screen (there are those who defend that Heloise’s letters are apocryphal, which entangles all possible explanations...)

And there are also strong and more general explanations, namely those related to the weight of past prejudice and social oppression – allied to illiteracy. These factors may have knocked down even the most heroic and intelligent women.

But within the other possible explanations, there is one that deserves our reflection. In fact, it isn’t exactly an explanation, but a reason that can explain the absence of revolt. An element that can be considered as provocative by feminists. A very simple argument: maybe men weren’t as dominant and brutal as we sometimes imagine.

Maybe in many societies and situations, the private relationships between men and women weren’t as degraded and perverted as we now sometimes conceive.

Yes. Why not? Human nature is complex. And the average dominated woman may well had the cleverness and capacity of escaping from male social dominance within the intimacy of the family. We have to admit it...

Books, Films, Cultural Stuff on feminism, love, sex, men and women nature and other related issues? See Love Essays Store (in association with Amazon)

Quotations
Complaints and ancient feminist echoes

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.
Mary Ann Evans (George Elliot), 1819-1880, English writer, Middlemaarch

Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759-1797, English feminist and writer, The wrongs of woman

I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.
Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759-1797, English feminist and writer, A vindication of the Rights of Women

Wife and Servant are the same
But only differ in the name.
Mary Chudleigh, 1656-1710, English poet, Poems, To the Ladies.

Men are vile inconstant toads.
Mary Montagu, 1689-1762, English writer and feminist, Letter to Anne Justice

You must be proud if you’ll be wise.
Mary Chudleigh, 1656-1710, English poet, Poems To the Ladies.

The labour of women in the house, certainly enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.
Charlotte. P. Gilman, 1860-1915, American writer and feminist, Women and Economics

The foolish and cruel notion that a wife is to obey her husband has sent more women to the grave than to the courts for a divorce
Lemuel K. Washburn, 1846-1927, American writer, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays

Quotations Complaints and ancient feminist echoes

Quotations
Complaints and ancient feminist echoes