Social Conflict Between Women and Men

Summarization of “The Social Conflict between Men and Women” Sue Blundell, author of the article “The Social Conflict between Men and Women” suggest that strife and hostility from the determining of proper social roles between men and women cause social conflict. Additionally, the way men treat women cause the women to suffer, which leads to disaster. For example, Jason breaks his oath to Medea by not being loyal to her so she suffered so much that she came up with the idea to kill their children in order to hurt Jason. Her pain was more than she could bear so she did it. Medea decided to take control of her affairs. Blundell suggests that one person looked at Medea as being a strong and brave woman which was rare since people didn’t give credit to the women about anything. Medea didn’t want anyone thinking she was scared. She said, “Let no one think of me as humble or weak or passive. I am dangerous to my enemies and loyal to my friends”(73). In addition, she made sure no one tried to take advantage of her. She had to go into exile to another land but she manipulated her friend so he could keep her safe. She was very smart. Blundell states that the social conflict was that in drama men and women would imitate each other. The men would dress as women and the other way around. This shows that women didn’t have rights. In addition, even when a woman was married her life wasn’t free from danger yet. It was said to never allow women to triumph over the men. Women didn’t get recognized as themselves, they were recognized by the men’s identity. Like everything about the women belonged to the man. The men had rights and could speak about anything or do whatever they wanted but the women was very limited. From this article I learned that social conflict between men and women has existed for many centuries, though the level of conflict has changed. During this period of time the conflict was drastic. Though men were felt to be superior, women like