Let's talk feminism

First part

Since the antiquity, womens are excluded by the great authors of power. It is still the case nowadays where the power and the authority are assigned to man. The example given at the beginning of the book illustrate perfectly : Homer write that Telemachus, Ulysse’s son, order to his own mother Penelope to keep quiet. Conversely, Mary Beard talk about the speech of the queen Elizabeth 1 who takes the floor in front of her soldier at Tilbury where she affirm that she have « the hearth and the stomac of a king ». This sentence allows her to mark her authority on her troops and her place on the throne.

This speaking has been followed by other women in militancy. Two women often forgotten, Sojourner Truth and Coretta Scott King has defended the black women rights. These revendications for the improvement of the condition of women in the patriarchal society are very important for Mary Beard who insist on. Even if these examples exist, it it still difficul for women to express themselves and be heard on other public subjects as she says.

«By definition, in most circumstances, a woman speaking in public wasn’t a woman.»

Despite that, she shows that some women succed to reach important functions in the politic world as Hilary Clinton, first women candidate for presidential elections in United States of America and Angela Merkel, Chancellor.

But it has a cost that they pay daily. Between the medias which try to pull themselves down and the harshness of the politic world, they don’t have the right to fail.

In the world of litterature, main feminine character are the target of misogyny. She makes reference to the bool Herland of Perkins Gilman in which one the story takes place in a world with no man but a day, 3 men come to find the masculin order like our world. It reminds the beginning of the book with the example of Penelope and Telemachus.

Second part

Beard comes back on the women in the politic world. She says that these ones are penalized in comparison to their male counterparts in the ascent to posts. To accede to these posts, women have to imitate their predecessors by dressing as a man, physically and psychologically. And when politic men do some deviations, a woman’s touch is added to their actions. Their behaviour in reaction is interpreted as conviction but when it is a women, she would be crazy. During the presidential elections in 2016, Hilary Clinton has been compared to Medusa, terrifying character of the mytology. This attack by the partisans of Donal Trump echos to the birth of Athena venerated by her battle qualities given by her father who give birth to her and not her mother.

To finish his book, Mary Beard wants to make us think about the power, its nature to review our vision of this one with the place of the women in politic and that the pouvoir would be « confered » and not « owned ».