A Feminist Perspective of Hero in Much Ado About Nothing Unlike the title of this piece suggests, Hero did not undergo her transformation in Much Ado About Nothing through magic. Rather, Hero was a victim of the double standards and illogical fears that the men of Shakespeare’s plays commonly held. The following quote sums it up quite well: In the plays female sexuality is not expressed variously through courtship, pregnancy, childbearing, and remarriage, as it is in the period. Instead it is narrowly defined and contained by the conventions of Petrarchan love and cuckoldry. The first idealizes women as a catalyst to male virtue, insisting on their absolute purity. The second fears and mistrusts them for their (usually fantasized) infidelity, an infidelity that requires their actual or temporary elimination from the world of men, which then re-forms [sic] itself around the certainty of men’s shared victimization (Neely 127). Hero’s plight in Much Ado About Nothing is a perfect example of how the skewed male perspective can turn a sweet and innocent girl into a scheming strumpet in no time. The main problem is young Count Claudio. He is immature when it comes to matters of love, and it shows when he hints of his growing feelings for Hero when he asks Benedick what he thinks of her (I.i.161). Claudio cannot come out and just say that he has feelings for Hero, he has to seek approval from his male counterparts first. While talking to both Benedick and Don Pedro, Claudio describes his feelings as passion first (I.i.219-220), and then he says, “That I love her, I feel” (I.i.228), indicating that he knows he feels something for Hero, but he is unsure of exactly what his feeling... ... middle of paper ... ... Ironically, this has occurred because of the folly of the men, almost making up for the double standards exercised in the beginning…But not quite. Hero should not have had to depend on the men to regain her honor. Works Cited Much Ado About Nothing. Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Samuel Goldwyn Company and Renaissance Films, 1993. Much Ado About Nothing. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. 366-398. Neely, Carol Thomas. “Shakespeare’s Women: Historical Facts and Dramatic Representations.” Shakespeare’s Personality. Ed. Norman N. Holland, Sidney Homan, and Bernard J. Paris. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. 116-134. Ranald, Margaret Loftus. “ 'As Marriage Binds, and Blood Breaks': English Marriage and Shakespeare” Shakespeare Quarterly 30, (1979): 68-81.
A major concern in both the film and the original text is the ‘status of women’. This is represented through the differing roles of women and their denigration within the Elizabethan society. For instance, Hero is accused of committing infidelity; consequently her image in society is tarnished, In addition to this, Claudio insults Hero publicly without even considering confirming the accusation of her being unchaste. This is illustrated through Claudio slandering Hero through the use of usage of Greek Mythological allusions “You seem to as Dian in her orb, but you are more intemperate than Venus in y...
In the Bontemps poem, he uses the metaphor of reaping and harvesting to express the bitterness felt by African Americans in a racist America. The metaphor explains that no matter how hard African Americans work, their reward will always be less than that of a White American. Bontemps feels that African Americans have labored long and hard enough for White Americans, and that it is time for all Americans to receive equal reward for equal work. In lines 11 and 12 Bontemps says "Small wonder then my children glean in fields / They have not sown, and feed of bitter fruit." These lines are a great example of the extended metaphor used throughout Bontemps poem, and show that he believes that no matter how hard he works to bring change, his children have already tasted the "bitter fruit" (line 12) of racial prejudice. Cullen also uses the extended metaphor of reaping and harvesting as evident in lines 1 and 2: "We shall not always plant while others reap / The golden increment of bursting fruit". Cullen uses these lines to express his pride in his race and to promote equality. He also says "So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, / And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds" (lines 13 and 14) to say that change will not happen overnight and that the wait for equality will be painful and
Amussen, Susan. "The Family and the Household" in A Companion to Shakespeare. Ed. David Kastan. Malden Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1999. 85-99.
