Herodotus And Wallace Stevens's 'Peter Quince At The Clavier'

For a majority of history, there has been gender discrimination amongst humankind. Gerda Lerner explores reasons why gender discrimination came to be and how without the full perspective of both sexes, there is no real depth to our knowledge. Both Herodotus and Wallace Stevens’ works show that there is a disparity between the two sexes created by society and after thinking of Lerner’s work it is very apparent. This paper will demonstrate that in order to fully understand history and the world around us, we must hear from both sexes to achieve a more accurate information. In “The Creation of Patriarchy,” Lerner searches for the start of the inequality of the sexes. She starts off by making a distinction between history, the unrecorded past, …show more content…
The poem starts off with the speaker desiring courtship with a woman, but then he describes his feelings to be like those of the red-eyed elders who walked in on Susanna naked. According to the biblical story, the elders wanted to have sex with her and she refused. Although she didn’t have sex with them, her reputation gets tarnished anyways because she was naked. This also occurs in the poem when her attendant comes in the room and “their lamps’ uplifted flame revealed Susanna and her shame,” and it is a double standard that the same is put on Susanna but not the elders (Stevens 212). This poem reflects how in society men are free to have sex with any woman they want and only the woman is held accountable for the events that …show more content…
I think Lerner is accurate in saying that women are underrepresented and it is ridiculous because women are not a minority. Stevens work shows that there are different expectations for men and women when it comes to sex, but it doesn’t make any sense. It takes two to tango, so both parties should be equally guilty and shameful or shame and guilt-free. Your actions should not be judged based on gender roles because it is all stuff created by society to maintain some type of control over women. The freedom and equality that women are proposed to have never existed and still does not exist. The perspective of women is denied throughout history and men are at fault for inaccurate Histories because of it. Herodotus was not able to achieve all the facts because the story of the princess from Greece was never actually told truly because no one thought to seek her side of the story. To the people of the time it really was not important what a woman had to say, especially for the Greeks since women were essentially property at the