When William Shakespeare and Aeschylus create purpose, they create it in a direct manner. Executing it with carefully chosen language, Shakespeare and Aeschylus implement multiple layers to construct meaning and multiple interpretations. Without alienating the audience and regardless of it’s controversial theme’s, both text’s were at a time developed when devoted leaders condemned the idea of Eve and praised the Virgin Mary, Neoclassical scholars welcome the idea of feminism, reversed gender roles, and that women could be the dominant domain. The everyday couple would settle and incorporate pieces of the popular ideas of societies hierarchy of the male position, masculinity over ruled femininity, which was embedded in a tradition constructed society. This essay seeks to create an understanding of the symbolic characters of Katherina in Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of The Shrew’ and of Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’s ‘Agamemnon’. By exploring both texts in conjunction, it comes to attention that both female characters play masculine roles to be able to achieve their dominance stance. Both women not only revel the real life female, but also depicts to the audience the double bind due to the patriarchal world they live in. This essay will show how both characters use their actions as well as their words as an opportunity, yet becoming problematic due to the idea of ‘a mans world’. In the context of the play, rather then ignoring the problematic elements, Anne Barton (1997)
“That woman – she manoeuvers like a man” (Aeschylus 103). This quote from the Greek tragedy, The Oresteia by Aeschylus, introduces readers to a theme of the piece: the role of women. Furthermore, this tragedy gives the reader a view on how women played a role in ancient Greek society. Additionally, it highlights the reaction, from Greek men, to women in leadership roles. In the following, you will find a historical account of the role of Greek women, and how Aeschylus shows a different role of women. Therefore, by reading The Oresteia we can get a glimpse into what characteristics Greek women embodied. Also, through the actions of female characters such as Clytemnestra and Electra, we see examples of women
Women have been belittled by men since the beginning of time. This is demonstrated in the novels Oresteia by Aeschylus and Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud. Men have always held the upper hand in society, politics, and technological advancements. Women have been purely sentimental sexual objects. Freud is keen to state that a man’s wish to fulfill his sexual desires is crucial. Women are cast as purely sexual objects, and, furthermore, as entirely unreasonable and illogical. In the novel Oresteia, we learn how women are sensitive, emotional, and exceptionally incoherent to men in the play. However, throughout the play the women, such as Clytemnestra, the king’s wife, prove that women are not pieces of meat. She is a great leader who is a remarkably strong mentally, and who can easily outsmart a man. However, women like Clytemnestra are a minority in these works of literature. Most women are perceived in literature as domesticated creatures who are irrational and emotional. Freud maintains a condescending attitude toward women, seeing them as mere objects, while Aeschylus helps reinforce Freud’s attitudes. By enforcing the gender roles in Greek society it is easy to reflect powerful female character who carry the mentality of a man, portrayals of "wrong womanhood" and solely displaying women’s sexual and family interests.
That the film includes these elements of feminist material reflects its modern context of a society that is not unfamiliar with feminism. In this area it challenges the original text, where within the context of the Elizabethan era, Katherina’s rejection of her inferiority as a woman is unaccepted and repressed. As Hortensio mocks: ‘ ‘Mates’, maid? …No mates for you/Unless you were of gentler, milder mould’ (1.1.59-60), he manipulates Katherina’s reference to him as a ‘mate’- a crude man- to mean ‘husband’ in an attempt to silence her. Such repression- and that of Katherina at the hands of Petruchio- though exaggerated and outrageous, was acceptable and approved of in the context of Shakespeare’s play.
“When love speaks the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony,” Taming of the Shrew, Act IV, scene II.
The Taming of the Shrew (TOS) is a play by Shakespeare set in Padua, Italy in the 1590’s. The play was written in 1590 and has had several films, reproductions and appropriations created from it. One of these appropriations is the 1999 movie Ten Things I Hate About You, which is set in the late 1990’s in Seattle, U.S.A. Why has this story been so attractive to society? It is not only because Shakespeare has crafted a brilliant story, but because the themes have been relevant over the 4 centuries that the story has existed. Some of the messages explored in this essay are that both texts explore the social expectations of men and women. Another theme is that both Shakespeare and Junger identify that men are the ‘gazers’ and women are the
Throughout history, there have been social hierarchies imposed upon society. Perhaps one of the most influential was the imposition upon women during the Renaissance era. Women during the Renaissance patriarchy were expected to be proper, pure, and above all else, mindful of the men in their life. In her essay, “Women in Othello”, Farah Karim-Cooper argues that William Shakespeare’s play, Othello, creates complicated dynamics and roles for the women within it, due to the fact that Shakespeare himself did not believe that women fit easily within the roles that they had been assigned. This essay will seek to prove, in agreeance with Karim-Cooper, that Desdemona and Emilia do not, in fact, fit neatly into
In the Oresteia trilogy, Agamemnon has to be the most controversial story regarding female interpretation and gender roles. The character Clytemnestra has not only rejected her feminine role in the Greek society, but also knocks the patriarchal society of its axis because of her masculine actions. The essence of masculinity comes through Clytemnestra with the language that she uses and the pivotal point of the story, her committing the murder of her husband, Agamemnon. Her masculine role, which is most clearly seen in the actual murder at the end of the play, allows her to gain the power needed to take revenge on her husband. Not only is murder seen as a masculine action, but also the concept of revenge seems to portray Clytemnestra as having a masculine mindset. It is also important to point out that if attention is paid closely on the actions of the Greek gods and goddesses, revenge seems to be a common thread between them besides the powers that they possess. That element itself puts Clytemnestra in a light that makes her look mystical or unreal. Though she also has no hesitations about playing a submissive and feminine role, there is an underlying agenda to accomplish her goals. Clytemnestra’s well-developed plan makes it intriguing to examine and explore her masculinity driven ways and will lead into the explanation of her desires and motives.
