Eunuch Character Analysis

The treatment and creation of eunuchs is generally telling of historical views of gender in major empires. Despite the stigmas against them, eunuchs were made to fit by the very people who thought they were wrong. In the book Maurice by E. M. Forster, there happens a scene where a couple men bully a flamboyant character named Risely for his mannerism and they hurt him by calling him a eunuch. This is quickly followed by the line of someone coming to his rescue, saying, "You could call your cousin a shit if you liked, but not a eunuch." It is peculiar that the term eunuch has such a negative tinge when the people, those who were eunuchs in the past had much more vivid, complex lives then they were given credit for today. A eunuch is essentially a synonym for a castrated man, usually castrated before adolescence, so that he never hits puberty in his
Many were equally sexually exploited, insulted and considered half-people. The worldwide tales of eunuchs were rarely a studied angle of society, due to the long retained stigma against feminine men, and their small, but important, numbers, which made a minority. As the last Chinese court eunuch died in 1996, eunuchs remain an angle we may never see again to the point they once were. Many generations watched this mutilation happen in masses. Keeping eunuchs was as distinct and normal to certain societies of the past as keeping women in pens. On that note, eunuchs were the protectors of these woman's under the voice of the men who controlled them. Looking at examples mainly from the Ottoman, Chinese and Christian empires, three large historical patriarchies with heterosexual constructions of gender, it’s central to look into what made someone become a eunuch as the social order generally blamed eunuchs for being grotesque but did not blame the institutions which created a demand for them because the institutions were too