The Changing Role of Women?

     Gender equality has been a factor in society probably since the beginning of society itself. Man has always found himself to be superior to woman and this image has proved itself difficult to change, even in the twenty-first century. Despite this male domination, the role of women has changed over the centuries. Or has it? In Evolving Canon II, we have looked at a broad range of texts, the earliest being John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost”, written in 1674, and the most recent being Virginia Woolf’s book A Room of One’s Own, written in 1929. Over two hundred and fifty years separate these works but has the role of women really changed in those two and a half centuries? One would hope so, but that may not be the case.

     John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” describes the exile of Satan and the other devils from Heaven and Satan’s subsequent temptation of Adam and Eve. Writing in seventeenth century England, Milton probably did not have a very progressive opinion in women, as we see Eve portrayed as totally subservient to Adam in his poem. The role of Eve in this poem is to worship Adam and to serve as his wife and servant.

     Book IV is where we first meet the couple. Right from the start, we know that the two are not equal”. The narrator describes them as

[n]ot equal, as thir sex not equal seem’d;
For contemplation hee and valor form’d,
For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace,
Hee for God only, shee for God in him: (93)

A few lines later, we get a better description of Eve. The narrator says,

[s]hee as a veil down to a slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevell’d, but in wanton ringlets wav’d
As the Vine curls her tendrils, which impli’d
Subjection, but requir’d with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best receiv’d,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay (93).

This is not an equal Eve at all. In their very creation Adam and Eve were not meant to be equal. Adam was created to think and be heroic. Eve was created to be nice and pretty to look at. Adam is to worship God; Eve is to worship the God in Adam. In this relationship, Adam is very much the superior to Eve. Even in her physical description we see such words as “subjection”, “yielded”, and “submission”. Eve is, in every sense of the phrase, a “trophy wife”. She is to look pretty, follow Adam around, do anything and everything he asks of her, and worship him, without ever giving a thought to the contrary.

Even in Eve’s words, we see evidence of this behavior. She addresses Adam as

…thou for whom
And from whom I was form’d flesh of thy flesh
And without whom am to no end, my Guide
And Head,… (97).

Another example of this worshipful, and submissive speech, is

My Author and Disposer, what thou bidd’st
Unargu’d I obey; so God ordains,
God is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise (102).

This Eve has never had an original thought. She blindly follows every instruction that Adam gives her. She never argues, never suggests something else, and never does anything to upset Adam. Every word out of her mouth flatters her husband.

     Eve is the ideal woman. She does not think for herself, obeys everything that her husband decrees, and is amazingly beautiful. What more could a man want? Certainly not a woman who could think for herself. In the seventeenth century, the idea that women should cultivate their brains and ever have anything interesting to say was unimaginable. Unfortunately, this idea has prevailed for over two centuries.

     Chapter three of Virginia Woolf’s book, A Room of One’s Own, asks the question: why have there been so few women writers. Primarily she looks at Shakespeare’s time and contemplates about what were to happen to women if they could posses the type of genius he had. She concludes that they would most likely kill themselves. (1576-1578)

     Towards the end of the chapter, Woolf explores women’s minds and the cultivation of them in her on time. What she finds is not very encouraging. She says that

Mr. Oscar Browning was wont to declare ‘that the
impression left on his mind, after looking over any set
of examination papers, was that, irrespective of the marks 
he might give, the best woman was intellectually the 
inferior of the worst man’ (1580).

These words are quite discouraging to women everywhere. Woolf goes on to quote another contemporary. She writes

there was Mr. Greg-the ‘essentials of a woman’s 
being’, said Mr. Greg emphatically, ‘are that they are 
supported by, and they minister to, men’-there was an 
enormous body of masculine opinion to the effect that 
nothing could be expected of women intellectually (1581).

Even in the early twentieth century, we unfortunately see the denial of women’s minds. In Woolf’s day, women were seen as inferior to men, especially intellectually. Even though women attended school and received formal educations, nothing much was expected of them. The role of women was to be a good wife and mother. Any thought of women receiving the same education that men did would cause men to quote extensively the words of these highly regarded men. Women seem to have been little better off in the twentieth century than in the seventeenth.

In conclusion, the role of women in both Milton and Woolf are scarily and unfortunately quite similar. We see that in both works, nothing is expected of women. Milton portrays Eve as a mindless servant of her husband, Adam. This male idea of woman has not changed when Woolf wrote her work. Men still saw women as quite intellectually inferior. Nothing was ever expected of them and they were discouraged at every step of the way. Thankfully, in the eighty years since Woolf’s book, the conception of women has changed greatly. Though in some cases women are still seen as the inferior to men, in general they are close to being equal. Hopefully, total equality will soon come.

© April 30, 2001

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