Chapter 5: Women

Chapter 5 was an interesting chapter for me because we are looking into documents that show evidence of how women during the first century were viewed and how they viewed life. It also explains the duties of a woman with her family and outside their family life. What makes this interesting is the fact that we don't hear very much about women, or their roles in society. These documents were actually written by a woman so we can get a clear idea how a woman during the first century may have viewed life.

According to the book, it is hard to get a complete clear idea of a woman's perspective during the first century because there are a small amount of sources and a lot of the sources that are taken about women are written by men. The reason to this is because women normally didn't write because it wasn't a common value as it is today. The documents we do have about women are written by elite women and therefore we are unsure of how life may have been viewed for women who were bellow this class.

Ban Zhao was what the book considers an elite woman. She wrote several documents about her views and thoughts. They are extremely interesting to read, and if this is a direct translation, she was quite a good written when expressing her thoughts and views. Reading her documents made me feel pretty bad because a lot of the time she is putting herself down as a woman and she seemed to have had a lot of pressure. Her perspective of her life and of herself are pretty negative. She seems to accept the fact that (according to their ear's society) she is lower than a man and that she is not as smart, not as productive, and weak. She talks about her role of passing on the fact that women are weak to her daughters.

In her first documents she is writing of how a woman she act, and how she should view herself. She is giving lessons for other woman because she felt as if she had failed with her other daughters. It is believed that if the woman was to stray from her role, than the ancestors may frown upon her and her family. It is considered to be a disappointment to not follow strict tradition. A husband is to control his wife, and she is to respect him, and serve him.

Reading these documents must be hard for a girl to read, especially in today's world. A woman was viewed very differently, and what was considered a proper woman was very different as well. I am a boy and it is even hard for me to see how unfair it was to be a woman. I may not agree with the way woman view themselves today, but what is shown in this document is not how a woman should be viewed or have to act. Woman should be respected and do deserve a much bigger place than they were given during this era. After all, it was up to the women to populate the world. Life must had been very harsh to be a woman during the first centuries.

by Andrew Murillo