Aung K. Zin
Professor Fleischer
English 1A
March 31st, 2019
Final
The books used in this class reflects many important issues that the community
and the world are composed of. “The Republic of Suffering” by Drew Faust reflected on
the gruesome history of America, but more importantly it explored the lesser talked side
of the Civil War, the voices of the wives of the fallen. Astronauts are among those who
are often looked up to in the country and across the world, but as Wolfe in his book “The
Right Stuff” brought out the side of the wives and what they had to go through during
their husband’s service. Women’s are truly the unsung heroes in almost everyone’s
lives, but their efforts and struggles have been greatly neglected, the essay set by
Solnit, “Men Explains Things to Me”, reflect the struggles and the hardship they face
today. Because of that, Men Explain Things to Me is the one that has the most societal
importance out of the three.
Through-out Solnit book, she highlights the day to day struggle that women face,
from gender pay to violence they face. Many of these are build form the societal norm
that is based to oppress women and to keep men elevated in the social hierarchy.
Men’s violence towards women is a result of the power structures that exist in society.
Women across the world stay feared that they might be attacked, mostly by men. But,
it’s not men’s predatory instincts that is blamed for such attacks it’s the women. In most
cases, it seems as if blaming victims for their predicament with violence is the universal
thing to do. Rape victims are more often than not; accused of alluring their attacker,
causing them to do what they did. Many claims that victims of violence deserve what
they got. Many victims feel that the ways they were treated by the authorities, friends,
and family were just as bad or worse than the actual situation. From an essay in the
textbook “Peer culture is one of the most powerful factors in shaping the behavior of
college students” (Ruszkiewicz and Walters, p.703). There is this existing peer factor
among men in colleges that somehow considers women as trophies. But instead of
fixing such mindsets in colleges many still choose to teach women ways to act to
prevent rape and other violence. Solnit explains that violence towards women is treated
as a given. Women had to restrict on their liberty to prevent violence inflicted towards
them, “The young women described the intricate ways they stayed alert, limited their
access to the world, took precautions, and essentially thought about rape all the time”
(Solnit, p.19). This is a result of society’s refusal to recognize such assaults as an
infringement of women’s human rights.
Such refusion social problems are reflected towards the intuitional sexism that
women face. Solnit stated in her essay, there is still an underlying assumption that in a
marriage the husband has the right to control and punish his wife and the way such
violence is used to that end. While today, there are laws set to protect women in many
western countries, but historically, women and married women, in particular, have had
no protection in law against violence in the home. The legal position in England until the
end of the nineteenth century was not whether a man had beaten his wife, but how
severe that beating was. The absurdity is that it was legal for their husband to beat them
for the most part of the history. Such intuitional restriction on women’s personal liberty
and personal safety can still be found today. For instance, the Saudi Arabia government
enforces a guardianship law that strips away personal liberty and basic freedom from
women. A Saudi woman requires permission from her male guardian, Wali, to do things
such as travel, obtain an education, get a job, to marry and to divorce along with many
core things in her life. As reported in The Straits Times, on the 9th of January 2019,
“Guardianship law gives men the ultimate authority over women. He can control her,
slap her, beat her, do whatever he wants and no (government) agency can stop him.”
Since the beginning of time women have been oppressed and regarded as
second to men. Even in the story of Adam and Eve women as seen as second because
she was created from his ribs. Almost all of the past, women’s’ opportunities were
restricted resulting in their lives depending on their husband's lives. Their identities were
hidden by their husband’s for years as Solnit expressed in her book “I have a friend
whose family tree has been traced back a thousand years, but no women exist on it.
She just discovered that she herself did not exist, but her brothers did.” (p.36). But after
the Civil War, most of the women in the country lost their husbands, sons, brothers, and
fathers, with a complete disregard of their lives by the government of the time. Faust
reflected in her book this through the fact that many wives of Confederate soldiers had
to bury their husband on their own funds, without even having their own income or
without having any assistance from the governments (p. 315). Moreover, women’s roles
in the Civil War are greatly neglected, for the most part. Faust attributed the
Confederate defeat to the withdrawal of support by women on the Southern home front,
who abandoned the fight because of the damage the war was inflicting on their families
and on traditional gender relations.
There is a popular saying, “Behind every successful man there is a woman.”
Which for the most part is true, but the sad thing about this is, the majority of society
assume relentless support for the husbands from their wives without concern for the
wife’s perspectives. An example of this is presented in the story of the astronauts, by
Wolfe in his book, The Right Stuff. Wives of the astronauts of the Mercury program had
the “untold” jobs, that required them to maintain a certain image, an appearance of
support despite the fear that they may lose their husbands. This expectation by the
society of women’s support for their husbands he further highlighted in the
disappointment and infuriation by the Vice-President, when astronaut Glenn, ask his
wife to disregard the Vice President and the press request to be part of a publicity stunt
(p. 175). A parallel example is provided by Solnit, “I know lovely and amazing
heterosexual couples who married in the 1940s and 1950s and every decade since.
Their marriages are egalitarian, full of mutuality and generosity. But even people who
weren’t particularly nasty were deeply unequal in the past. I also know a decent man
who just passed away, age ninety-one: in his prime, he took a job on the other side of
the country without informing his wife that she was moving or inviting her to participate
in the decision.” (P. 34) Such expectations and assumptions that women must comply
with whatever the husbands deiced have plagued the lives of many women through
history. This completely disregards the idea that women have their own independent
thoughts and decisions, which is based on the underlying idea that women are
subordinates to men, and that her right to liberty is unimportant.
While most of the content form the Right Stuff, and the Republic of Suffering
presents the unnoticed struggle and the efforts that wives of the era endured, the set of
essays by Solnit reflects upon the inequalities that women face in recent and present
time. Her work shows examples of areas society must work together to fix. While it is
important that people learn our history on things that women have endured over time,
but it is far more important than society come to the realization of their own faults and fix
them today. Hence, out of the three books, the set of essays by Solnit in “Men Explain
Things to Me” have the most societal importance.