Susan B. Anthony, a woman American civil rights leader said, “I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” This quote directly relates to the stereotypical thinking about gender in both the Elizabethan Era and 19th century because women wanted to be recognized. In Chekhov’s, “The Lady with the Little Dog,” Dmitri Gurov experiences women to be the “lower race,” but when he meets Anna Sergeyovna he begins to think differently. One of Shakespeare’s works, Twelfth Night, depicts a love triangle that plays an important gender role. In addition, Viola/Cesario disguises herself in order to survive in the Illyria. In the film, Shakespeare in Love, Viola de Lesseps fools society by dressing as man, Thomas Kent, to follow Shakespeare, her love of the theater. The film reminds us repeatedly, a complex world where gender roles are uncertain, and things are seldom what they may seem. Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog” and William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, along with the film Shakespeare in Love, depict the similarities of the Elizabethan Era and 19th century of women through induced character roles and powerful emotions. Shakepeare in Love comes closest to breaking the gender seal because the Viola uses clear and concise actions throughout the film.
In “The Lady with the Little Dog,” Chekhov’s character, Dmitri Gurov, an initial male chauvinist married man, has lust for many females, but changes to heart-felt love when he encounters Anna Sergeyovna. She counteracts Dmitri view of women as the “lower race” by using shy and constrained appearances to aid her throughout their meetings. Chekhov describes Anna as...
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.... “The Lady with the Little Dog,” finishes last because there is not enough character development towards gender relations, but rather more emphasis towards love.
Works Cited
Chekhov, Anton. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Comp. Robert DiYanni.
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"Movie Discussion Club Post #4: Shakespeare in Love." Web log post. Blogspot. Blogspot, 29 May 2012. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. .
Perko, Ashley. Gender Role Reversal in Twelfth Night and The Rover. Essay. N.p.: n.p., n.d. MIT Open Course Ware. MIT, Mar.-Apr. 2008. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. .
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night Or, What You Will. Ed. Gayle Gaskill. Newburyport: Focus, 2012. Print.
Lindheim, Nancy "Rethinking Sexuality and Class in Twelfth Night." University of Toronto Quarterly: A Canadian Journal of the Humanities 76.2 (2007): 679-713. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 6 Nov. 2009.
Lindheim, Nancy "Rethinking Sexuality and Class in Twelfth Night." University of Toronto Quarterly: A Canadian Journal of the Humanities 76.2 (2007): 679-713. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 6 Nov. 2009.
In Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare, gender identity and alternative sexualities are highlighted through the depiction of different characters and personalities. In the play, Viola disguises herself as a man thereby raising a merry-go-around of relationships that are actually based on a lie rather than actual fact. Viola attracts the attention of Olivia since she thinks that Viola is a man but even more fascinating is the fact that Orsino is attracted to Viola although he thinks that she is a man. In another twist Viola is attracted to Orsino and has fell in love with him although their love cannot exist since Orsino thinks that Viola is a man.
Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1997.
The play Twelfth Night, or What You Will by William Shakespeare is a 1601 comedy that has proven to be the source of experimentation in gender casting in the early twenty-first century due to its portrayal of gender in love and identity. The play centrally revolves around the love triangle between Orsino, Olivia, and Viola. However, Olivia and Orsino both believe Viola is a boy named Cesario. Ironically, only male actors were on the stage in Shakespeare’s time. This means that Olivia, Viola, and other female characters were played by young boys who still had voices at higher pitches than older males.
The liminality in performing Twelfth Night lies in sexual ambiguity on the stage. It enables a boy actor to play viola's role and disguised as a boy who is wooing another boy who plays a female role . The audience sees no more than a p...
Malcolmson, Christina. “’What You Will’: Social Mobility and Gender in Twelfth Night” in Twelfth Night. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
Wells, Stanley, and Gary Taylor, eds. "Twelfth Night, or What You Will". William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1998.
William Shakespeare once told us, "All the World’s a Stage" —and now his quote can be applied to his own life as it is portrayed in the recent film, Shakespeare In Love. This 1998 motion picture prospered with the creative scripting of Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman and direction of John Madden. The combined effort of these men, on top of many other elements, produced a film that can equally be enjoyed by the Shakespeare lover for its literary brilliance, or for the romantic viewer who wants to experience a passionate love story.
Barton, Anne. Introduction to Twelfth Night. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974. 403-407.
“Gender hardly determines the nature of a character, in the plays of Shakespeare. It is for this very reason, that his plays are read, viewed and enjoyed by both the sexes equally, even after five hundred years of their composition” (Singh). Gender is not something that defines what a character is going to be like in Shakespeare’s plays. This quote illuminates that in Shakespeare’s writings females and males were on equal level playing fields when it came to their traits. Females during the time period were considered inferior to men.
In the book “Gender Trouble” (1990), feminist theorist Judith Butler explains “gender is not only a social construct, but also a kind of performance such as a show we put on, a costume or disguise we wear” (Butler). In other words, gender is a performance, an act, and costumes, not the main aspect of essential identity. By understanding this theory of gender as an act, performance, we can see how gender has greatly impacted the outcome of the play in William Shakespeare’s Othello. From a careful analysis of the story, tragedy in Othello is result of violating expected gender roles, gender performance by Desdemona and Othello, and the result of Iago’s inability to tolerate these violations.
... Critical Interpretations, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987) 43. For further discussion on renaissance gender performance and identity politics among Shakespeare's cross-dressed heroines, see Michael Shapiro's Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages (Ann Arbor: The University of MIchigan Press, 1994).
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night Or, What You Will. New York, New York: New American Library, 1998. Print.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, Or, What You Will. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009. Print.