Throughout the evolution of societies, the way people regard women and their roles in the community has changed. Thomas More’s Utopia and Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year focus on the role of women in their respective societies. Even though the novels are written nearly two hundred years apart, both regard women very highly and express their importance to their individual communities. However, over the two centuries that separate the novels, opinions and beliefs were sure to change, specifically regarding women. Utopia, a novel in which More criticizes his current corrupt society through the creation of an ideal community, promotes egalitarian principles which extend to gender equality. Yet, this Utopian society also sets what they
…show more content…
In his novel, Thomas More attempts to create a community where women are held to a higher esteem than this. From a young age, education is valued in the Utopian society for not only boys, but also girls, which contrasts with the overarching views of sixteenth century Europe, where only men, and even then only certain men, had the ability to pursue any form of education. In Utopia, even after primary education, women, (and men), continue to educate themselves in their free periods (70). Not only are women allowed a complete education, but they are also given the opportunity to pursue virtually any occupation and obtain essentially the same rights as men in Utopia. As opposed to in More’s contemporary life, women are allowed to vote, fight on the battlefield alongside men, and even become priests, all of which are appalling ideas to citizens of a sixteenth century European society. More’s underlying belief seems to be that a community cannot truly be one hundred percent effective and productive if only fifty percent of the members are working and providing. Due to this, women are expected to have full time jobs as well as doing their equal share of the agricultural work. Although every Utopian citizen works, they are not overworked and in fact spend reasonably less time working than Europeans and enjoy more free time to pursue intellectual interests or individual …show more content…
For instance, women were the only ones allowed to be nurses, but only because no men would want that position as they thought it beneath them and that women should be the caretakers. Defoe makes sure to point out in his novel that the doctors are only and always men, but that a majority of the men acting as doctors weren’t qualified as physicians and had no specific training and were only given the job because the real doctors ran out of town to escape the plague. Although they weren’t even real doctors, they were still highly regarded compared to the women nurses, simply because they were given this title of doctor that no women could obtain. Not only were women thought of as less in their professional lives, but also in their personal ones. It was common in those times for women to be seen as objects instead of people, and surprisingly Defoe alters from his more progressive views to include this, such as in the story of the three men. One of the men, John, requests not only food from the constable, but also “six or seven Women for three days” (134). This makes it seem as though having women for men’s pleasure is a staple, just as bread
In his novel, Thomas More attempts to create a community where women are held to a higher esteem than this. From a young age, education is valued in the Utopian society for not only boys, but also girls, which contrasts with the overarching views of sixteenth century Europe, where only men, and even then only certain men, had the ability to pursue any form of education. In Utopia, even after primary education, women, (and men), continue to educate themselves in their free periods (70). Not only are women allowed a complete education, but they are also given the opportunity to pursue virtually any occupation and obtain essentially the same rights as men in Utopia. As opposed to in More’s contemporary life, women are allowed to vote, fight on the battlefield alongside men, and even become priests, all of which are appalling ideas to citizens of a sixteenth century European society. More’s underlying belief seems to be that a community cannot truly be one hundred percent effective and productive if only fifty percent of the members are working and providing. Due to this, women are expected to have full time jobs as well as doing their equal share of the agricultural work. Although every Utopian citizen works, they are not overworked and in fact spend reasonably less time working than Europeans and enjoy more free time to pursue intellectual interests or individual …show more content…
For instance, women were the only ones allowed to be nurses, but only because no men would want that position as they thought it beneath them and that women should be the caretakers. Defoe makes sure to point out in his novel that the doctors are only and always men, but that a majority of the men acting as doctors weren’t qualified as physicians and had no specific training and were only given the job because the real doctors ran out of town to escape the plague. Although they weren’t even real doctors, they were still highly regarded compared to the women nurses, simply because they were given this title of doctor that no women could obtain. Not only were women thought of as less in their professional lives, but also in their personal ones. It was common in those times for women to be seen as objects instead of people, and surprisingly Defoe alters from his more progressive views to include this, such as in the story of the three men. One of the men, John, requests not only food from the constable, but also “six or seven Women for three days” (134). This makes it seem as though having women for men’s pleasure is a staple, just as bread