Gender and Sex as a Theme when Depicting Women in Shakespeare's Poems

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Gender and Sex as a Theme when Depicting Women in Shakespeare's Poems

When we talk about sex we can mean one of two things. One is being physical with someone else and two to say whether a person is a man or a woman. People contain physical characteristics which distinguishes them from either being man or women. The sex of someone is what a person is and the gender of a person is how he or she present and express themselves. They can act more feminine or more masculine. Typically the women are more feminine and the males are more masculine. Yet sometimes the roles of the two change. One can look and be a man, yet maybe his voice; walk and manner of presenting himself may be very much like a female. Of course then we would only be setting a stereotype on women, that they talk with soft voices, walk more elegant with shorter steps and when it comes to presenting themselves they look lovely.

When stereotypes about women are thrown down on paper many women (usually called feminist) take offense to them. They don't believe women are the weaker sex, or think the man is the worker of the household. They don't believe a male should put women on a pedestal, they just want to be equal. They starve for equality and criticize those with different perspectives on how it should be

A poem which shows both gender and sex is "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" by William Shakespeare. Shakespeare expresses his love for a woman. A man tells his love to a woman and does this by comparing her to a summer's day. It is very clear that a male wrote "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day". It talks about the love of their life as beautiful and lovely. I don't believe a woman would be saying those things about a man. But just because a man wrote it does not mean it sounds like a male speaking. It is obvious to see this man has female characteristics, he talks with such softness, tenderness and sincerity. This is not saying that men are usually not like this, but the tendency is for a female to do so. The construct is for the lady to talk about purities and precious things, while men are talking about things that a little more rugged.

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