How the view of women inside books changed. For example, in earliest writing of fiction and plays women would be portrayed as being delicate. In some of mythology they were seen as items and prizes for the heroes. In some stories they are seen as enchantresses that lure men into danger. How did they transition from that to books with characters like Anne Shirley ?
This would be a good topic, and there's certainly a lot to be explored. You could analyze only American literature, British literature, or whatever and analyze how the views have changed across history along with decisions that have happened pertaining to culture and society. – Nayr12309 years ago
This topic is incredibly interesting, but it is also extremely broad. Perhaps it might be easier to take a couple character traits and shown how authors have ran with ideas that exemplified those traits? How has society made room for redefining what the roles of a women should be? Lastly, it could be worth looking into how the roles of women has changed in just two consecutive decades? – lgonsiorek9 years ago
I don't immediately see this topic as a good one. Women have to be generally objected, categorized and potentially dehumanized to reflect on the view of women in all of books. The generalizations that would have to be made would be terrible patronizing. If you carve out "perceptions of women in Norse mythology" or "portrayal of the woman's role in classic British literature" would help to focus the topic. – Piper CJ9 years ago
The main problem your generalized draft question hints at is how women characters were written BY men for most of history. I think narrowing your focus to considering the range of female characters women authors write could also open up some interesting discussions. The problem is that it's assumed that in ancient/early modern writing women were mere sexualised items however that view is problematic by how some Greek authors (see Lysistrata by Aristophanes) were already playing with those roles and creating strong female characters. And sadly today things aren't drastically better in how tv and many books still don't have strong female characters or lead roles. Perhaps it's worth investigating the instances they are given faithful representation and the type of stories that demote them to objects (masculine, pursuits of greed etc.) – JamieMadden8 years ago
This is a huge topic to cover- could you maybe narrow it down a little bit? It would really be interesting, but there is just so much to it that it couldn't be done justice in a single article. Maybe choose a few books, or an era of books to cover. – LilyaRider8 years ago
way too vague, not a good topic. – Richard Marcil8 years ago
This topic is extremely vague and difficult to cover as you are basically asking someone to explore all genres of literature form inception to contemporary times, i.e. Beowulf, or Gawain and the Green Knight, to let's say The Girl on the Train. It's too difficult and the way in which women are portrayed is intertwined with the social mores in which the stories are written. That, in fact would be an interesting topic. To look at it more from a sociological aspects--the expectations of the female heroine, and those that were thought to contradict the prototypical idealized female. – danielle5778 years ago