Titus Andronicus Gender Roles

The theme for honour and fidelity apply for both men and women in Shakespeare’s play ‘much ado about nothing’. Honour and fidelity is represented very differently for men and women as it would have been for the people in Elizabethan times. In this first section of the essay, I will be exploring double standards and Shakespeare’s awareness of the double standards between sexes and his feminist approach, the differences of honour and fidelity for men and women and upper class and lower class comparisons.

Polybius’s intricate description on the histories of Polybius gave on overview on the history of the Illyrian practices. Regarding their culture he states in dialogues the different characteristics and customs regarding both Illyrian practices through common conventions and who is also known as the pirate queen; Teuta. Being compared to the roman legate, Polybius clarifies the insignificances of the woman ruler through the implication of her gender role. He specifies this matter through the interaction between both parties regarding attacks on Italic merchants, the exchange off speech between Teuta and the roman legates and through his own representation of the pirate queen.

Rape is beyond dispute one of the most explicit events that can occur to a person in order to harm them on a physiological, emotional and even physical level. The violation here is subverted into a domination of the “poor rapist”. However the heroine encounters a violation on a physical level, which becomes obvious, when she states:” I was inexperienced at dog-fashion fucking and had probably torn the skin of my cunt a little.” (70) There is physical pain as a result of the violation, but the way the heroine reacts and wipes the pain away by marginalizing (“a little”) the injury makes it less harmful and consuming. At first it seems, that the rape has no quality for her as the source for shame. But on the same page she also describes the way Toni and her interacted right after the rape had taken place: “Tomi glanced at me quizzically once or twice, but I managed to avoid her eyes”. This sentence is easily overlooked because she had taken everything that happened beforehand so lightly, but here there is a moment of judging a moment of trying to avoid shame. He avoids her eyes, because she

Throughout history, society has often created division within gender roles and gender relations, typically at the expense of women. In Plato’s Republic, Plato devises his plausible ideal city, Kallipolis, which holds a very different notion of these gender roles and relations from the standard held in the early ages. It is quite progressive as both, men and women, are able to uphold the same positions at work and have access to the same education. This concept enhances and strengthens the unity of Plato’s ideal just city. Unfortunately, this progressiveness is cut short as Plato’s subtle misogyny comes into play – nonetheless, this does not interfere with the general structure of Kallipolis. Through analyzing Plato’s account on gender roles and gender relations with context of his ideal society, one is able to see that Plato’s subtle misogyny does not greatly affect the outcome of his city.

The publicity from the trial and judicial documents of the case overshadowed Artemisia’s artistic contributions and she was widely overlooked by critics, who were preoccupied with her sexual assault. In her time, women were heavily defined by their sexual history, the over sexualized interpretation of Artemisia in trial documents depict her as a sexual creature to be judged by all (Cohen 2000, 47). In the past, Artemisia was blamed for her own trauma as she was made out to be a flirtatious and hypersexual women, but today we can better revere her art and try to understand her story—and we can think of her more as a progressive feminist and a “resistor of male violence” (Cohen 2000, Abstract).

Equity between men and women is a deeply rooted battle. As the modern culture shifts further from patriarchal rule, it is interesting to question why females remained the submissive sex for so many centuries. When examining the play Twelfth Night, it becomes apparent that Shakespeare considered such an issue and used the character Viola and her interaction with Orsino as a vessel for gender equality.

Women are often held to different standards than men and an ideal woman is hard to describe, even harder to find. This paper will explore the views and expectations of how woman are portrayed in the sixteenth century. In Cinthio’s, The Unfaithfulness of Husbands and Wives, Story Seven, an ideal woman was said to be faithful and a faithful woman would rather commit suicide than to commit adultery (Cinthio 32), while in Shakespeare’s Othello, an ideal woman is said to breastfeed and inquire about useless matters (2.1.159). Cinthio’s and Shakespeare’s use of characterization for Disdemona and Desdemona, respectively, demonstrates that the wives of men in the sixteenth century were to be gentle servants. Cinthio focuses more on the common stereotypes about women, while Shakespeare challenges them.

