The Improvement Of Women's Status In The Later Stage Of The Ancient Rome As Seen From The Awakening Of Feminine Consciousness

Under patriarchy, women were often regarded by men (even by themselves) as a kind of people who lacked independent personalities and had no consciousness of being their own master. They were accustomed to submit themselves to men's rule; they considered it as perfectly justified that they should obey men's will; they did not know what is "resist". In a word, "forbearance and obedience" became their synonym. Women in early Rome were under such situation.However, the situation is greatly improved during the later stage of Rome. The later stage of Rome here refers to the period from the later period of Rome republic (approximately from the second Punic War) to the destruction of the Empire Rome. At that time, feminine consciousness was awaken. Gradually, they had the consciousness of self respect and making unremitting efforts to improve themselves, and they also exhibited various individualities. First, they had possessed stronger self-expression desire than before. Second, they pursued free and happy love and strived to gain equal position with man in their marriage. Third, they owned strong sense of family responsibility, and they are so shrewd that they gathered money for themselves. In addition, they took positive role in social activities and acquired strong political consciousness. Finally, they began to struggle for their own rights, and even women political aspirants emerged. In short, women in the later stage of Romehad their own thoughts towards man, family and society. They were no longer reconciled to be confined to the comer of man's world; on the contrary, they resisted to pursue broader life space. All these things indicate that women's status had substantially improved at that time.This paper mainly discusses upper-class and middle-class women in the later stage of Rome. From the analysis of the awakening of their feminine consciousness, we find that their status had improved and try to inquire into the reason.The paper can be divided into two parts, the foreword and the main body.The Foreword first introduces the present national and foreign study conditions of women history, especially the study conditions of Roman women history, then briefly discusses women's status in early Rome. At that time, their feminine consciousness was not fully awakened. Men were their life center. Although they had realized they are subordinated to men, they had never thought to change such situation.The main body includes two parts. The first part discusses the expression of feminine consciousness in the later stage of Rome. It develops from six aspects: women's self-expression desire, women's view on love and marriage, women's sense of family responsibilities, money occupancy desire, society participation sense and political consciousness. Then arrives at the conclusion that women status wereobviously improved in the later period of Rome. Furthermore, the second part probes into the reason of the situation, including objective reasons and subjective reasons.Indeed, it should be pointed out that although women status were greatly improved, we can not aggrandize the improvement. To begin with, it is just relative improvement, when comparing with women's status in early Rome and other ancient countries. Second, women here studied are just part of women at that time, i.e. upper-class and middle-class women, while excluding a great number of lower-class women. In fact, the status of lower-class women hadn't substantially improved. In addition, the improvement could not change the position of men who ruled over women, and women all the same belonged to the inferior gender.