Patriarchies
This assignment requires you to construct an essay response that relies on your interpretation of the documents provided below. Take 10 minutes to read the documents and plan your essay. Use the remaining 40 minutes to write an essay with a clear thesis and specific references to the documentary evidence in the body paragraphs. You should analyze groups of documents using outside information about the historical context, and cite additional types of documents that might support (or refute) your thesis.
Compare and contrast gender and its relationship to knowledge, power, and salvation in Afro-Eurasian civilizations prior to 1500 C. E.
Document 1: The Quran
If you fear that you will not act justly
towards the orphans, marry such women
as seem good to you, two, three, four,
but if you fear you will not be equitable,
then only take one, or what your right hands down;
so it is likelier you will not be partial.
And give the women their dowries as a gift
spontaneous; but if they are pleased
to offer you any of it, consume it
with wholesome appetite
Men are the managers of the affairs of women
for that God has preferred in bounty
one of them over another, and for that
they have expended of their property.
Righteous women are therefore obedient,
guarding the secret for God’s guarding.
Document 2: “Vikrama’s Adventures,” anonymous source, 11th century
Sire, my husband fighting on the field of battle, has been slain by the enemy. His head, his arm, his sword, and his trunk have fallen down here. So, that my beloved may not be wooed by the heavenly nymphs, I will go to where he is. Let fire be provided for me…Now for whose sake shall I preserve this body? Moreover,…even fools know that wives should follow their husbands. For thus it is said:
The wife who enters into the fire when her husband dies…enjoys bliss in heaven.
A woman who follows after her husband shall surely purify three families: her mother’s, her father’s, and that into which she was given in marriage.
What profit is there in the life of a wretched woman who has lost her husband? Her body is as useless as a banyan tree in a cemetery.
And when the king heard her words, his heart being tender with genuine compassion, he caused a pyre to be erected of sandalwood and the like, and gave her leave. So she took leave of the king, and in his presence entered the fire together with her husband’s body.
Document 3: “The Discipline Basket” from the Pali Cannon, anonymous, first century BCE
And the venerable Ananda said to the Blessed One:
“Are women, lord, capable when they have gone forth from the household life and entered the homeless state, under the doctrine and discipline proclaimed by the Blessed One – are they capable of realizing the fruit of conversion, or of the second path, or of the third path, or of Arahantship [Enlightenment]?”
“They are capable, Ananda.”
“If then, lord, they are so capable, since Maha-Prajapati the Gotami has proved herself of great service to the Blessed One, when as aunt and nurse she nourished him and gave him milk, and on the death of his mother suckled the Blessed One at her own breast, it would be well, lord, that women should have permission to go forth from the household life and enter the homeless state under the doctrine and discipline proclaimed by the Tathagata.”
“If then, Ananda, Maha Prajapati the Gotami takes upon herself the eight chief rules, let that be reckoned as her ordination. They are these:”
1. A nun, even if of a hundred years standing, shall make salutation to, shall rise up in the presence of, shall bow down before, and shall perform all proper duties toward a monk, even a newly initiated monk…
…
8. From henceforth official admonition by nuns of monks is forbidden, whereas the official admonition of nuns by monks is not forbidden.
Document 4: The Law of Manu
A wife, a son, and a slave, these three are declared to have no property; the wealth which they earn is acquired for him to whom they belong…
In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead, to her sons; a woman must never be independent.
To be mothers were women created, and to be fathers men…
No sacrifice, no vow, no fast must be performed by women apart from their husbands…
By violating her duty towards her husband, a wife is disgraced in this world, after death she enters the womb of a jackal, and is tormented by diseases as punishment for her sin.
A barren wife may be superceded [replaced by a second wife] in the eighth year, she whose children all die in the tenth, she who bears only daughters in the eleventh, but she who is quarrelsome without delay.
Document 5: Travels in Africa, Ibn Battuta, 14th century C.E.
These people have remarkable and strange ways. As for their men, they feel no jealously. None of them traces his descent through his father, but from his maternal uncle, and a man’s heirs are the sons of his sister only, to the exclusion of his own sons. This is something that I have seen nowhere in the world except among the Indian infidels in the land of Mulaybar, whereas these are Muslims who observe the prayer and study the fiqih and memorize the Koran. As for their women, they have no modesty in the presence of men and do not veil themselves in spite of their assiduity in prayer.