Shakespeare portrays LM as predominant woman who refuses to conform to the expectations of a patriarchal society. From the perspective of a Jacobean audience, which believed that women were submissive and obedient, LM’s immediate plan for regicide comes as a great shock. It establishes the theme of female villainy from the beginning of the play. The conventional 16th century woman was also expected to embrace their femininity; Shakespeare uses explicit and unequivocal language to convey a corrupted LM who desires to relinquish every fibre of human tenderness, maternal instinct and

Since The Reeve’s Tale depict women as weak, yet unknowingly in control, many research sources will be utilized to defend the hypothesis. The essay’s that will be used support both the patriarchal dominance and defiance of the master narrative. Each essay focuses on a different topic and subject which allows for multiple sources. A review of the definition of rape during the middle times will be explored and how it relates to The Reeve’s Tale. Likewise, character behavior and personality analysis will be integrated as another method of exploring the female objectification terms along with examples of how the females rebel against societal

Throughout history, there is not one group that has more stringent cultural norms than women. In the Elizabethan Era, women were subservient to men in almost all aspects of life, both public and domestic.In the eyes of a man, a woman was a piece of property to be owned; a tangible piece of property that one had rights to. Such is the case with Ophelia in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Hamlet forces social constraints of typical womanhood onto Ophelia, which in turn exacerbates her madness. Due to this pervasive sexism, Ophelia and Hamlet’s death’s are views in sexist lights that make readers view Hamlet’s death one that was heroic, and Ophelia’s one of a damsel in distress.

In the past one hundred years, one of the most important social issues has been the subject of equality. However, this has not always been the case. For centuries, western civilization was a primarily patriarchal society, but in recent years, this issue of equality has permeated all parts of our social world, including literature. Thus we find literary critics placing twenty-first century values on ancient works, hoping to find elements of social equality where, often times, there is none to be found. For example, critics in recent years have attempted to describe William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew as a feminist work; however, it is largely the opposite. Petruccio's actions can been seen as patriarchal, enforcing the generally

Throughout history, womankind has been forced to endure misogyny in many forms; and, innumerable examples of inequality in society’s treatment of men and women can be found in the world’s past and present. From foot-binding to slut-shaming, from harems where women were treated like property to jobs where women receive lower salaries than their male counterparts, and from the women’s suffrage movement to the fight for women’s right to make their own choices about their reproductive health, the “fairer sex” has often been treated unfairly. This theme of oppresion has been explored in many works of literature, both contempory and classical, and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, written at the turn of the 16th century, is no exception. In Hamlet,

Revenge can come in all shapes, sizes and forms, but there is no form I love more than that of the vengeance seeking woman. Whether it be through sheer wit, extreme violence or a mixture of the two, there’s something so thrilling about watching a woman stick it to the man in a variety of ways. Especially when the proverbial man deserves such comeuppance.

In The Revenger’s Tragedy, Middleton presents a look at gender inequality in the early 1600’s through characters like the Duchess. He allows these characters a level of agency in which their actions are either punished or rewarded depending on the socially acceptable rules established by the patriarchal hierarchy in the play. Similarly, in Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, a parallel examination is made where the Duchess is given a certain degree of agency and is ultimately killed for her actions in the play. Both Duchess’ in Middleton and Webster’s plays, rebel against the patriarchal hierarchy and are punished by the male characters in the plays. The treatment of women in these plays constructs the ideal moral woman through inappropriately deemed actions.

Shakespeare and the members of the Elizabethan era would be appalled at the freedoms women experience today.  The docility of Elizabethan women is almost a forgotten way of life. What we see throughout Shakespeare’s plays is an insight into the female character as perceived by Elizabethan culture.  Shakespeare’s female characters reflect the Elizabethan era’s image of women; they were to be virtuous and obedient and those that were not were portrayed as undesirable and even evil.