Comparing The Rights Of Women From Essays Through The Eras

Society has long since recognized the concept of men being superior to women, both in the aspects of physical strength and the ability to earn living for their family. It was a natural concept that based and formed the modern society: strong versus weak, superior versus inferior, non-marginalized versus marginalized. In earlier time, this concept materialized itself in the battle of the sexes, or what we knew as men versus women. Naturally, the existence of this issue provoked counteractions from the marginalized sex: women. At those times when women could not freely express their thoughts in verbal manners, they did it through writing. "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" by Mary Wollstonecraft, "Taking Women Students Seriously" by Adrienne Rich, and "The His'er Problem" by Anne Fadiman are mere few of many essays which raised the issue of women's rights in society at large. They prodded, examined, and countered these issues with logical and sometimes persuasive arguments. On the other hand, in some other essays, the essayists used a tone of such anger that clearly conveys their disgust to the way women are treated in society. The main goal, however, was the same: to prove that equality had yet to exist between men and women, and to work on achieving it.

In response to an essay published in 1970 concerning rights of men, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote "Vindication of the Rights of Women." It covered the general issues of how women were being seen and treated in the society of her era. "Taking Women Students Seriously" (1979) by Adrienne Rich, on the other hand, focused more on the educational rights of women, how they were being treated in class, how they weren't taken seriously in the manner of thoughts and expressions, and finally, how they needed to take themselves seriously in order to gain the respect they deserved. Finally, "The His'er Problem" (1998) by Anne Fadiman focused on specifically the domination of masculine aspects in the English language and literature. The three essayists, though their essays discussed the same general topic, possessed different outlooks on the way women were generally viewed in society, the implications of such views to their rights, and to what extents they could exercise those rights. These differences were influenced by the time periods in which they lived, but they had the same basic premise: women were not respected enough, and the same basic goals: women needed to work by themselves to earn that respect they deserved.

The ways society viewed women in each essayist's era were different in accordance with the growth of feminism. In Mary Wollstonecraft's essay, we could see that women were seen as the less important sex to the extreme extent by the society of her era. They are, "ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavor by satire or instructions to improve them" (559), and "are taken out of their sphere of duties, and made ridiculous and useless when the short-lived bloom of beauty is over." (560). Such remarks, though they might have been victims of hyperboles, couldn't have stemmed from mere insignificant degrading treatment from the society. These remarks showed that women, in Wollstonecraft's era, were viewed no more than objects of desire, means of reproduction which could be easily disposed and ridiculed once those of the greater sex grew bored with them. These notions might have sounded absurd, but if one were to base their opinions solely from those remarks, it was easy to see that women were treated almost with no real respect for their identities. While in Adrienne Rich's "Taking Women Students Seriously", from the way she focused more on her students and their education, we could see that women had been viewed slightly more importantly, by allowing them to attend the same level of education as men, and allowing them to stand in 'certain' platforms and give a lecture. However, as quoted from her essay, "Women students were simply not taken very seriously." (449) we can also see that they were still repressed. They weren't seen as serious, achieving individuals who needed to be given a specific education of their kind. Society simply did not believe that they would thrive by themselves, that they were still the weaker, lesser sex.

Unfortunately, these views were not mere passive views. These views set limitations to the rights which society applied to them. Under the assumption that they were unimportant and frivolous, society, which was governed almost completely by men, seemed not to see the importance of giving them enough rights to get an education, to vote, or to do many other things men could do. Adrienne Rich's "Taking Women Students Seriously" clearly showed that there were differences in the way her society treat men and women. For instance, "But despite their existence as alternate models for women, the content of education they gave us in no way prepared us to survive as women in a world organized by and for men." (449) and "But the university curriculum, the high-school curriculum, do not provide this kind of knowledge for women, the knowledge of Womankind, whose experience has been so profoundly different from that of Mankind." (451) indicated that there was segmentation between the female and the male students in the field of education. Correlating to that issue, in different era, as seen in "The His'Er Problem" by Anne Fadiman, "I believe that although my father and E.B. White were not misogynists, they didn't really see women, and their language reflected and reinforced that blind spot." (521) again, we could see that society, up to that point, still thought that women did not equal men. They didn't even do it consciously. It was just one of the values that have been ingrained in their minds, like eating, drinking, and sleeping were; values that were accepted and practiced by nature of mankind.

The application of such limitations by society, in turn, influenced the extent to which women exercised their rights. These limitations had been