Essay On Objectification Of Women In Ovid
Are women viewed as equals in the Tales From Ovid or are they no more than objects? Some argue that Ovid shows a sympathetic side for women due to how much he poured into their characters, but there is a difference between the author portraying women sympathetically and to how they were actually treated in the book. Women are objectified in Ovid rather than viewed as equals to men which can be clearly seen in the accounts of Pygmalion, the excursions of Jupiter, Tereus, and other violations enacted upon women. Pygmalion, in searching for the perfect woman, creates the perfect woman out of ivory, furthering the argument that women are objectified in Ovid. In this way, Pygmalion is showing that the woman he creates, has nothing more to offer than her looks, which is the epitome of a woman being objectified. Ovid states, “Yet he [Pygmalion] dreamed of women./ He dreamed/ Unbrokenly awake asleep/ The perfect body of a perfect woman,/...So he had made a woman/
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These stories matter because when Ovid was writing these stories, it was in the times of the Roman Empire, in which appalling acts, like ones in Ovid, were enacted. It’s like Ovid is trying to reveal to the Romans the revolting acts that they themselves participate in. This gives the reader, in modern times, to have a better understanding of the intensity of the heinous acts that were enacted during that time.
Bibliography
Greene, Ellen. "Sexual Politics in Ovid's Amores: 3.4, 3.8, and 3.12." Classical Philology 89, no.
4 (1994): 344-50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/270604.
Hughes, Ted. Ovid. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.
In class notes. February 23.
James, Paula. Ovid's Myth of Pygmalion on Screen : In Pursuit of the Perfect Woman. London:
Continuum, 2011. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed February 27,
These stories matter because when Ovid was writing these stories, it was in the times of the Roman Empire, in which appalling acts, like ones in Ovid, were enacted. It’s like Ovid is trying to reveal to the Romans the revolting acts that they themselves participate in. This gives the reader, in modern times, to have a better understanding of the intensity of the heinous acts that were enacted during that time.
Bibliography
Greene, Ellen. "Sexual Politics in Ovid's Amores: 3.4, 3.8, and 3.12." Classical Philology 89, no.
4 (1994): 344-50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/270604.
Hughes, Ted. Ovid. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.
In class notes. February 23.
James, Paula. Ovid's Myth of Pygmalion on Screen : In Pursuit of the Perfect Woman. London:
Continuum, 2011. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed February 27,