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  3. The Status of Women in Ancient Society In large part as a consequence of the feminist movement, historians have focused a gre

The Status of Women in Ancient Society In large part as a consequence of the feminist movement, historians have focused a gre

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问题                            The Status of Women in Ancient Society
   In large part as a consequence of the feminist movement, historians have focused a great deal of attention in recent years on determining more accurately the status of women in various periods. Although much has been accomplished for the modern period, pre-modern cultures have proved more difficult: sources are restricted in number, fragmentary, difficult to interpret, and often contradictory. Thus it is not particularly surprising that some earlier scholarship concerning such cultures has so far gone unchallenged.  An example is Johann Bachofen’s 1861 treatise on Amazons, women-ruled societies of questionable existence contemporary with ancient Greece.
   Starting from the premise that mythology and legend preserve at least a nucleus of historical fact, Bachofen argued that women were dominant in many ancient societies. His work was based on a comprehensive survey of references in the ancient sources to Amazonian and other societies with matrilineal customs--societies in which descent and property rights are traced through the female line. Some support for his theory can be found in evidence such as that drawn from Herodotus, the Greek "historian" of the fifth century B. C. , who speaks of an Amazonian society, the Sauromatae, where the women hunted and fought in wars. A woman in this society was not allowed to marry until she had killed a person in battle.
   Nonetheless, this assumption that the first recorders of ancient myths have preserved facts is problematic. If one begins by examining why ancients refer to Amazons, it becomes clear that ancient Greek descriptions of such societies were meant not so much to represent observed historical fact--real Amazonian societies--but rather to offer "moral lessons" on the supposed outcome of women’s rule in their own society. The Amazons were often characterized, for example, as the equivalents of giants and centaurs, enemies to be slain by Greek heroes. Their customs were presented not as those of a respectable society, but as the very antitheses of ordinary Greek practices.
   Thus, I would argue, the purpose of accounts of the Amazons for their make Greek recorders was didactic, to teach both male and female Greeks that all-female groups, formed by withdrawal from traditional society, are destructive and dangerous. Myths about the Amazons were used as arguments for the male-dominated status quo, in which groups composed exclusively of either sex were not permitted to segregate themselves permanently from society. Bachofen was thus misled in his reliance on myths for information about the status of women. The sources that will probably tell contemporary historians most about women in the ancient world are such social documents as gravestone, wills, and marriage contracts. Studies of such documents have already begun to show how mistaken we are when we try to derive our picture of the ancient world exclusively from literary sources, especially myths. (467)
The primary purpose of the passage is to ______.
选项 A、compare competing new approaches to understanding the role of women in ancient societies
B、investigate the ramifications of Bachofen’s theory about the dominance of women in ancient societies
C、explain the burgeoning interest among historians in determining the actual status of women in various societies
D、criticize the value of ancient myths in determining the status of women in ancient societies
答案D
解析 主旨大意题。本文开头便提出了目前历史研究中的一个热点问题：考察各个时期女性在社会中的确切地位(on determining more accurately the status of women in various periods)，而后作者以Bachofen的理论为例对以神话为证据来研究女性地位这一方法进行了批判，因此本文的主要写作目的应为D项。
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