I am Woman; Hear Me Roar! -
"Do you take this man to be your husband, to have and to hold from this day forward; for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. To love and to cherish till death do you part?" Many women cannot wait to say, "I do." to the man they love and spend the rest of their lives with him. Unfortunately, marriage and the treatment of women was not as romantic as this many centuries ago. A few writers, however, spoke out against this even when it was against normality. Their criticisms found in their stories and plays include men as figures of authority to women, the mistreatment of women, arranged marriages, suppressed sexuality, and life without true love.Traditionally, a woman was supposed to always listen and obey any man who was seen to have authority over her. However, a leading doctrine of the Enlightenment shared by these writers includes "All men [and women] are equal in respect to their rationality". Many of them often wrote about women standing up for themselves and showing incredible strength and wisdom. In School for Wives, Moliere's leading female, Agnes, is described as innocent and naive because Arnolphe had her raised to be this way. At the end of the play, tho
Because he tries to keep her all to himself, he is criticized and is murdered. In her conversation with Arnolphe, she teaches him more about life and love than he ever thought he knew. Other writers in the pre-Enlightenment era were more direct about their opinions of sex than Moliere. Denying love from ones life or simply not having it causes that person to be incomplete and in a sense, wounded. By Moliere discrediting his class, he is also discrediting his actions towards Agnes. She in fact does not even know what sex is except that she likes it when Horace touches her. Women of Middle Ages and Renaissance eras were often treated as possessions belonging to the male figure of the family whether it be the husband, father, or the next closest male figure in her life. Even a woman's unsatisfied sexual desires were a good enough reason for her to leave her husband. In School for Wives, Moliere illustrates through Arnolphe the idea that love is painful and can only be healed by a lover. For example, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote many stories in the Decameron about the self-fulfillment of women who are in mismatched marriages. In this day, women were often seen as extremely sexual and it was often thought that no one man would ever be able to satisfy any one woman. In School for Wives, Moliere does not directly speak out against it, but his references are strong. Marie de France depicts this idea in The Lais of Marie de France. In the story Guigemar, a knight denies love and is therefore incomplete. If a woman's husband is jealous and does not satisfy her needs, than she has every right to find another man who will.
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Acceptance Essays
