First, what a great way to close the presentation portion of class. The other presentations were great, but the play left a lot to the imagination as opposed to just hard facts. What I enjoyed not just from the play was the background information given prior to the play. The play was created based on an actual trial held by a woman who murdered her abusive husband. Then in 1916, by an author many in England equated with Ibsen, recreated the tale. What made the story so capturing and highly regarded was the relate-ability and  reflection of the time period's issues. This was prior to the prohibition era and one of the actresses explained that at the time there was a lot of abuse of women. The abuse of women became a  common practice and an unspoken one at that. Women took on the roles of being seen and not heard. The actresses in the play gave perfect example of that. The women were seen as incompetent and unable to give any real assistance to the solving of the murder. What was ironic was that the women found the motive and solved the case, all while the men were stumbling around the house passing by all legible evidence. Though the men saw the women as inferior and trifle, the men were not the only ones to blame. I am not saying the women chose to be viewed as less intelligent but they did not object it either. The women, in the presence of the men quickly dumbed themselves down and talked about trivial matters.What is very interesting though, are the paralleled attitudes concerning women between then, 1916, and now 2015. Yes the journey for women equality has progressed greatly from 1916, but a lot of old behaviors and mentalities still linger. Women have positioned themselves in the work force as capable and competent and men are acknowledging that fact and accepting that a woman has the capability of equalling if not surppasing a man. While this is true, women have to actively do much more than needed to even prove themselves to be in the same category of men. Like in the play, if a woman were to hide evidence or do something clever, a man wouldn't immediately think a woman was capable of that. At the same time, our society thinks that a man can do anything. So compared to then women are getting recognition, but they have to put n more effort to gain said recognition.
                  The other thing I found very interesting was the concept of dumbing oneself down in an audience to become inconspicuous. The actresses quickly made themselves appear to be doing trivial things when the men arrived, but that prompted me to wonder, do these women dumb themselves down just to avoid scrutiny by their husbands and society, or are they dumbing themselves down because of insecurity? Today, now that its widely known, womens ability to excel, women should no longer feel the need to make themselves feel inferior, so their husbands could feel superior. Too often does a woman play dumb because she believes that is what attracts a man to her. I just found it curious to see the parallelism between 1916 and now, 2015. We have made progress, but there is so much waiting to be done.