Literature Representations of Women

Essay Question: Discuss the representation of women in at least 3 works from 3 different cultures, identifying similarities and differences. Be sure that you select at least one work from before the midterm and one after the midterm. Before the advent of women as professional writers, literature portrayed them as an inferior class. This is exemplified in the book of Genesis and Euripides' "Medea". It was not until Christine de Pizan's The Mutation of Fortune and The …

…ladies appear to tell her something that she was, on some level, already aware of: that all of the negative portrayals of women in texts were written by men. They also purport that many of the writers were writing fiction so these stories are not to be taken as fact. Through the course of this story, de Pizan realizes her own accomplishments and begins the process of empowering contemporary as well as future generations women.