Do Women Have Rights?
In many of the poems we discussed in class, women were depicted as mere possessions of men. They were basically treated as slaves to the men. The women had to endure these troubles, because men were of a higher stature, therefore could do anything to the women. According to the poem To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, women are depicted as people that do not know what to do with their lives. “And while ye may may, go marry,” (Line 14). This quote means that women should go marry, because the men will lose interest in them, if they grow too old. Even though this statement is true, the men are still ordering the women around. They just look at them as uneducated fools. Because the women do not know what to do with their lives, the women have to take orders from the men that are educated and are trying to lead them in the woman can’t. This is just of ordering to woman to be with him, jus to take advantage of her. The woman is helpless, because she has no rights of her own to protect her form being used. Not only that, during this time period, the men were of a higher status therefore, the court would believe them at all costs rather than the women. In these two examples, we can see how they thought of women in the 17th century. The women are basically comparable to the slaves in the United States. The slaves were possessions of the owners that bought them, whereas the women were slaves of the men that were their husbands.
to go to war. He also indicates in the poem, that if he did not love honor more, he could not love his wife. He just says this to his wife and then leaves for war. He does not even care about how she feels, he does not even ask her about her opinion. Just because she is his wife, he just tells her where he is going, and that is all. He does not have to say anything else, because he is of higher status than the women. But when the women go: Forbidding Mourning illustrates the difference between the men and the women of...