Reading Response

Reading Response 1

Analyzing Cott’s discussion it became clear that women were objectified and used as means of satisfaction after marriage by men they wed. As times progressed they had more freedom towards choosing their own spouses that also indicated increase in the rate of prebridal pregnancies. Cott infers that both sexes had gained sexual freedom but it may have also indicated greater “vulnerability and exploitation of women”. Living in New York City I have inferred that having sexual intercourse before marriage is absolutely acceptable for a woman while back where I come from, a woman’s virtue is questioned before marriage. The respected and wealthy families do not marry women who have had any physical relations with men before marriage. In another case, there have been instances where men have had intercourse with women before marriage who were prospective their spouses, and then the men reject them as those women succumb to ruining their virtues before marriage. This means there may not be any outlet for women’s sexual desires before marriage. While women are still sexually concealed in my culture I don’t see a massive oppression about it here in the United States.

Another issue that Judith Sargent Murray of Gloucester, Massachusettes, argues that men’s superiority in rationality was cause due to their superior education. Today we can find a large sum of women who are highly educated and in several places where they may even outnumber the men. Since childhood my parents had always told me to stand on my own feet as there is no man or my parents for that matter who will provide for me for a lifetime. During my high school in India I learned highly educated women are greatly respected in the society, but there are still some backward thinking elders who always say that there was is no need to get gravely bothered with higher education when a woman could just marry a rich. While in another culture in the state of Kashmir in India, a woman told a...