Female Resistance in Elizabethan England: A Study of Beatrice and Viola

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Women in Elizabethan England lived in a society that was largely dominated by men. They were expected to be obedient and submissive to their husbands. They were viewed as property rather than people. Both Beatrice of Much Ado About Nothing and Viola of The Twelfth Night are strong, independent women that are living in a male dominated world.
Gender roles are prevalent themes throughout the two plays. After her cousin, Hero, is publically humiliated and jilted at the altar by Claudio, Beatrice wishes she could get proper revenge on her own. After begging Benedick to avenge Hero for her she proclaims: “Oh, that I were a man for his sake! Or that I had any friend would / be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into curtsies, / valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, / and trim ones, too. He is now as valiant as Hercules that / only tells a lie and swears it. I cannot be a man with wishing. / Therefore, I will die a woman with grieving.” (Much Ado 4.1.310-15)
Beatrice would never be taken seriously by Claudio if she tried to defend Hero’s honor; she needs Benedick to do it for her. No one in Messina would possibly take Beatrice’s word against Claudio’s. In the minds of the men, she is, after all, just a silly woman with no morals that would also supposedly cheat on her soon-to-be husband if given the chance. …show more content…

If you can’t beat them, join them. Due to her disguise, she doesn’t have to live up to the highly patriarchal society’s standards for women. While discussing Olivia with Cesario, Orsino says that “There is no woman’s sides / Can bide the beating of so strong a passion / As love doth give my heart. No woman’s heart / So big, to hold so much. They lack retention” (Twelfth Night 2.4.90-93). Cesario is able to refute Orsino’s misogynistic claims about women by cleverly arguing that his sister was able to love just as deeply as him or any other

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