Female Gender Roles in Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare paid much attention to different issues connected with gender roles in many of his plays. This essay will focus on the analysis of female gender roles and stereotypes in Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew . It will also explore how these aspects influence the concepts of courtship and marriage and how they stipulate a person’s behavior in the society. The two aforementioned plays demonstrate how gender was treated in Shakespeare’s time and how typical stereotypes regulated all aspects of societal life.
The works of William Shakespeare offer a wide range of materials useful for the study of gender ideology. Gender issues are especially …show more content…
Both plays feature quite atypical women, namely Katherina and Olivia, who, due to different reasons, distance themselves from the traditional Elizabethan female ideal. However, through the course of the plays, the women mentioned above are gradually subdued to submissiveness. This means that in that time, the society did not want a woman to violate traditionally established gender roles since that could ruin the social order. This is especially obvious in the case of Katherina, who has a strong personality that defies all rules and stereotypes. It is evident that Shakespeare makes her smarter and more sophisticated than her sister Bianca, who embodies the traditional understanding of a perfect Elizabethan woman. Katherina does not want to accept marriage as a financial transaction between men, in this case, her father and her would-be husband. Instead, she is more inclined to see marriage as a spiritual union of two lovers. However, being a realistic person, she understands that Petruchio’s attitude, “I come to wive it wealthily in Padua,” is a too widespread notion (1.2 The Taming of the Shrew).
Olivia, in her turn, is also aware that she is a rich woman without a husband. Therefore, she realizes that she will be courted primarily because of her money. As a result, she becomes irritated with Malviolio’s attempts to court her …show more content…
In some episodes of his plays, he allows female characters to express masculine features, either due to their own personalities (as in the case of Katherina) or when they are in disguise (as in the case of Viola). These aspects make the works of Shakespeare even more complicated in terms of gender analysis. Besides, in the Elizabethan theatre, all female roles were played by men. Thus, such cases as Viola dressed as a man became complex and multidimensional. However, it is not appropriate to analyze all interpretations of gender roles in these two plays from the perspective of a modern reader because the cultural and social standards of the English Renaissance were significantly different from the contemporary ones. Consequently, the traditions that may seem discriminatory to a modern person may have been treated as an absolute norm in the sixteenth
William Shakespeare paid much attention to different issues connected with gender roles in many of his plays. This essay will focus on the analysis of female gender roles and stereotypes in Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew . It will also explore how these aspects influence the concepts of courtship and marriage and how they stipulate a person’s behavior in the society. The two aforementioned plays demonstrate how gender was treated in Shakespeare’s time and how typical stereotypes regulated all aspects of societal life.
The works of William Shakespeare offer a wide range of materials useful for the study of gender ideology. Gender issues are especially …show more content…
Both plays feature quite atypical women, namely Katherina and Olivia, who, due to different reasons, distance themselves from the traditional Elizabethan female ideal. However, through the course of the plays, the women mentioned above are gradually subdued to submissiveness. This means that in that time, the society did not want a woman to violate traditionally established gender roles since that could ruin the social order. This is especially obvious in the case of Katherina, who has a strong personality that defies all rules and stereotypes. It is evident that Shakespeare makes her smarter and more sophisticated than her sister Bianca, who embodies the traditional understanding of a perfect Elizabethan woman. Katherina does not want to accept marriage as a financial transaction between men, in this case, her father and her would-be husband. Instead, she is more inclined to see marriage as a spiritual union of two lovers. However, being a realistic person, she understands that Petruchio’s attitude, “I come to wive it wealthily in Padua,” is a too widespread notion (1.2 The Taming of the Shrew).
Olivia, in her turn, is also aware that she is a rich woman without a husband. Therefore, she realizes that she will be courted primarily because of her money. As a result, she becomes irritated with Malviolio’s attempts to court her …show more content…
In some episodes of his plays, he allows female characters to express masculine features, either due to their own personalities (as in the case of Katherina) or when they are in disguise (as in the case of Viola). These aspects make the works of Shakespeare even more complicated in terms of gender analysis. Besides, in the Elizabethan theatre, all female roles were played by men. Thus, such cases as Viola dressed as a man became complex and multidimensional. However, it is not appropriate to analyze all interpretations of gender roles in these two plays from the perspective of a modern reader because the cultural and social standards of the English Renaissance were significantly different from the contemporary ones. Consequently, the traditions that may seem discriminatory to a modern person may have been treated as an absolute norm in the sixteenth