Elizabethan Gender Roles

In William Shakespeare’s play, Othello, the playwright presents us a story of love turned bad by unfounded envy. The play brilliantly introduces the main protagonist’s wife, Desdemona, as a perplexing character, assiduously illustrating her metamorphosis from a heroically courageous and defiantly audacious woman of power to a quiet, weak and passive maiden, essentially reflecting on the conventional role of women as well as the changing role of women during the Elizabethan Age. Nevertheless, Desdemona, a character commonly misunderstood to be an innocent, passively submissive, angelic-like woman who can do no wrong, consists of many more qualities that can certainly add to her true characterization as a brave and defiant heroine. Primarily, Shakespeare introduces Desdemona as an Elizabethan gentlewoman who challenges the classical and established role of women in her conservational society with her fortitude, frankness, and bravery.

The basis of Shakespeare’s plays appears to focus mainly around the dominant male character and his conflicts, which tend to deal with a woman. There are only three women in the play Othello; Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca. The way in which these women behave and present themselves strongly reflects the ideological expectations of women within Shakespeare’s imagined Venetian society as well as the Elizabethan society in which he lived. This patriarchal Venetian society presented in the play depicts women as possessions of men who should remain submissive and meek at all times. The women are expected to unselfishly and unreservedly devote their lives to serve their fathers until they are of age to do so, their husbands. All three women love

Throughout ‘Othello’, Shakespeare uses the manipulation of the protagonist, by the antagonist, Iago, to present a play controlled by men. In such a male dominated society, Shakespeare presents the women in the play as tragic victims at the hands of their husbands, in particular Desdemona and Emilia. Throughout this essay I will relate to the Aristotelian and Senecan descriptions of tragedy to come to a conclusion of how in ‘Othello’ Shakespeare presents women as tragic victims of men.

By implementing a contemporary feminist viewpoint in “Othello”, contemporary responders are able to analyse and connect with the theme of womanhood and relate it to a modern context. In A.C. Bradley’s “Shakespearean Tragedy” (1957), Desdemona is described as “the sweetest and most pathetic of

In “Othello,” William Shakespeare extensively explores female stereotypes that occur during the playwright’s time. Throughout the Shakespearian era, women were seen as the inferior sex, over whom men had complete control and thus forcing women to act submissively and obediently in front of their husbands. Men believed that women were objects who just cooked meals, cleaned the house, and bore children while society just accepted these degrading roles. William Shakespeare extensively reinforces female stereotypes by presenting the deaths of Emilia and Desdemona to be rightly deserved for defying their female gender roles throughout the play. Emilia and Desdemona are polar opposite characters who

The Renaissance was the rebirth/reformation from the 14th century which was the plague began. In England, this was considered the Elizabethan Era because this is when Queen Elizabeth I was the queen of England. Learning about how Renaissance women/Elizabethan women were in the past is important to understand because we learn about the gender roles. Women were usually viewed as soft, weak, and obedient while men were viewed as powerful and worthy. In the Tragedy of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth deviates from the gender roles of a traditional woman of her time because she is outspoken, she didn’t have children after marriage,

Religion played a major part in the gender roles during Queen Elizabeth I’s rule. During this era, the Bible was interpreted to make women look and seem weak compared to men (Loades & Trow, 2011). One of the reasons for this dates back to Adam and Eve. In the book Genesis, Eve allowed Satan, in the form of a serpent, to seduce her into eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, the one tree she and Adam were not supposed to eat from.

Newman claims that Othello and Desdemona can both be seen as monstrous. She argues that their actions and characteristics go against the gender norms of the Renaissance. She successfully uses evidence from difference Renaissance sources to support her ideas. This essay is helpful to my research paper because it will support my theory that Shakespeare depicts Desdemona as a monstrous woman.

During the Elizabethan era, gender roles were clearly defined with men as the dominant gender. Shakespeare challenges these social norms with the true definition of feminism being conveyed in The Merchant of Venice. The characterisation of Portia, the heiress of Belmont, challenges traditional gender roles of an obedient daughter and the clever male figure. Portia is bound by a clause in her dead father's will that forces her to marry whichever suitor chooses the right casket. While Portia obeys her fathers wishes it is clear that she is upset with the plan stating "Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one nor refuse none?"

