Veerginia Women's Rights

In recent history, a focal point of attention has been placed on the issue of Women's Rights and an increased role for women in society. One would think that the spirit of most of these sweeping social reforms can be traced back to ideas in Ancient Rome, but after reading Roman literature, I have come to realize that the role of women in ancient roman life was an incredibly small one. It seems that in ancient Rome, women were seen as equal, but were anything but in practice. In the stories of Lucretia and Verginia, both women aren't really a key part of the story, but rather just a problem or inciting incident of the story. One could see this to an extreme degree in the story of Verginia, where in the text Verginia says next to nothing the
entire time. The theme of both stories is that women are helpless. One thing that was incredibly shocking to me was the reaction of the father at the end of the story of Verginia. Instead of simply fighting to have his daughter live a normal life or ask for a more official way of determining her status as a free citizen, he simply kills her so that way her reputation will not have to be stained and unclean. This type of attitude towards women as objects, and things to be kept clean and guarded, was incredibly surprising to find in a society that we today would think of as very socially advanced. The absolute extreme of this societal attitude is shown in the story of Lucretia, where Lucretia kills herself after Sextus assaulted her so that way she will not have to live as an unclean woman. This shows that in this society, even the women did not view themselves truly as equal to the men in a complete societal sense. The stories of Lucretia and Verginia show that women took a backseat to men in almost every regard in daily Roman