The Ideal Ideas of Ideology

First, did these writers breath between words? Second, I'm sure glad I opted for semiotics. I will first have to excuse myself slightly because I just received my book yesterday evening and so have been reading frantically trying to catch up, but thus far I must say I'm in need of further explanation with some of these essays. In the intro they don't bother breaking down Ideology, which I feel is critical in introducing a complex subject. Its not until I get to the Althusser essay and he is stating his first thesis, ideology=illusion/allusion. Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of exists. Is it that we create ideas that we relate to the reality that exists around us? As others do from all over and this is why there are so many conflicts of interest? Such as in the Marxist essay, the aristocrats have the upper hand because they own more material goods, therefore their ideology is placed upon the rest of society who then have to abide to their rulings. Ideology to me is a set of thoughts or beliefs (cause a belief is a thought to start) that come together to form a more structured representation of the reality perceived through whomever’s eyes. Therefore it is unique to every person, and doesn't pertain to the whole of one society. I am very curious to see where Simone de Beauvoir's essay will lead us in class. Is this supposing the ideology of men about women or is it about who has control of the material goods? And since men have almost always received more praise in the sense of achieving something they create a set of engrained ideas about women. What I defining is, that men obtain material/survival goods, such as meat from a hunt and even though the women do EVERYTHING else to prepare it, the rest of the villagers would give praise to the hunter. And more or less this has been going about since then until modern times. This is essentially playing upon the Marxist idea that those who posses, posses the ruling ideas. If man is the aristocrat, he posses the ruling and women continue to be the social class. That woman have to create an identity other than being the "other," but in doing so they have to stop placing themselves in that category and have their own set of ideologies. Who knows, maybe I've miss-interpreted this whole thing completely wrong, but hopefully it will all be straightened out in class.