The women there have friends and companions among the foreign men, just as men have companions from among the foreign women. One of them may enter his house and find his wife with her man friend without making any objection.
Document 6: Yoruba woman of authority.
(The figure probably represents an Iyalode – a mother in charge of external affairs, an important officer among the Yoruba. The Iyalode was a chief in her own right and one of the monarch’s chief lieutenants.)
Document 7: Poem by Fu Xuan (217-278 C.E.)
How sad it is to be a woman
Nothing on earth is held so cheap.
Boys standing at the door
Like Gods fallen out of heaven.
Their hearts brave the Four Oceans
The wind and dust of a thousand miles
No one is glad when a girl is born:
By her the family sets no store.
Document 8: Report from Zhou Daguan, Yuan official, 1297
In Cambodia, women attend to trade. Even a Chinese who arrives here and takes a woman will profit greatly from her trading abilities…
When the king leaves the palace, first comes the cavalry, leading his escort, followed by an array of standards, banners, and music. Next comes a troupe of palace girls, anywhere from three to five hundred,…after them come the palace girls who, armed with lance and shield, form the king’s private bodyguard;…After them in palanquins, carriages, and on elephants come the king’s wives and concubines;…Behind them comes the king…on the royal elephant, whose tusks are encased in gold.
…
Document 9 Lady Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of the Genji, 1007
A pair of big bookcases have in them all the books they can hold, In one of them are placed old poems and romances. They are the homes of worms which come frightening us when we turn the pages, so none ever wished to read them…As to the other cabinet, since the person [husband] who placed his own books there, no hand has touched it. When I am bored to death, I take out one or two of them; then my maids gather round me and say: “Your life will not be favored with old age if you do such a thing! Why do you read Chinese? Formerly even the reading of sutras was not encouraged for women.” …I have heard of it and have wished to say, “It is far from certain that he who does no forbidden thing enjoys a long life,” but it would be a lack of reserve to say it…after all, when I was among ladies of the court, I did not say what I wanted to say either, for it is useless to talk with those who do not understand one and troublesome to talk with those who criticize from a feeling of superiority. Especially one-sided persons are troublesome. Few are accomplished in many arts and most cling narrowly to their own opinion.
Document 10: The Shrew, Sung era Chinese story
Your daughter was destined at birth to a lonely, wretched life
She married an ignorant foolish husband!
Though I might have endured the severity of his father and mother,
How could I have borne those sisters-in-law?
If I but moved my lips,
Off they went and stirred up the old ones,
Besides, such venom lay behind their scolding,
It soon led to blows and kicks,
From which began an incessant to-do;
Then all at once they wrote the certificate of dissolution.
My one hope was to find contentment and peace at home –
How should I expect even Dad and Ma would blame me?
Abandoned by the husband’s family and my own,
I will cut off my hair and become a nun,
Wear a straight-seamed gown and dangle a gourd from a pole,
And carry in my hands a huge wooden fish.
In the daytime from door to door I shall praise the Buddha,
Chant my ‘Namah,’
Observe my fasts and attend to my exercises.
My head will be shaven and quite, quite bald;
Who then will not hail the little priestess?
Document 11: The Gospel of Thomas, 2nd century C.E.
Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us,
because women are not worthy of life.”
Jesus said, “Behold, I shall guide her so as to make her male,
that she too may become a living spirit like you men.
For every woman who makes herself male,
will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Document 12: The Life of St. Mary the Harlot, 4th century C. E.
She replied: “If you are sure that I can do penance and that God will accept my atonement, I will come as you request.”…And they rose up and went away,…
When they arrived home, he placed her in the inner cell that had previously been his, and he remained in the outer cell. She, clad in hair shirt, resided there in humility of soul, weeping in her heart and through her eyes, disciplining herself with vigils and the stern burden of abstinence,…And God the Compassionate, who desires that no person perishes but that all come to repentance, so accepted her penance that after three years He restored many ill people to health through her prayers. Crowds flocked to her, and she would pray to God for their healing, and her prayers were granted.
Thomas Martin