Essay 2: Learning Path
To preface, I am not a history buff. I have not been exposed much to the lives of ancient women, and what their struggles were. I did have some preconceived notions of women’s lives, but they were very limited. I assumed women could not do much without the permission of men, and the names that we did know were because these women were highly groundbreaking and influential beyond the scope of what we could imagine now. I initially thought that powerful historical women, like Cleopatra, were able to get where they were by using men to their advantage. I think this is still part of it, but I think it also discredits women and their ability to be strong and continue moving upward despite the pushback from those who wanted them oppressed. I also did not realize that there were civilizations that granted women more power than we realized. Women were not always completely held back and helpless, and yet that seems to be a common narrative. Egyptian women, for example, held the same legal rights as Egyptian men, though they were noted to have, “more equality with men than the average woman of Eurasia,” in the same time period (Hughes 30). It seemed to me that most societies functioned politically without women, despite some allowances for legal practices.

I know now that some of my immediate assumptions were correct- on the whole, women had very little political power in comparison to men, but they also were not helpless. One of the lines in the introduction to Hughes’ book says that we must avoid the misconception of believing that, “women’s history progresses from a time of unconscious submission to oppression to a liberated twentieth-century West” (Hughes 5). I think this reminder is an important one to have, especially in the context of women’s history going largely unrecorded. I did not realize how much we don’t know about women because the majority of literate people were men. I know now, however, that women were able to make demands for themselves in many cultures, like Judaism. A Jewish woman was able to make clauses in wedding contracts that benefitted them, such as, “that ‘the equal shares’ be observed, meaning, God forbid, that if after entering the bridal chamber Sitt al-Turaf [the bride] died without producing a living child, male or female, one-half of her bridal outfit would return to ehr heirs from her father’s house,” meaning that Jewish women and their families still had protected rights in marriage (Hughes 75). Not everything immediately went to the man and became his property, like I had initially assumed.

Even ancient China and Japan, which I have generally considered to be the more sexist of the ancient nations, had well known and powerful empresses, and women, particularly in the Han dynasty, had great power over the family. The emperor’s grandmother, for instance, was particularly powerful in China during this era. She picked spouses for her grandchildren, which was a massive boon for her family, considering she would be able to keep power consolidated within the lineage already in power, giving her more control (Hughes 98). Doing research on Murasaki Shikibu also helped dissuade this notion, as the Fujiwara clan, during the Han Dynasty, was supportive of their women at court, and encouraged them to pursue the arts. She was able to write and put out a full novel of many episodes, and although her true identity is not known, this was incredible for women of her time.

In the Ramayana, an epic poem that details the life of Rama and the characters woven in, one of the protagonists is Sita. She is a wife, and is often put on a pedestal, but she also carries a lot of agency and is able to act of her own will frequently throughout the poem. While the Crash Course video gave a very brief overview, it’s important to remember that the Ramayana is a, “living religious tradition,” and the fact that it has survived as a tradition for so long with a powerful woman character does speak to the power which women are capable of holding (Crash Course, 0:10). In ancient literature, there is also Ninsun in the Epic of Gilgamesh. She is a minor goddess, and the mother of the protagonist, Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is often referred to as the son of Ninsun, showing reverence to her both as a minor deity and as a mother who raised him.

Learning that women had far more power than I initially thought was very interesting. Most of it came from the readings we did, particularly the Hughes’s book, but also from the peer shared Women in History minutes. These were really interesting snippets of facts from a time beyond me, and learning about the various ways in which women were capable of and involved in so many different facets of daily life was really interesting. I have a much better understanding of how women’s lives were led, and especially the variety of lives and abilities across the global expanse. This semester in particular has been a very interesting and informative one, in several of my classes. I am incredibly grateful to the specific experience of this class, despite the struggles, and feel as though I have a much better understanding of ancient life, and especially in the context of women’s lives, questioning where the women in history are present, and thinking critically about information presented about them.