Final Essay

Women’s Rights.

The following essay will expose a point of view regarding women’s role during XVI century. I will take the example of Portia, from the movie The Merchant of Venice. I will explain they way she lived, how she was treated, and what her rights, as a woman, were. After explaining these topics, I will make a comparison with the actual situation that women live in our society. At the end of the essay, I will write my opinion about the exposed theme, and the conclusion of the presented work.
In the movie The Merchant of Venice, there was character named Portia. She was a girl who belonged to the royal family. She was destined to get married by his father and by the society. The problem with this was that she could not select who her husband will be. The reason of that was she had to wait until a prince went to her castle. There, they had to choose among three chests, and if they pick the one with Portia’s image inside they would marry Portia. Even if Portia did not want to marry the prince, she had to because that way the way in which princesses get married in those times.
Every time a prince went to the castle, she was thinking she did not want to marry him. She could not do anything regarding this situation; she was obliged to marry the one who choose the right chest. With this example, I can appreciate that women’s rights were absolutely left away. Their marriages were used as politics issues. Fathers were not interested if his daughters wanted to get married or not, they just leaded them to this condition.
On the contrary, nowadays women’s rights are absolutely different. Now, girls can decide if they want to get married or not. They can decide who her husband will be, and also, they can decide when her marriage will be. There exist a very respectful way of thinking regarding women’s rights. In our society, fathers do not intervene in his daughter’s marriages. They just help them to choose a good man, to make good decisions, and they advice his daughters. If women want to do the opposite of what their fathers say, they just do it. There is not a legislation that hinders women to make their own decisions.
Although our society respects the decisions of women, the law interferes if there are certain conditions that women do not accomplish. If an under age girl want to get married, she will have to ask for a legal permission to access to marriage. This permission must be signed by both of her parents. If they parents regret of signing the document, she will not be allowed to marry. In this sense, there are still restrictions for girls, but the reasons of these impediments are that sometimes girls are not mature enough to get married.

In my opinion, women’s rights were very ignored during XVI century. They should be allowed to decide whether they want to marry or not. Their thoughts were not taken into account, girls were just leaded to what their fathers thought was right. I believe these actions were absolutely incorrect. People cannot make decisions by someone else. We are free to decide what our future will be, even though people do not share our decisions. I think the society developed during XVI century was wrong because its way of thinking. It did not respect women and I think this is serious. It can not happen again. We are all human beings and differences because of sex can not occur again.

To summarize this essay, I want to say that societies have changed a lot with the pass of the time. In the past, women’s future was decided by someone else. They did not have the opportunity to select what they thought was correct. Many girls were sad because of these actions; they had feelings and thoughts, but they could express them. Women were really oppressed by many factors; fathers, families, society, people, etc.
Fortunately, things have changed. Nowadays women are absolutely free to take the decision they feel or think are rights. Now, girls can get married if they want. They can be mothers, even if they do not have a husband. They are family head if a man is absent. Our society is very different than in the past. Now women are respected by people, even though there are still differences between man and women.