A Comparative Study of Women as found in Korean and English Literatures

Abstract

Loss of Helen leads the Greeks to the immortal war. Loss of Briseis starts the immortal epic. Even the divine being who kindles the whole affair from above is a small-minded female god whose pastime it is to lead or mislead the amorous passion of helpless mortals. Indeed without women the great epic of The Iliad could not have developed even in its incipient form. Beowulf is different. It can very well be retold in an all-male story. Excluding the few female characters from the narrative would not have presented a critical problem. The absence of Wealtheow's hospitable hostessship, for instance, would not have seriously abated Beowulf's superhuman muscular strength or heroic readiness to fight; while his funeral would have still been a funeral without the abrupt reference to an unidentified woman's wailing woe. Thus in the only full-length Old English epic women are kept peripheral. With all their broad visibility they do not, like the Homeric women, enter the core of the events.