Treatment Of Women In The 18th Century Essay

1.) There were many issues in the 14th-19th centuries because of injustice and unhappiness in the world. Three of these things were: unhappy marriages, women not being taken seriously as writers, and religion being restricted. Katherine Phillips, Margaret Cavendish and Anne Askew tried to fight back against these injustices.
Katherine Phillips saw women all around her in unhappy marriages. Women gave up so much in order to please their husbands. In Phillips’s poem, A Married State she wrote about women in their unhappy marriages. She wrote, “ A married state affords but little ease: The best of husbands are so hard to please” (Phillips 174). In this she discussed how in a marriage a woman is not put at ease because she is always trying to
However, women still struggled to be recognized as full human beings. Amelia Lanyer demonstrates what it meant to be a woman in the 16th century, and Margaret Cavendish demonstrated what it meant in the 17th century.
In Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women, Lanyer shows how unjust it was to believe that Eve was the downfall of man. This idea that the first woman ever created led to the downfall to man set up a very negative view women. In this piece, Layner wrote, “ Our mother Eve, who tasted of the tree, Giving to Adam what she held most dear, Was simply good and had no power to see” (Lanyer 85). She wanted the world to see that women are good and intelligent, and not dirty or the downfall of humanity. Throughout Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women, I can see that the society she lived in expected women to be perfect, but thought of them as dirty. A man, Adam, did the same thing as Eve, but he is held to a lower standard. Layner hopes to help society see that women are not perfect, but neither are men, so they should both be held just as accountable for their actions regardless of
When she wrote about leadership she wrote about conquering foes, and standing up to defend her country. In her Speech to the Troops at Tilbury, she wrote “I myself will take up arms”(Elizabeth 67). She was willing to lead her troops herself, which was very brave. Another topic the Queen touched on was love. Because of her status as Queen, she didn’t seem to have time for love, and when she did, it didn’t work out. In her poem, On Monsieur’s Departure, she wrote “I grieve and dare not show my discontent, I love and yet am forced to seem to hate” (Elizabeth 67). She was mourning the loss of a failed affair or love that had to