In "Battle Royal", Ralph Ellison tells us a story of people being used for entertainment at their own expense. Young men were forced to box one another blindfolded against their will and were forcefully persuaded to scrounge for money on an electric carpet. The townsmen would laugh, drink, and even yell rude comments to the boys bleeding and being shocked in front of everyone as if they were caged animals with no escape. .
This form of entertainment, the kind where certain individuals are degraded and made fun of so a bunch of men can laugh at someone and carry on with their good times, did not only use young men as their entertainers. The older men would not only degrade younger men by forcing them into violent and silly acts, but would also do the same to women. At one point in "Battle Royal", a woman dances around naked for the men's pleasure. The men would hoot and holler and even grab at her as if her value was that of a mere object. I found it quite interesting that this behavior was tolerated and accepted some fifty or more years ago. I got the impression that women only existed to please men and to entertain them, not to perform a valuable function in society like they do today. Certainly the grabbing, hooting, hollering, and exploitation, would not be as accepted in today's society as it was some fifty years ago. .
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So, I had to wonder about the changing role of women, expectations placed on them as well as their accepted role in society, over the last century.
Throughout history, women have generally had fewer legal rights and fewer career opportunities than men. Between 1910 and 1920 wifehood and motherhood were regarded as a woman's most significant roles. Women were still fighting for the nineteenth amendment to pass (the right to vote and not to be discriminated based on sex), they wanted to be able to practice every right which a man would practice. The nineteenth amendment was passed in 1920, but still women were not granted much personal and certainly no intellectual freedom(wic.
