Thursday, October 18, 2007
HW 22- Why are men so much better?
The definition of patriarchy is as follows: A society in which fathers are the powerful reasonable heads of their families and households, and by extension, a society in which men hold a disproportionately large share of power. This term is very common in Virginia Wolf’s, “A Room of One’s Own”. On page 33 in chapter 2 it says, “The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony that England is under the rule of a patriarchy.” (Woolf) This quote basically explains how today society is as a majority run by men. There has never been a women president or vice president here. Today women’s roles in the higher power systems are becoming more common but are still lacking shared control. Looking over news papers it is very apparent that ‘men rule the world’. Mostly all stories are written by and about men. Women are continually being overpowered and shut off from high power positions and the news paper is one of the best examples to prove this.
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This assignment asks you to explain why Woolf thinks the newspaper proves that England is a patriarchy, and to what she sees to today's newspaper. I sense that you're unsure here (much of this post just restates the question).
Woolf says of the paper that man's dominance is seen in that he was "the proprietor of the paper and its editor and subeditor. He was the Foreign Secretary and the Judge. He was the cricketer...He was director of the company...he suspended the film actress..." (Woolf 33-34). The way to investigate this would be to look at what gender the heads of state and ambassadors and company owners and athletes mentioned in the New York Times were. Do the representations of men still outnumber those of women in powerful, non-domestic roles? I think this would be the way to make more in-depth comparison.
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