View source for Week 1 Questions/Comments

 -- Major Problems, 1-23

The first essay mentions how women were once only seen as important to history because of their relation to important men. A prime example of this is our University. Mary Washington is recognized solely as the mother of George Washington. She is seen as important because of her son not because of any of her own actions. -- Allison

One of my other professors mentioned that history is constantly being reinterpreted and rewritten, so can any of the questions represented by this book ever actually be answered to everyone's satisfaction? -- Allison

In response to Allison's question: I think that you have a good point.  I seriously doubt that any of these questions will ever be answered to everyone's satisfaction.  Like in all things there will always be someone who is not satisfied, someone who continues to look for another way to answer the question.  Its human nature.  You can see that just looking at the essays, even though the historians writing this are all involved in women's history they all have different ideas of how you should go about it and what you should focus on.  --Mary

There was one section while reading that stood out for me and that was the part on page twelve about equality and difference.  I found it interesting that she should mention the idea that so often in the search for women's "equality" women want to be treated as if they were men and often over look the differences between men and women because they have often been used as a basis for discimination.  While this section was very confusing, in my opinion at least, just because of the strong and opposing opinions about the subject, personally I think that just because a woman wants to be seen as an equal to a man in the eyes of society and in the eyes of the law that is no reason to set aside her femininity. --Mary