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Unjust Treatment Of Women In Mary Robinson And Anna Letitia Barbauld

Decent Essays

As far as one looks back, women have always been oppressed and unfairly treated by society; The Norton Anthology English Literature, by the respected editor Greenblatt, illustrates some descriptive incidences through these selected poems. Throughout this essay I elaborate on Mary Robinson and Anna Letitia Barbauld, as well as analyzing the introduction of the book. These ladies have illustrated the arduous times women have endured, and I believe they deserve the respect and admiration as any other male author. Thus, women were oppressed and were forced into stereotypes which over the course of the decades grew out of thanks to our feminist leaders.
As Mary Robinson clearly portrays through her poem, oppression is very common among the 1800s for women. Despite the controversial issue, majority of the population supports equal rights; every woman deserves the same opportunities any man is allowed. Moreover, the unjust treatment of women has been an ongoing conflict from the beginning of time, and Robinson clearly portrayed an example from the early ages through her poem. In The Poor Singing Dame, “He sent his bold yeomen with threats to prevent her (happiness)...At last, an old steward relentless he sent her-Who bore her, all trembling, to prison away!” (Mary Robinson 82). This clearly illustrates how women were oppressed around the eighteen-hundreds by a prince. This prince did not wish for any women or pheasant to be happy as long as he remained in power, thus he was retaining a lower class women’s happiness to fulfill his own pleasure. The selfish ruler was unable to handle this women’s joy and threw her into his prison letting her rot away. In the end, I believe this was unfair, as women deserve every right any man has to freedom and happiness.
Another key conflict that is pointed out through the volume, is that women were not given the same acknowledgments as men were given. This has and will always be a controversial topic as well. Unacknowledgement about the advances of women are clearly portrayed through prejudice in female philosophers and writers. This is clearly portrayed in the introduction: “The Unsex’d Females was, by naming and shaming, to firmly distinguish the virtuous lady writers of his

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