Sarah Stickney Ellis was a firm believer that women should accept their inferiority to men and devote themselves to the happiness and moral elevation of their brothers, sons and husbands. I must say that when I first scammed Ellis work, I had no interest of reading more because I was like ‘inferiority’ what? She had no idea what she was writing about…but then I had to read her closely to see where she is coming form. I would use the word ‘superiority’ instead…Okay; gentlemen do not be mad keep reading the blog I will explain down the line..:)
For Ellis, men are born selfish, proud and sometimes with a shaking integrity, she added, “he has stood corrected before the clear eye of woman, as it looked directly to the naked truth.” (P1893) The author was trying to tell us that men need women strength in order to succeed; before I came in this country, I always heard my parents or even my teachers at say that “behind any successful man hide a woman”, I kind of understood that before but now it is confirmed. This is where to me women ‘superiority’ come from, they have the natural power to balance or manage everyone life around them, however this is not 100% always true. (Again will clear that up later) Ellis was very proud of her country England which is a great thing we all should be proud of where we are coming from in order to succeed; this is one of the strength Americans have over a lot of nation ‘believe in who you are first and you will succeed.' Ellis wrote, “The women of England, possessing the grand privilege of being better instructed than those of any other country, in the minutiae of domestic comfort, have obtained a degree of importance in society far beyond what their unobtrusive virtues would appear to claim.” (P1893) I agree Ellis; there is no reason why not, because women went to special school in order to overcome this challenge and I also agree when you said, “the influence of women in counteracting the growing evils of society is about to be more needed than ever.” (P1893) I am not sure if Ellis was clear about women being as educated as men, but I think that women needed to balance education, work and caring for their family to deserve full credit. Further more Ellis said that women needed to have a brain in order to give advise to their brother and husbands, they needed that to have a decent conversation with either (she definitely was for women education).
I agreed with all the point that Ellis made; I must also say that men are also capable of achieving what women do if they want and if they had a good education (relative to the home education that their mothers gave them.) It is just natural for women to care for others than men but form my own experience I know it is possible. It could be the other way around sometimes when a woman is less worthy than man; it all goes back to the fact that human being outcome is not 100% accurate…
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3 comments:
Kassia,
You do a nice job here of presenting your interesting take on Ellis's view of women. Normally I find students disagreeing with her!
I liked your view of Ellis's "The women of England." I disagreed with most of what she said the first time I read it so it was interesting to see the other side of things. I like the phrase Behind every successful man is a woman (or something like that). That definitely holds true for most cases. I enjoyed reading your post! :)
This is an interesting take on "The Women of England" because I read it to be just the opposite. I thought that she was saying that men were inferior and that women should devote their lives to making the men in their lives happy. Reading this passage made me see how far woman have actually come since this was written. Good interpretation.
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