Women in a Male-Dominated Society

Phuong Do

ENGL 1023-25

02/15/2016

Draft #1

Women in a Male-Dominated Society

We have a major problem in our modern society though, we want everything to be “equal”, at least equal in the way we think it should be equal. But I am going to put it straight out there so there is no confusion: men and women are not equal. For two things to be perfectly equal they would need to be the same and it should be self-evident that a man and a woman are not the same. Not only are they different on the physical level but they differ in almost every way they relate to the world around them. Men and women have different communication skills, different uses of emotion and even different perceptions of pain. However just because men and women are different does not mean that one is better than the other, in fact the very existence of humanity depends on these differences. These differences are what we might call complementary and they are part of the richness and design of humanity. The following stories; A Rose for Emily of William Faulkner, The Birth-Mark of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and The Yellow Wallpaper of Charlotte Perkins Gilman will improve my opinion about these socially underprivileged groups.

“A Rose for Emily”, unravels the mysterious and strange life of a recently deceased Southern woman named Emily Grierson. The story is known for its themes of death, sexuality, the roles of women, and the tensions between the changing, more modern North and the resistant, more old-fashioned South. The story is divided into five parts. Part one opens at the time of protagonist Emily's death . The entire community attends Emily's funeral, but as the narrator suggests, no one really knew Emily. Emily rarely went out, had never been married, and died alone at age 74. Part one also reveals part of the reason Emily died alone: Emily's father had turned down most of Emily's suitors; by the time he died, Emily had no more suitors. At this point in American history, women were generally...