William Shakespeare said: “Women may fall when there's no strength in men” (Romeo and Juliet). Throughout history gender role have been a big, whether someone is a feminist or someone believes there is no equality between males and females; everyone has different opinions when it comes to the matter of gender roles. The same thing can be said about William Shakespeare who was a feminist (Shakespeare of Stratford). This ideology can be seen in his play Much Ado about Nothing. In this comedy Shakespeare focuses on two pairs of lovers named Claudio and Hero who are set to be married in a week but before their marriage day, they plan to conspire with Don Pedro, the prince of Aragon to trick their friends Beatrice and Benedick to admit their love for each other. Don John, the brother of Don Pedro, meanwhile plots to prevent marriage of Claudio and Hero by accusing Hero of being unfaithful. Don John initially succeeds in his plan as Hero is accused and ashamed at the marriage ceremony, but at the end Claudio and Hero are united and marry each other. Also, Beatrice and Benedick finally declare their love for each and dance at the end of the play. Shakespeare uses a lot of sources for this comedy and one of them is “Orlando Furioso” written in 1591, which gave Shakespeare the idea of Hero and Claudio’s marriage and Don John’s plot to prevent it. Another source Shakespeare used to write the play is the courtier written in 1588, which gave him the idea of the romance between Beatrice and Benedick. And also “La Prima de la Novelle” written in 1554 by Matteo Bandello gave Shakespeare the idea of putting the setting in Messina, Italy (Shakespeare in quarto). Because Shakespeare was a feminist, some of the women appear as supporting and central...
The scene opens in the beautiful hills of Tuscany, Italy. Lying about on the slopes of grass are the humble townsfolk basking in the sunshine as a soft voice introduces; “Sigh no more ladies, sigh no more.” This dreamlike setting is the opening scene of the major motion picture Much Ado About Nothing as envisioned by film director Kenneth Branagh. A far cry from its Shakespearean origins, Branagh’s Much Ado has a look and feel all of its own. This film seeks to capture its audience with visual majesty as the characters and setting are transformed to reveal Branagh’s joyful rendition of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy.
(Essay intro) In the modern day, women have the luxury of belonging to themselves but unfortunately this was not always the case. During his life, William Shakespeare created many positive female characters who defied the traditional gender roles and brought attention to the misogynistic patriarchy of Elizabethan England. One of these true feminist icons is ‘Much Ado about Nothing’s. Beatrice. The women in ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ defy traditional gender roles. Beatrice represents a brave and outspoken woman who defies the oppressive, traditional gender roles for the female sex. Her cousin Hero, however, represents those women who were successfully oppressed by the patriarchy and accepted the traditional gender roles without much complaint.
One of Emily Dickinson’s greatest skills is taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar. In this sense, she reshapes how her readers view her subjects and the meaning that they have in the world. She also has the ability to assign a word to abstractness, making her poems seemingly vague and unclear on the surface. Her poems are so carefully crafted that each word can be dissected and the reader is able to uncover intense meanings and images. Often focusing on more gothic themes, Dickinson shows an appreciation for the natural world in a handful of poems. Although Dickinson’s poem #1489 seems disoriented, it produces a parallelism of experience between the speaker and the audience that encompasses the abstractness and unexpectedness of an event.
"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal [but] which the reader recognizes as his own." (Salvatore Quasimodo). There is something about the human spirit that causes us to rejoice in shared experience. We can connect on a deep level with our fellow man when we believe that somehow someone else understands us as they relate their own joys and hardships; and perhaps nowhere better is this relationship expressed than in that of the poet and his reader. For the current assignment I had the privilege (and challenge) of writing an imitation of William Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 87". This poem touched a place in my heart because I have actually given this sonnet to someone before as it then communicated my thoughts and feelings far better than I could. For this reason, Sonnet 87 was an easy choice for this project, although not quite so easy an undertaking as I endeavored to match Shakespeare’s structure and bring out his themes through similar word choice.
