Things Fall Apart Essay Essay, Research Paper

Things Fall Apart Essay

Throughout many years women have always been inferior to men in all cultures and places. Maybe it’s because men are physically stronger than women and have always had the ability to control them that way. There are also sayings that men a more intelligent than women but that is an arguable statement. Whatever the case, women have always been a few steps behind men since years ago and still today.

In the society of the Umuofia, women were treated more as objects and tools than human beings. Women were personal slaves to all the men and each man had more than one wife because the more wives a man had, the more respect he received from the rest of the village. A woman’s purpose in the Umuofia society was to cook her husband s dinners, grow crops in the fields, and care for the children. Wives were mistreated, disrespected, and even beaten at any man’s will. The only time a woman was safe from a beating would be during week of peace.

There ways and lifestyle is almost completely different then the women in today’s society. In most cases a man has only one wife and women with any self-respect would not stand for a second wife. Women are not beaten like they were in the Umuofia society since it is now against the law to disrespect your wife in such a manor. They have jobs and no longer need to depend on their husbands for money or well being. The women of today are very independent and are treated as equals according to the law. A woman can easily achieve a career and receives the same opportunities as any male today. Also, a single woman with a child receives financial support from the government or from the man who impregnated her.

The women of the Umuofia society did not have many advantages, if any, over the women in today’s society. One trait that does exist is that women of the Umuofia society are in a way valued by men. A man’s goal is to have more than a wife or two so he can achieve respect from his tribe. Therefore, men see woman as a way of gaining something, which leads them to want women even though love may not be a factor.

Women have always been a few steps behind men since years ago and still today. There is really no comparison between these two types of women from different times and places. A woman in today’s society is much more likely to live a better and more respectable life than a woman who shares her husband and must bow at his feet. Which of these is the right way to live I don’t know, but I do know which is the better way to live.