The Male and Female Self in European Civilization Essay

The Male and Female Self in European polish - Essay ExampleTwo of these personalities were Heloise and Abelard who became famous for their disastrous combat which shook the church in France during the Middle-Ages. whoreson Abelard, a renowned philosopher and priest, fell in love with his beautiful and convent-educated student Heloise who eventually became pregnant. The affair cease in a tragedy when the couple secretly got married. When Heloises uncle found out intimately the illicit affair and the marriage, he ordered Abelard castrated. Abelard spent the rest of his life in a monastery and Heloise decided to take vows as an Abbess, both embittered and separated from each other(a). Heloises and Abelards letters, written to each other at the height of their affair, compiled by eternal Mews, in a book foreseeed The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard, radically and eloquently described the surpassing nature of their love. These collection of letters found and translated by Mews, only manifested that al geegh men mainly dominated this period, the voices of women in that generation could never be silenced by constraints on gender or the established spectral institutions. In one of her letters, Heloise wrote to Abelard she preferred love to chains and freedom to marriage as marriage was do merely for conventional purposes. And if the name of wife appears more sacred and more valid, sweeter to me is ever the word friend, or, if thou be not ashamed, concubine or whoreI preferred to love to wedlock, freedom to a bond. I call God to witness, if Augustus, ruling over the whole foundation, were to deem me worthy of the honour of marriage, and to confirm the whole world to me, to be ruled by me forever, dearer to me and of greater dignity would it reckon to be called thy strumpet than his empress. (Constant 27)Heloise altered her rendering of self from being 1a woman of great wisdom and prudence and religion to someone who is not chaste. Constant Mews men tioned this as 2an incredible insight into Heloises perception of the hypocrisy of religious life. A part of Heloise identification of the self was her strong views about gender issues of her time questioning the functions of Christian women in religious life and how this life could be make to suit them and not the other way around. Mews added that 3the traditions Heloise inherited were one in secular level quite an distinct from the love based on the Scriptures that Heloise had to follow or the love that was talked about in conventual life. The Middle-Ages were the period in which society identified women as the cause of decay and corruption and Heloise defied this prevailing approximation by developing a notion of love which at best was liberal and beyond her time. In another letter to Abelard, Heloise wrote 4I do not consider the knowledge of those who seem to love each other for riches and pleasures to be durable at all since the very things on which they base their love see m to have no durability. In many of her letters in which she professed love to Abelard, Heloise stressed equality and friendship as essential to love and relationships.For the most part, Abelard agreed with Heloises view about love saying that they could cost