Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages by Tanya Pollard (review) (original) (raw)
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It is a most significant matter and aspect of Shakespeare's artistic genius in presenting his women character, that I'm now going to deliberate and contemplate through my paper and thereby bring out a social picture of Shakespeare's time: it's patriarchy, women's condition and their social importance. In our way of discussing women character in Shakespeare's plays, we have to cast a view upon social condition of women, Queen Elizabeth's influence, its stage plays and many others. In this very paper I am going to project three different types of woman and try to determine them socially during Queen Elizabeth's reign. Amongst the other huge number of women character, few important characters are categorized and discussed briefly. And mostly Shakespeare's intelligence and skill in fitting them in a right place and in a right manner is also a central theme of my paper. The various characters with their fluency, their obstacles, their dealings with men and above all Shakespeare's managing of them is purposefully presented on my discussion. In a word, Shakespeare's view upon his female characters, weather it is glorious, jovial or timid investigated argumentatively.
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Lack of Motherly Affection in Shakespearean Tragedies
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One of the most shocking moments in Euripides' Hecuba comes in the displaying of a boy's corpse onstage. When Hecuba's servant returns from the sacrifice of Polyxena with a body in winding cloth, Hecuba believes that her daughter has been returned to her for burial. Upon removing the cloth, her eyes fall upon the body of her youngest son, Polydorus, dead and mutilated. "Oh no, no!" she cries out, "This kills me! Oh, what misery! I am alive no more, no more!" (II. 681, 683-4). Immediately she begins to sing a mourning dirge: "0 my child, my child, what woe is mine! I lead qff a wild, ecstatic song, newly taught me by the avenging spirit who has sent these ills ... not a day shall passfor me without groans or tears" (685-7,690-91). She calls the boy's murder an unspeakable violation of human and divine law, "fa]n act that cannot be spoken, cannot be named, past wonder, more than heaven can countenance or men endure" (714-5). "0 accursed man," she cries out, envisioning how the Thracian king to whom she and Priam had sent the boy for safety during the Trojan war, "rended his flesh, hacking at this boy's limbs and showing no pity!" (718-20). Hecuba may wear the "garland" of sorrows (660), her misery unsurpassed by any man or woman, but she does not lack agency in her profound grief; rather, in her lamentation, with her slaughtered son before her, fury arises. She wastes little time with tears as she prepares for her revenge, an instinctual and violent action rightly understood as ethical and political in nature. In her book Mothers in Mourning, Nicole Loraux argues that classical Greek theater gave mourning women a political voice and affective power that was forbidden them by the state. She focuses on great mythic queens such as Hecuba, who appear on stage not only as mourners, but as agents of violence, driven by wrath (menis) and unforgettable grief (penthos alaston) to avenge the deaths of their children. "More cruel yet than
The lack of proper motherhood in Shakespeare’s plays has been a point of attraction for many feminist critics actively engaged in emphasizing the patriarchal aspect of Shakespeare’s plays. This paper aims to analyze motherhood and the lack of mother/mother-figure in The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew through Luce Irigaray’s theory of gender and the work of other feminist critics. The issues of gender, father-daughter relations and the reflections of the absent mothers will be discussed. Male/Female Subjectivity will also be questioned, in view of Irigaray’s conceptualization of gender by relating it to Subject.
Representation of women in Shakespeare historical Tragedy
First and foremost, I would like to give special thanks to my instructor(ARI) without whom this project would not be possible. My term paper in this project is free from any types of plagiarized content. Rather, the authenticity and integrity of this instructor inspired me to give references in an authentic manner.