Cassandra by Christa Wolf, this is the story of an author writing about the pain she feels as a woman in war time, through a character. Cassandra was a priestess of Apollo who when she refused sex with him, he cursed her to have prophecies that no one would believe her about. While this is not an exact thing that would happen in our time or her time as there isn’t a deity that could cast this curse, this is still something that happens. Especially written from a woman who has been in the middle of the second world war sex is something that is demanded and if not given can have disastrous side effects if refused. There may not be curses of unheard prophecies there can be rumors spread of, in Wolfs time, of being a traitor or being on the other side of the war. In our time, rumors can be spread of someone’s promiscuity or their abilities at their job, to quite extreme problems such as being attacked. Being a woman in anytime is frustrating, more so in the age of Cassandra alongside when Wolf was alive. In the text its Wolf writes about a young slave girl of Achilles went off and she cries wanting to know “what about me, save me too!” (Wolf,112) Before this she talks about how her brother wished she was a man and how much easier it would be, and how she used to wish that too but had decided to never again wish that because she can be proud of being a woman. I imagine that for Wolf this was a personal thing as well, because before the war she probably had that same wish to be able to be a man to have the same freedoms but when the war came it probably changed and there was no longer this wish as she had escaped the draft and later had a bit more freedoms when it came to afterwards.
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