“’Tis not a year or two shows us a man. / They are all but stomachs, and we all but food; / They eat us hungrily, and when they are full, / They belch us” (Shakespeare 3.4 103-6). Emilia notices how Othello has been acting towards Desdemona. Emilia then gives her input about how men do not show their true selves and how they use their wives to fulfill their needs for a certain amount of time, then get rid of them. In saying so, Emilia expresses the frustration and the struggles that women went through during that period with their husbands. Therefore, women feel pressured by society to put up with it their husbands, even if the way the men act towards them is

In William Shakespeare’s tragic play Othello there are numerous instances of obvious sexism aimed at the three women in the drama -- Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca – and aimed at womankind generally. Let us delve into this subject in this paper.

Emilia, in the play Othello, is not a typical example of a female character during the time of William Shakespeare. When one contrasts the time of the Renaissance to the modern day, one must determine the context of the times. A forewarning is that Emilia would not be unusual if one assesses her character by contemporary standards; nevertheless, analyzing the time of Shakespeare, an argument can be made about whether or not Emilia is the embodiment of feminist values. To commence this thought, it is important to factor in that under what is considered feminism today, Emilia arguably would not be within that realm; however, a strong argument could be made that she was the prototype for what will be considered feminism in the future. Emilia’s character is important to the play because of how she responds to the other characters. In Othello, females are not viewed in the same light as males, as the men in the play refer to them as whores and witches. Emilia conveys a message of feminism throughout the play by speaking out when she needed to and by being critical of the horrific actions of the men in the play.

Shakespeare’s society was strongly patriarchal .Women were expected to behave passively obediently and submissively toward their husbands ,who were considered the superior sex and were given the responsibility of governing the household .This is a topic undoubtedly critical to our understanding both of the role of women and the traditional concepts of gender and sexuality.Tarub explains that even domestic households were structured in accordance with patriarchal values ; the man ruled whilst his wife managed it .Traub sums up the repression and confinements of women within the domestic households as ‘’the body enclosed’’ to refer to their ‘closed genitals ,closed mouths and closure within the home ‘’ .Weakness and ‘the body enclosed’’ may have been synonymous with women at the time , but certainly not with the heroic and overbearing Rosalind who shows a reckless disregard for social conventions in donning on the disguise of Ganymede ,mocking the principles of love and bringing Orlando under her sway .She is ‘’a woman .When {she} thinks , {she} must speak ‘’ .To arrive at a tentative argument as to whether Rosalind acts as an ‘agent of change ‘ (Todd 1 ) and a challenge to the ‘body enclosed’ or a reflection of traditional gender roles , we must first of all define ‘heroine’ and look at how the its sense has changed over time , and how it may be applied to her as a ; cousin : daughter : man and boy .

In the context of modern society, the concepts of gender are blurred due to an open approach on the subjects of masculinity, femininity and all that may lie in between. However, as William Shakespeare was writing within the Elizabethan era, the lines of being masculine and being feminine were clearly determined in society, yet the cross-dressing plots in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1599) and The Merchant of Venice (1597) illustrate how even within this time period, the identity of gender were constantly being questioned. Rosalind and Portia demonstrate the concept of cross-dressing as both disguise themselves as men in their stories and in doing so, pose questions about the validity of femininity.

When observing gender in our society, women and men are stereotyped with specific roles. Men have always been seen as the family’s main source of income whereas the women take care of their home and children. However, Shakespeare challenges these gender roles in his play with the three female characters Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. While all three are independent, powerful women and even lead their armies into battle, the men seem to be foolish and weak such as King Lear and Albany. Furthermore, Mira cel Batran makes a point in her essay, “Feminist Reading of William Shakespeare’s King Lear”, that although women are regarded as dependent on men, Shakespeare explains that it can be the exact opposite. The men seem to depend on the women such as King Lear depending on Cordelia and Albany depending on Goneril. Shakespeare, in his play, King Lear, portrays women who are strong and intelligent and men who are weak or overpowered by female characters, challenging the societal belief that women are inherently less than or dependent on men.