FRAILTY THY NAME IS WOMAN

From the beginning of time women have been blamed for bringing about the downfall of man. It was Eve who tempted Adam to eat from the forbidden tree. It was Helen who caused the Trojan war. It was Draupadi who was responsible for the Mahabharata. It was Sita who did not obey Laxman and was consequently abducted by Ravana. Women have also been accused of being witches. Women have always been weak and in need of male guidance. If we look towards the West, we have documentary evidence of the struggles of women. It was Simone De Beauvoir who argued that it is the society as a whole who created this creature called woman. Women were the properties of their fathers before marriage and of their husbands after marriage. Women were not expected to have literary aspirations. Charlotte Bronte's famous work Jane Eyre charts the life of the protagonist who is an orphan. After she is sent to an orphanage where she is educated, she gets the job of a governess in Thornfield Hall where she falls in love with the owner and marries him. Yet this book was criticized later by Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea which traces the development of Rochester's first wife Bertha Mason or Antoinette as she was originally named. Even Jane Austen had to write in full public view so as to let everyone know that she was not writing something offensive.