I found Diderot's "Indiscreet Jewels" increasingly offensive to me, as a woman as I read the story. I found it unfair that first off, these women were placed subject to this bored king's power. And I was annoyed at the initial premise that was made clear at the beginning of this story that women, even the ones generally regarded as chaste, like the nuns and girls from the convent, proved to contradict their outward demeanor. No woman was safe from the king's ring. It was also extremely sexist in that one scene where the husband pleaded with the king not to have his wife's 'jewel' speak because he knew people would down on him because of what the jewel would possibly say.And after her jewel started speaking, he almost murdered her alive. Such violence was shocking to me, and even though this was during a time when husbands were in control of their wives, how he reacted was in my opinion not acceptable for any man, and even the community agreed he over reacted even afterwards when he locked her up at the house for veiled women. I disagree with what Ankita said about Diderot referring to a woman's jewels as a great compliment. Quite frankly I think this was not meant to praise women in any way--in fact I feel it was used as the exact opposite. Women and a very sexual, private part of their body were objectified and used as a means to make a statement about the society at the time.

In Montaigne's essay, maybe it was because I didn't really fully understand it but I felt this one was a lot less sexual than Diderot's. I felt that this article explored more on the power of a person's imagination and although there was the guy who needed the ring to help him sexually. But I am not completely sure about that because he did not describe it into great detail. Montaigne did go into detail about the power of the imagination and mentioned examples of how people can physically change themselves through their thoughts. Personally I feel this is more under the category of the power of the human mind rather than imagination because imagination has the connotation that it is made up and limited to the thoughts. But the stories used in his essay were thoughts that were able to physically be expressed, such as the woman who thought she had swallowed a pin. And while Montaigne says this power lies between an unexplainable link between "the soul and body" I feel it is more of the power between the brain and the body.