The Long Journey
...roles based on actual mental and emotional differences? Regardless of whether gender roles are socially constructed or naturally inherent, they exist and have since Adam and Eve.
The history of gender roles has been long and varied, frequently switching from near equality of the sexes to complete inequality and back. In the Middle Ages, gender limitations were prevalent in that the woman was seen as weaker, inferior to the "perfect embryo": the male. However, some equality was to be granted through the institution that most perpetuated cultural differentiation of the sexes: the Church. Gender relations began to shift with the Doctrine of Intent and the idea of courtly love. Women began to assume a higher status than before as unique and emotive beings. Emotion is also changed from being an inferior aspect of the female self to an idealized state achievable by both sexes. Abelard and Heloise are some of the first examples of this heightened emotion, and their love was celebrated rather than condemnedat least in future years. However, this emotion was in direct conflict with the Church, and along with many other factors the Doctrine of Intent helped bring about the Reformation. The Reformation brought great changes to the ideals of marriage and the church's role in marriage, but it also carried negative effects for the female's identity. As Ozment explains,
Whereas the centuries between 1300 and 1500 had been something of a golden age for womentheir educational and vocational opportunities increased, and with them their civic freedomthe sixteenth century turned back the clock. Women were again squeezed out of the guilds and public places and increasingly confined to the homea reversal of fortunes for which some scholars have held the patriarchal ideals of the Protestant reformers especially responsible. (Ozment 5)
The Reformation that...
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