Emily Dickinson is one of the great visionary poets of nineteenth century America. In her lifetime, she composed more poems than most modern Americans will even read in their lifetimes. Dickinson is still praised today, and she continues to be taught in schools, read for pleasure, and studied for research and criticism. Since she stayed inside her house for most of her life, and many of her poems were not discovered until after her death, Dickinson was uninvolved in the publication process of her poetry. This means that every Dickinson poem in print today is just a guess—an assumption of what the author wanted on the page. As a result, Dickinson maintains an aura of mystery as a writer. However, this mystery is often overshadowed by a more prevalent notion of Dickinson as an eccentric recluse or a madwoman. Of course, it is difficult to give one label to Dickinson and expect that label to summarize her entire life. Certainly she was a complex woman who could not accurately be described with one sentence or phrase. Her poems are unique and quite interestingly composed—just looking at them on the page is pleasurable—and it may very well prove useful to examine the author when reading her poems. Understanding Dickinson may lead to a better interpretation of the poems, a better appreciation of her life’s work. What is not useful, however, is reading her poems while looking back at the one sentence summary of Dickinson’s life.
Mehl, Dieter. Shakespeare's Tragedies: An Introduction. Cambridge, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge U, 1986.
Clark, W. G. and Wright, W. Aldis , ed. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Vol. 1. New York: Nelson-Doubleday
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare focuses on the enormous gap between the power of men and where women stand. Women were expected to be obedient and dependent on men, innocent, and were also expected to be good wives. Shakespeare wanted women to see how the roles are changing for the better. In this play, there is difference between the traditional roles of women back then, and the ones that stand out from the rest. He depicts this through two characters. In the opening scene, where characters and their personalities, and roles are established; Hero has only one line, which is seven words. Even said that, these lines are just a comment on Beatrice. Hero is the daughter and the property of her father, Leonato. Her helplessness comes from her being overprotected by her father, and the need to obey him. Beatrice, by contrast, does not have a father, she lives on her witty personality and her intelligence. Beatrice has a dream to spend her life “where the bachelors sit, and there live we, as merry as the day is long” (2.1.40-46) When Leonato tells Hero, “Daughter, remember what I told you: if the prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer,” (2.1.60-63) she just stands there, silently obeying her father. Hero’s looks are her only advantage as a women, as they are what attracts Claudio. He falls in love with her at first sight in the first act, based only on her appearance.
The great playwright Christopher Marlowe also wrote one of the most famous lyrical poems in British literature, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." In this pastoral portrait, Marlowe reveals the shepherd's desire for a certain young lady to be his love. In "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," Sir Walter Raleigh voices the young lady's answer to this invitation. The two poems share the identical structures of rhyme scheme and meter. Also, the speakers share a similar desire for youthful love. However, these similarities are overshadowed by the differences in the author's backgrounds which, in turn, influence the starkly different characteristics of the speakers of the poems--their view of reality and their motive for love.
In the poem, “It was not Death, for I stood up,” Dickinson uses words to describe the sense of hopelessness she feels as she tries to pinpoint the source of her anguish. In the first two stanzas, she uses specific sensory details to convey her chaotic feelings to tell the reader what her condition cannot be. A repetition of “it was not” (1) is then followed by a reason of why she eliminated the possibility, using the senses of sound or touch. She merges together the conditions she had eradicated and through her chaotic state, her thoughts turn toward funerals. This causes her to think about her death and her current state of mind. She feels her “life were shaven” (13), so that the only emotions left were despair and terror with the feeling of hope lost. She also “could not breathe without a key” (15); terror does not directly affect a person’s breathing, but it sometimes causes a person to feel as if he were suffocating, unable to breathe. Her “key” that she needs is to understand what she is feeling, but she cannot figure it out (15). The last stanza in the poem expresses an overwhelming feeling of bleakness, there is no opportunity for rescue, “like Chaos— Stopless— … / Without a Chance… / Or even a Report of Land—” (21-23). In the last line, there is a paradox, that since there was no possibility of hop...
...e nature of events transpiring, she does not exalt herself; the maiden is compared to a hero, but can never be truly recognized as one.