Relationships Between Men and Women in The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
The Winter's Tale was written in 1611, during the reign of Queen
Elizabeth I. The play is one of Shakespeare's romance titles, though
it could be more justly referred to as a 'tragi-comedy' due to the
instances of accusation, death, repentance and reunion. To
successfully study how Shakespeare presents relationships between men
and women in The Winter's Tale there are four main relationships to
examine - Hermione and Leontes, Paulina and Antigonus, Perdita and
Florizel, and Leontes and Paulina.
Shakespeare's view of women, and generally the Elizabethan view,
suggested that women had less capability for evil - can only assist in
a man's corruption or downfall, evidence for this can be found by
examining particular types of literature from this period, such as
T.E. (?)'s didactic 'The Law's Resolution of Women's Rights'. Likewise
in The Winter's Tale, only to a lesser extent, women can be seen as
temptresses. Hermione was the supposed adulteress in The Winter's Tale.
Many would argue that Shakespeare depicted the condition of women
within a patriarchal system and created female characters, which in
their richness transcend the limitations of his time. Shapiro, for
example, goes so far as to claim that Shakespeare was 'the noblest
feminist of them all.' Though Shakespeare pays more attention to the
roles that men play in society and many of the female characters are
constricted in their experiences. They do not have the same ability to
be as fully human as the men. They do not learn by their experiences,
except Paulina who is eventually chastised and pa...
... middle of paper ...
...sion.
It could be argued that Shakespeare only goes so far with the gender
roles - the women are eventually silenced or pacified - because the
suspension of disbelief can only be maintained so far - the
traditional view of women was confined within rigid boundaries. In The
Winter's Tale all the women are badly treated - incidentally, at the
hands of men. Our perspective of the actions of the men we believe to
be harsh, though to Shakespeare's contemporaries they were likely to
be justified - in fact chastisement would probably be justified to a
more brutal extent. There is however little authentic evidence in the
plays, that Shakespeare strove either to uphold or to subvert, however
covertly, the established order.
Works Cited:
Shakespeare, William. The Winter's Tale. Ed. J. H. P. Pafford (London: Methuen, 1963).
Firstly we will commence by discovering how women are presented in Shakespeare’s play .Through-out the play women are presented as immature , impuissant characters : Lady Capulet & Juliet ,all women are regarded as possessions of men ,for them to do as they please . They are ornaments, they cannot speak their minds nor can they make their own decisions. Women are in the men’s shadows.
Throughout Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, there is an overlaying presence of the typical roles that men and women were supposed to play. During Elizabethan times there was a major difference between the way men and women were supposed to act. Men typically were supposed to be masculine and powerful, and defend the honor. Women, on the other hand, were supposed to be subservient to their men in their lives and do as ever they wished. In Romeo and Juliet the typical gender roles that men and women were supposed to play had an influence on the fate of their lives.
William Shakespeare 's play Hamlet focuses on Hamlet, a 30-year old man who tries to seek revenge for his father. Reading the play and looking at it through a contemporary lens, one can assume the title character is homosexual. Even though Shakespeare does not mean for hamlet to be a homosexual, a contemporary reader can assume this argument; through Hamlet’s characterization, portraying his relationship with men all around. As well as his misogynistic relations.
Romeo and Juliet has different roles for different genders. During the Shakespearean period, when Shakespeare writes, most women had to marry when they were teen, when they were in adolescence or even before. However, the men who they were marrying were in their early to late twenties. In the household that the women lived in, the men basically owned them. The women always followed men’s word, which says that the male was the dominant gender of the society. Romeo and Juliet reflects this in a number of ways. Juliet was forced to marry Paris, by the word of her father, who said that if she did not marry Paris, she would go to the streets(Shakespeare, 3.5.154-62). Women were thought to be weaker and less important than men in Romeo and Juliet because men are trying to be the strongest out of everyone, women have a lower social status, and men think they owned women in Romeo and Juliet.
The struggle of women to fight for equal rights has always been a problem in society. This issue has transcended from generations and can be tracked down from many literary sources: books and articles, the conflict women went through to even be able to voice their point in in any matter, even ones that included them. William Shakespeare, as said by Scott Guffey, manages to bring “fourth [the] highly believable and realistic” (Guffey 2) judgment and belittlement of women during the Renaissance period in Othello. Shakespeare does this by establishing societies need for women to portray the image of the perfect wife and signifying the repercussion that occur when those needs are not meet. He illustrates what happens to Desdemona and Emilia’s credibility and treatment after their husband’s accuse them of cheating, an allegation that causes them to no longer hold the only thing women were valued for: their image of an impeccable wife. Although, they were both strong women by defying important men in their life, gender was represented as a source of supremacy, in Othello, and challenging those norms ultimately lead to both of these women’s demise.
A Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare is a chilling play full of misfortune and comedy. Throughout the play, the themes of death and suffering are present, but yet the way in which they are presented is both comical and strange. The way in which the dialogue takes place or the way in which actions occur seem to be ambiguous. One of the most pivotal points of the story takes place over a very short time span, climaxing over three pages, and declining almost immediately thereafter. In this case, the death of Hermione and Mamillius occurs and is resolved, with their burial following quickly after. The wording throughout the text can be interpreted in several ways, especially in the way which death is represented throughout the play. Death occurs quickly and there is no real indication to when it is about to take place. The characters die off stage, and as an audience we only hear of their deaths from second hand accounts. Is it thus possible to believe all that is said or heard, or is possible that the sounds and sights of the play are written as such to cause doubt? Shakespeare uses death in A Winter’s Tale as a modem for certain events to be interpreted ambiguously, ultimately leading up to the reveal at the end. The way in which death is presented is as a way for the story to proceed, and it allows for the character to mold to the situation.
