Viola and Beatrice both take on men's roles, Viola that of a manservant and Beatrice that of the perpetual bachelor and the clown: "I was born to speak all mirth and no matter," she says to Don Pedro [II.i.343-4]. They appear to be actors and manipulators, much more so than their female predecessors, who are mostly reactive and manipulated, such as Hermia, Helena, Titania, and Gertrude. None of these women seemed in charge of her own destiny, but tricked by the schemes of men and later scorned or humiliated as a result of male machinations. Viola and Beatrice, although they both seem fiercely independent and comfortable in a man's world, reveal themselves to have only the trappings of manhood, and not its full capacity for action. They are undone by unrequited love, made desperately unhappy by their inability to woo the man of their choosing. In the end, it is only coincidence and the plotting of other characters that bring the true nature of their affections into the open and thus force the plays to their respective matrimonial conclusions. Beatrice is deceived by Hero and the others, but the nature of deception is not on a par with the scheming of Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream or Claudius in Hamlet. The supposedly false premise on which Don Pedro's plot against Beatrice is based -- Benedick's passionate love for... ... middle of paper ... ...ke patience on a monument, smiling at grief." [II.iv.117-8] Her matching jests with the clown cause him to actually dislike her as a rival. Beatrice, after swapping a fine round of jokes with Benedick, must respond honestly to his question of "And how do you do?" with "Very ill." [V.ii. 93-4] So, while Viola and Beatrice are not completely free of typecast feminine failings, they are not helpless pawns. Although they do not confront their problems with masculine directness equal to their masculine wit, they are nobody's fools. Works Cited Much Ado About Nothing. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. 366-398.
Shakespeare represents Beatrice as a very feisty, cynical and sharp woman during the play. We can especially see this when she uses her wit to shock the messenger saying, in act one scene one, that ‘he is no less than a stuffed man.’ This is exceedingly disrespectful to fashion such a rude comment about a man who is just about to arrive back from war. One thing Shakespeare clearly shows us is that Beatrice would not be the ideal woman for most men. To emphasize this he contrasts Beatrice with a weak and quiet character such as Hero who acts upon every mans instruction, we can see this when Beatrice says to Leonato that its her ‘cousins duty’ to say ‘father as it please you.’ Shakespeare makes such a clear contrast between the two women to the extent that Beatrice steals most of Hero’s attention from the other male characters in the play. Furthermore he shows us how Beatrice is perhaps a threat to the patriarchal society at the time, we can see this on page fifty-nine where she implys that it is her duty to please herself, whether or not her father consents. This is unlike Hero, who cannot do anything unless a man is fighting her corner, however Beatrice is willing to
Lewis, Jone J. "Josephine Baker." About.com Women's History. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2013. .
"A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims. University of South Florida. Web. 19 May 2014.
Incomplete An exploration of Shakespeare’s presentation of trickery and deception in his play ‘Much Ado about Nothing.’ In William Shakespeare’s play ‘Much Ado about Nothing’, there are many instances of trickery and deception, which seem to surround the whole of the play. These instances are as follows: Don Pedro wooing hero for Claudio, Don Pedro wooing hero for himself, Claudio pretending to be Benedick to find out information from Don John and Borachio, Don John and Borachio both know that Claudio is not Benedick but trick Claudio into thinking that they believe that Claudio is in fact Benedick, Benedick pretending to be somebody else whilst talking to Beatrice, Beatrice pretending to believe that she is in fact talking to Benedick, Beatrice having romantic feelings for Benedick, Benedick having romantic feelings for Beatrice, Beatrice not having romantic feelings for Benedick, Benedick not having romantic feelings for Beatrice, Hero is unfaithful with Borachio, Hero is dead, and Antonio having another daughter.
Guyana, South America is South America’s monarch. It is located on the northern border of South America and is also part of the Anglophone Islands. After Jones and his flock moved to this country, he started a cult. He named this the Peoples Temple.They were located in the jungle of Guyana. In this community, Jones proclaimed that all men, except for him, were homosexual. He...
