Shared Human Responsibility in a World of Gender Inequality According to Carey and Woolf

Abstract

The issue of gender inequality has been a prominent issue for centuries. Regardless of gender, we are all living as humans, and we must learn how to live together. What do we owe our fellow human beings on this walk of life? Elizabeth Carey and Virginia Woolf answer this question through their works The Tragedy of Mariam and A Room of One’s Own. We will discover how complex female characters and Virginia Woolf’s essays represent internalized misogyny, how misogynistic male characters and Virginia Woolf’s commentary on men show the role of misogynistic men in society, and how the gender role swap of a powerful king and a powerless queen and the gender role swap of Shakespeare shows how a world of switched gender roles demonstrate the truth of what we owe our fellow human beings. Ultimately, we will learn that human beings owe themselves respect first and foremost, human beings owe others respect and understanding, and finally, we will learn how looking through the perspectives of our fellow human beings helps us to understand why we owe them these values.