One Man Two Guvnors, Womens Roles

While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.

Femininity is a concept whose attributes are contingent on the culture it is in—what one culture may consider typically feminine traits could largely vary from what another culture views as being feminine. While theater can sometimes subvert theses ideals and present women who function in ways that are not typically feminine, theater can often present idealistic representations of women who exemplify that culture’s ideals of femininity. Take, for example, the female characters in both Guan Hanqing’s Snow in Midsummer and Hroswit’s Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins. While both texts come from largely different cultural contexts—Snow in Midsummer was written in thirteenth century China for a general population whereas Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins was written in tenth century Germany as a closet drama—both texts have female protagonists whose rebellions exemplify feminine ideals of the respective cultures.

“Bouncers” and “Shakers” by John Godber are two captivating plays that challenge gender boundaries and explore the concepts of the stereotypical male and female roles within society. Therefore, the aim of our company was to explore gender stereotypes and gender elasticity through our adapted version of “Bouncers and Shakers”. Thus, bring to light the gender boundaries by delving into the roles of masculinity and femininity with us the actors portraying few roles, as well as challenge the perception that females should play female characters and males should play male characters. Furthermore, as we have discovered from previous years of study, the work of practitioner/playwright’s Sarah Kane and Steven Berkoff offer a great flexibility of gender, therefore we looked into their texts, style and performances in our rehearsal process. On the same hand, we strived to create quite eccentric, melodramatic style of the piece, however still showing conventional and truthful characterisations. Thus, the experience we wanted to create for the audience was to make people relate to these stereotypes and raise questions about the construction of gender. We tried to achieve this by showing scenes from everyday life that everyone can relate to, for instance hairdresser saloon, barbershop, pubs and night life.

The first essay, “The Roles of Women in British Drama,” represents my first exposure to a new genre of literature. The essay was also one of my first formal and interpretative essays at the college level. As a woman and a student of literature, I feel a special connection to this essay’s topic of women’s roles in literature. In addition, this essay shows my “knowledge of the social, political, philosophical, and religious forces that influence authors and the people they write about” (Oral/Portfolio). After reading some of the most prominent British plays of the twentieth century, I observed a discontinuity in the roles of women in this genre. Sadly, women’s roles in literature were very similar to their role in society. During the twentieth century, women were still trying and failing to emerge out of the roles they had been cast in by a male dominated society. Even though women were almost always portrayed as inferior to men, I found a strong exception to this stereotype through the role of Thomasina. I admire Thomasina’s intelligence and wit, but I truly admire Tom Stoppard for creating this character.

In society the purpose of gender roles is to group people into two opposite categories, men and women. These categories however, encourage toxic masculinity and gender inequality. In movies or books characters tend to fall into one category, when in reality most people don’t fit into just one. Shakespeare explores the idea of conformity and categorization in Macbeth. In Macbeth, the characters conformity to gender roles are the root of all their problems.

The theme of gender is presented to the audience as dramatic irony as well, since this play was written in 1912, the play shows how women were in that certain period of time, they didn’t have as many rights, they weren’t treated equally with men, in fact they were seen to be lower than men. However in the time that this play was written which is 1945 women had a lot more rights due to the fact that when men left the country for war, which according to Mr.Birling wasn’t supposed to happen, all the women were the people who looked after the country and kept it going, women became more interdependent and the society just grew and became a lot more open minded with their thoughts. JB Priestly has tried to show the importance of women in the play as well in the play as well at some places but very indirectly, like in that part where the inspector says, “There are a lot of young women living that sort of existence in every city and big towns in this

Gender roles in this play reflect the traditional ones that predominated in 1950s America. Men speak for women, control them, and mostly dictate what they wear and where they go. What is masculine and what is manly is clearly defined and when someone deviates from that, such as Rodolpho, they are subject to mocking, curiosity, and/or outright hostility.

The plot of both Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” and Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll House” provides scope for a few scenes that lack the presence of all or any men. These scenes, consisting of communication between the female characters, assist in developing the theme of women openly defying the fact that the society they live in is primarily run by men. All the power and authority in their society, no matter the situation, belongs to the men while the women are simply excluded. The women in these plays defy the norms set by society and manage to evade the expectations of their patriarchal societies.

The most prominent woman figure in this play is Linda, but the male characters in this play also give us insight into women’s roles and help feed the feminist analyses

Throughout many pays and novels, women have had important roles of helping form the main characters, in the way they think, move or change the story. Women have always been subordinate to men all through history, but in plays, novels, short stories, etc, they have been given large enforcing roles, showing the power within women. William Shakespeare and Sophocles use guilt, pride, and influence to demonstrate the importance of the women’s role to support the main characters in both the plays of Macbeth and Antigone.

In this essay I am going to be discussing to what extent I agree with the quote “Women’s roles are often stereotyped in dramatic comedy” and if I believe it is the case in Educating Rita. In these times working class women were always stereotyped as starting a family for their husband’s and not being as equal as men therefore not treated the same. In the 1980’s women were expected to start family’s and to be a housewife for their husband. They were known as the working class.

In Shakespeare's plays Twelfth Night and As You Like It both of the lead female characters dress as men. Both plays are comedies and the change in gender is used as a joke, but I think it goes much deeper. A woman can become a man, but only if it is not permanent. The affect of the change cannot be too great because she must change back to female once everything is settled. They are strong female characters, but must become men to protect themselves and ultimately solve the problem of the play. In the book Desire and Anxiety: The Circulation of Sexuality in Shakespearian Drama Valerie Traub calls the characters, "the crossed-dressed heroine who elicits and enjoys

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.

In Twelfth Night Shakespeare uses gender roles and cross dressing to create disguise. This creates a sense of gender ambiguity and this is what makes the audience laugh - but although it creates a sense of fun and liveliness it also examines

The scarcity of substantial roles for actresses has long been a problem in theatre. Churchill radically alters the balance in `Top Girls' by having only women on the stage. Churchill also uses the method of doubling. This is where the same actress plays several parts. This allows for thematic links to be made between roles and asks the audience to consider the implications of role-playing in society as well as on the stage. It also allows the actresses to play radically different characters in the same play, demonstrating their range as performers. In writing substantial roles for actresses, Churchill is inviting them to make these parts memorable for the audience. The agenda of socialist feminism transforms these roles into a showcase for female performance. Thus performance in this play may be considered as important as the text.