Friendship
Essays

Greek Mythology and Feminine Divinity Hesiod's Theogony shows his low opinion of women, yet assigns many vital aspects of life to divine females. However, Greek Mythology eventually weakened, domesticated and limited female divinity. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter shows the limitations and domestication eventually forced on goddesses by Greek mythology. When Demeter's daughter, Persephone, is kidnapped and raped by Hades and Zeus allows it, Demeter can do nothing directly against Hades or Zeus. Instead, Demeter is grief-stricken, withdraws from Olympus and goes to earth, where she becomes a wet nurse for a human's newborn son. Demeter does retain power over humans and still rules the harvest; however, she is powerless to force Hades or Zeus to release her daughter. In addition, after Zeus persuades Hades to release Persephone, Demeter cannot change the fact that Persephone must return to Hades for part of every year. Contrasted with Theogony, we see a considerably weaker, more limited and more domesticated role for a female deity. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo also shows a weaker, more limited and more domesticated role for goddesses. Here, many goddesses are reduced to helping Leto deliver her child, then washing and clothing the child. Even Hera, Zeus's wife, is limited in fighting a god because she can do nothing to stop Zeus' repeated affairs or to harm Zeus directly. The best she can do against him is to vow not to have sex with him and to stay away from Olympus. Nevertheless, Hera retains power in that she is still able to give birth to a child – though a horrible one – without Zeus. By comparing Theogony and the Homeric Hymns to Demeter and Apollo, we can readily see that Greek mythology limited and domesticated a previous notion of feminine divine power.

When Mulvey (1975) wrote about the psychological importance of the male gaze, most women would have recognized in her description of the dynamics of phallocentrism and the male observation of women their own experiences.

Saint Clare of Assisi was not a feminist in the modern sense, but then again no such ideas existed at all in the 13th Century. By all accounts, though, she was a formidable and powerful woman who was the first in…

The extent of damage that the application of imperialistic conquests, warfare or threat of nuclear power can have on the psyche, finances and structure of the weaker countries of the world is devastating.

¶ … classic view of the Matisse/Picasso rivalry is that these two artists were the equivalent of the odd couple of TV fame (Milroy). A staff writer for New York Newsday, Ariella Budick, describes the typical opinion of…

¶ … Life" by Gerda Weissmann Klein. In this book Gerda has narrated her ordeal during the Nazis regime and how she survived the holocaust and the death march. It is a highly emotional book, which narrates the horrors…

Ask any "PK"; they'll tell you that, on top of the four odds that were stacked against him as a child, James Baldwin had one additional card piled up against him. As for the first four: 1) he was born a black child in…

The fifteenth-century Spanish travelers who embarked on voyages of discovery and conquest in the Americas expected to encounter primitive savage races. Instead, they found advanced civilizations with intricately…

This study examines the use of social media such as MySpace and Facebook by retailers to grow their businesses in recent years, including the background and overview, the benefits of social media for retailers, and factors to consider and best practices in administering social media. A series of recommendations concludes the study.

The turning point in F. Scott Fitzgerald's life was when he met in 1918 Zelda Sayre, herself an aspiring writer, they married in 1920. In the same year appeared Fitzgerald's first novel, "This side of paradise," in…