Chains

            In the book Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson it talks about a girl named Isabel, who is a slave. She thought that after her owner died she and her sister would be free, but they weren't. They were tricked and sold to a very wealthy couple in New York. This book takes place in revolutionary times. The couple that Isabel and her sister are sold to are Loyalists and have documents in their possession that the patriot army wants. In the book, a fellow slave named Curzon asks Isabel to spy on her owners and tell all she knows to the general of the patriot army. Isabel learns many things but one thing she learns is how men treated women in this era.

            Women are treated very differently by men in this time period. One way that men treat women differently is by keeping them naive. When ever something would go wrong in the Lockton family, Isabel's owners, Mr. Lockton would always keep things from Mrs. Lockton because he didn't want her to know too much. For example in the book, Mr. Lockton is wanted by the police and he gets  arrested, but he wouldn't tell Mrs. Lockton why. She kept asking him and finally after an hour, and he still didn't tell her, he got annoyed and started hitting her telling her to mind her own business. Mrs. Lockton was just worried about Mr. Lockton but still he would tell her because he thought it was too much for a women to handle.
             Another way women are treated differently in the revolutionary era is the fact that women are not allowed to speak their own minds. For example, one night the Locktons were preparing to have a huge dinner and Mr. Locktons aunt was invited.  Lady Seymour, Mr. Locktons aunt, knows a lot about the world that she was living in, but she couldn't have an open opinion about it. For example at this dinner Lady Seymour said, "What if the rebels decide that the turnabout is fair play? We need to care for them so they don't harm their British captives." Lady Seymour was talking about her opinion on the prisoners of war and the men at the table totally shot down all of her ideas. They said she didn't know what she was talking about because she was a women.
             The world that Isabel lived in was completely different form the world that we live in today. Today women can get the same type of education as a man can get. Today women can get the same job as a man. But that's not the case everywhere. When in my class we watched the speech that Malala Yousafzai gave in front of the UN, it made me think about, how in a lot of ways the way men treat women are a lot like hoe they treated them 300 years ago. Our world has changed a lot, but we still have a lot more to accomplish and change.