In conclusion, gender role in Elizabethan era is very complex with respect to women’s role. Men are the masters of the home and society; they preside over every aspect of life. They are however, expected to take care of their family and also be actively involved in politics, war, and they inherit their father’s properties. Women role varied a according to their social status. All women were raised to be subservient to men. Unlike upper class women, lower class women were denied any kind of education. And all women are expected to get married and bear children. The qualities Shakespeare gave Beatrice are very significant because it contrasts traditional Elizabethan theater. Gender role has evolved over time, especially women’s role and it will continue to evolve as long as there are women like Beatrice around.
Ragghianti, Marie. "'I Wanted to Be Treated Like a Human Being'." Parade. Jan. 19 1992: 20-21. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
Beatrice is, without a doubt, one of the strongest female characters that Shakespeare ever came up with in his time of writing. Shakespeare shows, through Beatrice, how every woman should act in an era where only the men were even able to have control. In this era, or the renaissance time, no woman had free will; they were always told what they could and could not do, as well as, who they were to marry. In the play “Much Ado About Nothing” Beatrice has many qualities but the ones that stand out the most in the play are: her independence, her feistiness, and of course her openness to defy male subjection.
In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and in Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid, two ladies are presented, that are not necessarily the leading protagonist, but they help unravel the plays’ plots into something amazing. Twelfth Night features Maria, the lady in waiting to Olivia. At first Maria comes off as a dilettante, later on we find out that’s not the case at all. Meanwhile, in The Imaginary Invalid, there is the disputatious Toinette, who is the maidservant and nurse to the imaginary invalid himself, Argan. Maria and Toinette are two strong women characters, their strength and wit is depicted through Maria and Toinette’s deceiving schemes to make their plays more stimulating as well as their objectivity throughout all the chaos in their respective play.
Over the span of the Holocaust over 6 million Jewish people were senselessly tortured and killed. The man in charge of this horrible act is no stranger to history, Adolf Hitler. There is only one logical explanation in my opinion for the way Hitler acted. Paranoia. You can clearly see that as soon as he felt that he was being threatened by someone or some group, he just took them out, like the Jews, the Gypsies, the swing kids, and many more. Hitler was scared or paranoid of having his power taken from him so he did what he thought was the best decision that he could do to protect what little power he did have at the time, which was genocide.
Taub, Leslie-Faith M. "Making The Diagnosis: Idiopathic Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder." Journal Of The American Academy Of Nurse Practitioners22.7 (2010): 346-351. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 May 2014.
Crain, W. (2011). Theories of development: Concepts and applications (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Baker, Lynda M., Patricia Case, and Deena L. Policicchio.”Abstract” National Center for Biotechnical Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 23 June 0005. Web. 28 Apr.2014
In the comedy Twelfth Night written by William Shakespeare many of the characters experience emotional pain. The pain that a character name Olivia experiences is the death of her brother, causing her to mourn. Malvolio who is Olivia's steward is involved with emotional pain caused by humiliation, which occurs more than once in this play. Lastly, a great deal of characters battle with the feeling of unrequited love. Even though Shakespeare wrote this as a comedy, there was still a mass amount of emotional pain throughout.
Ultimately, Viola gives herself a choice, either enter Illyria as a woman or disguise herself as a male named Cesario where she will live in servitude to the duke. In giving her self a choice, Viola transcends the traditional understanding of gender but also love from a humanistic perspective by denying her societal expectations as a woman in the 1600s. At the beginning of the play Viola decides to “conceal” her gender under her own pretenses that “For such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent” (Shakespeare 1192). Her reasoning and determinism for disguising herself as a man helps revolutionizes the concept of love through Viola’s character development throughout the play where she “falls in love” with the character of Orensio, whom is the duke for which she serves. While, Viola could never determine that her “fate” was to fall in love with Orsensio, her choice at the beginning of act one helped determine her unorthodox path that lead her to not only fall in love with someone beyond her social class as a disguised boy but also define a different method of marriage in a 1600s