The following paper is an analysis of Katherine and Bianca in Taming of the Shrew. The two sisters have different ideas about marriage and how women should act. Their roles within
Over the past 400 or so years since Shakespeare wrote _The Taming of the Shrew_, many writers, painters, musicians and directors have adapted and reformed this play of control and subjugation into timeless pieces of art. In _10 Things I Hate About You_ and Kiss Me Kate from two very different times in the twentieth century, and paintings of Katherina and Bianca from the late nineteenth century, the creators of these adaptations have chosen to focus on the role of the two main female characters in the play. The ideas surrounding these women have changed through the years, from Katherina and Bianca simply being young women who deviated from the norm of Shakespeare’s time to women who embody
Shakespeare 's The Taming of the Shrew focuses not only on the roles of the sexes, but also plays with the varying social roles found in society from head of the house to foot of the house. Tranio finds himself at the bottom of this social ladder, a servant to Lucentio. However Tranio employs his wit and cunning to raise his status at the expense of his master. Tranio is a manipulative intellectual who uses persuasive rhetoric and wit to distract Lucentio and climb the social ladder to a higher social class.
Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew illustrates the relationship between gender and authority while defining its imbalance as simple social construct, suggesting that gender, more or less, exists merely in association and connotation. In characterizing masculine and feminine personality without regard to physical sex, he in turn reveals the illusion gender-roles cast in assumption and stereotype. Doing so, Shakespeare writes to comment on the position of women in Elizabethan society and their faculty of power in general. Given that inequality and the institution of gender-identity still exist and that current culture still clings to it, it follows that themes expressed within the play still presently apply. As adaptation, BBC renovates in modern version the Taming of the Shrew and keeps with it Shakespeare’s original themes, altering several other aspects of it, taking away detail from which the original play capitalizes.
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare was written in the latter years of the Elizabethan Era. In this play, Shakespeare looks at the themes of womanhood, patriarchy, courtship, and marriage, which are topics prevalent in Elizabethan Era. Amongst citizens, the topics hold strict beliefs in the public space. This play that illustrates a woman with such self-control and individualism, get forced into the life of a weak woman beholden to her husband. A once strong and domination female character is broken by the methods of taming. On the other hand, a very silent woman, Bianca, Katherine’s sister, is placed in marriage based on a romantic interest, which contrasts the very likes of the narrative of arranging marriages during this time period. Being very political in his writing Shakespeare never shies away from presenting ideas very much embedded into the everyday life of England’s citizen at the time through the mockery of characters or by having readers question these practices or ideas based on his deliberate word play; with the marriages of Katherine and Petruchio, and Bianca and Lucentio, he is able to criticize the practices and contrast the different styles of marriage, one being very widespread at the time and one beginning to emerge.
William Shakespeare’s, The Taming of the Shrew, has become one of his most controversial works. Though audiences have viewed this work with hilarity and admiration, the story of Katherina’s relationship with her husband Petruchio goes against modern judgements and allows the idea that it is acceptable for men to be misogynistic and endure great lengths to ensure their wives will meet their expectations of how women should behave. Shakespeare illustrates that women with strength of character, like Katherina’s,mitigates charges of male prejudices. In “Misogyny is Everywhere,” Phyllis Rackin observes that , “Women were expected to be chaste, silent, and obedient” in Shakespeare’s time.
In William Shakespear’s “the taming of the shrew” the comedic devices help to make a plot more understanding as well build the plot from the exposition to the resolution successfully. They added more detail and the identity of the chracters in to the building of the plot. This brought a stronger understanding of the plot and made the intensity build up throughout the play as a whole better..
William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew In the play the taming of the shrew I will be discussing about Katherine & Petruchio’s behaviour towards each other through words, body language and stage craft. In the Elizabethan times men kept women as possession the women had many hard times coping without freedom & limited to what they could do out side also women were accompanied by men at all times because they were thought as being vulnerable.