The focus for today’s reading is on the distance between men and the Gods and addresses questions about mankind’s relationship with nature and the divine. As we see in the reading for today and as will be made clearer for Monday, human are connected to the natural world more closely than the divine. In western traditions often the reason for this is some act of trickery or malfeasance on the part of man. Eve eats the apple in the Christian tradition taking on the knowledge of good and evil. Thus she and Adam can no longer exist in the garden where all things exists and all things meet their opposites. They must move into the world of nature and have children and suffer and die. This is also reflected in the Pandora story where mankind is cursed by the gods to suffer, sweat an d toil all his life.
One unfortunate element of these stories is their scapegoating of women. In the western cultures such as the Greek, women were literally the property of their husbands and might not ever see their families again after they were married off . Remember that men wrote these stories and keep in mind that not all cultures viewed women as the “downfall of man.” One of the main reasons why this may be the case is that women are more closely tied to their reproductive function than men. When a woman becomes pregnant it is clearly visible and when the child is born, that child is still tied to the mother for at least a year or so and depends on her for sustenance. There fore women are tied to nature and it’s cycles of fertility and productivity. This is a common observation among agrarian societies. Once men have played their part in the sexual act they are basically irrelevant. If some early societies used this against women, many others did not.
Please remember to submit your journal entries today to my e-mail at the college with the attached Word file containing all your entries. Next week we will continue with these stories and then look closely at the importance and function of the goddess. Enjoy you weekend and stay cool if you can.
I definitely do not like the concept of women being property to their husbands whatsoever. There are also still religions that emphasize this concept as well as polygamy. The Church of the Latter Day Saints, or mormons believe that the more women you marry, the more status you gain... each woman has different pros and cons that may help to better their husband's lives. Men of the religion believe that the more women they marry and the level of obedience they make their wives adhere to, the better they will have it in the after life, they will become a God and sit at the right hand of the plentiful. Much like the beliefs of the Gods of greek mythology.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting how, in the first several pages of our reading for today, it talked about how women had not yet been created. Although I kept reading, It was hard to grasp that some mythologies believed in such a superiority of men to women that it could be believed that men were created first and women came about at a later time. Later on in the reading, it was mentioned that Pandora was the first woman created. She was created to punish mortals for having received Prometheus's gift of fire. This portrays women badly, in my eyes. It was also mentioned about a connection between women. food and cooking. This must be around the time when people believed that 'women belong in the kitchen.' I'm not really a fan of that idea.
ReplyDeleteWithin the chapter we read for today, there was a lot of talk about power. Although this seems to be an important topic amongst the gods, chapter four seemed to really emphasize this. It seemed that the only way a god would help another would be if it would benefit him in some way. In the section talking about how Prometheus could save Zeus, it was stated that Prometheus would benefit from a god willing to die for him. Once Chiron grants Prometheus his immortality, on Chiron's death bed, Prometheus is forced to wear a steel ring which a fragment of a rock is attached. This was to show Zeus's superiority. Although you see acts such as this today, it's sad to think that someone would have to show the world that they were better than someone else.
Although I disagree with the maltreatment of women I see the flip side of the coin. We as women have a much greater tie to the children we bear. We know them from conception and as they grow we know them better than they often times know themselves. So I think that we as women have it better than the men that only have a small part in their existence. This is like Hera who had her son Hephaestus only herself. The Adam and Eve story is a double edge sword because of eating the fruit Eve had to bear painful childbirth. However do we as woman love our children with such a bond because of that great pain that we had to endure for them to be born?
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