Attitude Towards Women in Virgils Aeneid :: Aeneid Essays

Attitude Towards Women in Virgils Aeneid In Susan Wiltshires essay, she accuses Virgil as being a woman-hater. Vergil is seen to portray female characters on both the human and the divine levels as ill-considered and subordinate, while male characters be rational and hierarchially superior (Wiltshire) While trying to prove her conviction of Vergils epic, she goes on to say, for example, Perkell hypothesizes that Vergil altered the traditional stories about Creusa and Dido expressly in order to portray women as victims of the Roman mission and Aeneass inattention. (Wiltshire) While she does admit that Vergil did not only discredit women, but men too, she felt that his feeling towards women was a great deal more prejiduce than men.While women are labeled to be sooner unstable, Virgil gives us such an indepth look at the private lives of these characters that you cant help but wonder if he was merely trying to capture what is real in society. It is extraordinary that Vergil takes any account, much less the extensive account he does, of the struggles, pains, hopes, and diappointments of relationships in the private realm. (Wiltshire) I have to agree with this statement because it is quite abnormal to see this type of intamacy between characters in an epic.You can truly relate to this story. These characters are not seen unless as heroic, but human. You see jealousy between women because of looks, much like we see today. Women, as sad as it is, really can be quite shallow when it comes to physical appearance. We see it all over the media with women paying thousands of dollars for cosmetic surgery so they can feel better about themselves, but really, they are just trying to win some type of competition.We also see in the story what someone must sacrifice in order to replete their goals. Though Aeneass destiny was much more grand than many of our own, we still must make choices that can sometimes hurt others. I really feeling that Vergil captured our inner emoti ons with the affair between Dido and Aeneas.