Susan Elaine Florek

Homer's epic work, The Odyssey (800 BCE), is a man's tale told by a man for men. At the time of its writing, it was one of the first written poems after centuries of oral traditions. Greek women of the time were rarely literate, nor were they permitted to attend the theater or readings, and yet women in the roles of goddesses, demi-goddesses, wives, and slaves figured prominently throughout the adventurous hero's journey.

While Rousseau tried desperately to change his readers perception while he was alive, by writing and publicly reading his last work, The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau, where he explains his avoidance of having any relationship with his own children, Mary Wollstonecraft’s late husband, as a tribute to her, disclosed personal details of her life that the world was not yet ready for as he described her “out of wedlock” pregnancy.

After the fall of Rome Empire, as the surviving population ravaged the remains of a once
glorified kingdom for the materials needed to rebuild a new civilization, others turned to the
church for answers and direction in between bouts of the plague, which would decimate half the
population in some areas, and conflicts over territorial leadership.