From the beginning, Macbeth is a play filled with contradictions. In the opening scene, the witches, who are women with beards, declare, “ fair is foul and foul is fair”(1.1.12 Shakespeare). In this disarranged and chaotic world, the conventional gender roles are sometimes unseated as well. However, when they are unseated, negative repercussions always ensue. Furthermore, in Macbeth, Shakespeare implies that traditional gender roles are the most beneficial and should be followed invariably.
In order to analyse Shakespeare’s women, one must be aware of the female situation in both the playwright's own time period, and in the period in which his play was written. The ladies in Othello suggest that they have “internalised society's’ expectations of them, and apart from in moment of private conversation, behave as men expect, believing this to be ‘natural’” (. Emilia’s (and Desdemona’s) behaviour towards men for the most part of the play is an example of this behavior considered normal at the time. This conformity to social norms can be perceived as weaknes...
Love is the central theme in the play ‘As You Like It’ by William Shakespeare, the author expressed many types of love in the play. Some of them are, brotherly love, lust for love, loyal, friendship love, unrequited love, but of course, romantic love is the focus of this play.
On the surface, Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night may seem like to the run of the mill Shakespearean comedy. It has loads of the ingredients you would typically see in a Shakespeare play; love being the be all end all, revenge, and yes, cross-dressing. Aside from dramatics, this comedy embodies the fundaments of the battle of the sexes; the age-old conflict is reminiscent to how gender roles are to this day. Man vs. Woman, or the main ingredient as it is, sets the ball rolling for the tone and the social construct of the comedy. Viola, disguised as Cesario, says, “Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness wherein the pregnant enemy does much. How easy it is for the proper-false in women 's waxen hearts to set their forms!” (Twelfth Night, II.ii 27-30.) This quote alone expresses not only the ambiguity of gender through identity, but also the way men portray female’s inferiority and deceitfulness. Despite the male protagonists ' view on women 's incapability to love, Viola 's
During the Elizabethan era women had a status of subordination towards men. They had a role to marry and oblige to their husband’s wishes. Shakespearean literature, especially illustrates how a woman is psychologically and physically lesser to their male counterpart. The play, Othello, uses that aspect in many different ways. From a Feminist lens others are able to vividly examine how women were subjected to blatant inferiority. Being displayed as tools for men to abuse, women were characterized as possessions and submissive; only during the last portion of the play did the power of women take heed.
Society in the16th century was highly structured. Women of the upper class were expected to be trophies for their husbands. The men were required to hunt, lead, and go into battle. If one chose not to follow these dictates, the rest of society would question, look down on, or even punish the deviant. The prominent author, William Shakespeare, placed this subject into comedy and tragedy plays with dramatically different outcomes. In Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare makes fun of stereotypical gender roles by establishing Beatrice and Lady Macbeth as the dominant characters over Benedick and Macbeth through imagery, dialogue, and character personalities.
In Shakespeare’s play Othello, the male characters perceive women as adulterous and property, treating them as inferior that need to be submissive and obey. Iago creates a false perception of his wife thinking she is promiscuous. Also, Othello sees his wife as promiscuous, an impression created by his jealousy and one he has convinced himself of it. Furthermore, Iago and Othello perceive their wives as inferior, and by his words, the reader can see that they are both their wife and subordinate. At last, the male characters refer to Desdemona’s marriage as a “steal” and “purchase” of property, then, Iago and Othello end their wives’ lives because they see them as possessions of no good.
William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer of all time as well as the greatest dramatist. Shakespeare lived in Stratford-on-Avon and he dedicated most of his life to writing plays and poems. Shakespeare’s plays are well known and they have many of the same reoccurring and similar, underlying themes. One very interesting thing about Shakespeare is the way he approaches the women characters in his plays and how he treats them. In the Shakespearian plays, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Tempest, King Lear, Much Ado about Nothing, Othello, and A Midsummers Night Dream, the women characters are treated very similar, but also differently as well.
Throughout the historical literary periods, many writers underrepresented and undervalued the role of women in society, even more, they did not choose to yield the benefits of the numerous uses of the female character concerning the roles which women could accomplish as plot devices and literary tools. William Shakespeare was one playwright who found several uses for female characters in his works. Despite the fact that in Shakespeare's history play, Richard II, he did not use women in order to implement the facts regarding the historical events. Instead, he focused the use of women roles by making it clear that female characters significantly enriched the literary and theatrical facets of his work. Furthermore in Shakespeare’s history play, King Richard II, many critics have debated the role that women play, especially the queen. One of the arguments is that Shakespeare uses the queen’s role as every women’s role to show domestic life and emotion. Jo McMurtry explains the role of all women in his book, Understanding Shakespeare’s England A Companion for the American Reader, he states, “Women were seen, legally and socially, as wives. Marriage was a permanent state” (5). McMurtry argues that every woman’s role in the Elizabethan society is understood to be a legal permanent state that is socially correct as wives and mothers. Other critics believe that the role of the queen was to soften King Richard II’s personality for the nobles and commoners opinion of him. Shakespeare gives the queen only a few speaking scenes with limited lines in Acts two, four, and five through-out the play. Also, she is mentioned only a few times by several other of the characters of the play and is in multiple scenes wit...