Shakespeare's Dowry: Subjectivity and Resistance in The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, and The Merchant of Venice (original) (raw)
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A political reading of William Shakespeare to whom numerous epithets like ‘the Bard” or “Man of Millennium” are applied and whose works are included in the “canon” to represent universal values of mankind, destabilizes this claims of canonicity and universality and entails certain questions about the politics of representations and the complicit role of social discourses in the construction of gender identity. A deconstructive materialist approach to his oeuvre reveals that Shakespeare has, in many of his plays, reinstated the racial and patriarchal ideals of the Renaissance. Kathleen McLuskie in her essay The Patriarchal Bard: Feminist Criticism and Shakespeare goes to the extent to characterize Shakespeare as “the Patriarchal Bard” not the “Bard of Avon”. The Taming of the Shrew written between 1590 and 1593, as the editor Brian Morris has pointed out in the Arden edition of this play, is one of those early plays by Shakespeare which unmistakably produces evidences of immaturity in dealing with the subjects. Its first performance invited mixed critiques among the audience and prompted many literary retelling of the same story. This paper seeks to unravel in this play a sexual/textual politics
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.
LOVE, BETRAYAL AND VIOLENCE: A FEMALE SUBJUGATION IN SHAKESPEARE’S PLAY OTHELLO
Abstract: Women across historical, social and religious boundaries have been pitted against the asphyxiating patriarchal norms and rigid cultural constructs which bestow power, dominance and freedom on man, and push her into the margins of both, society and domestic space. The current paper attempts to explore the mechanics of domestic violence, and its treatment in William Shakespeare’s Othello. The aim is to ascertain how the playwright addresses the issue of crime against women within the familial and social world of his times. Based on the theme of power politics within domestic hierarchy, the play not only lays bare a grim picture of domestic abuse and violence against women in matrimony, but also offers an insight into the psyche of abusers. The dialectics of power struggle in the play written in the 16th century is a reflection of the playwright’s sensitivity towards the existential reality of women of his times and his negation of male hegemony and criminal violence in conjugal relations. . Vishal Bhardwaj adopted Othello to make the film Omkara in 2006. Bringing the 17th century Elizabethan society in the 21st century Indian setting, Bhardwaj deftly pointed out the present scenario. There are numerous cases of a father’s restriction on daughter’s freedom of choice, brother’s threat to the sister for not to disgrace their family apart from ‘honour killing’. This continues even in the household of her ‘soul mate’ for whom she dares to defy every challenge. The predicament of modern Desdemona’s in the hand of Othello bears the testimony of Shakespeare’s immortal creation and its never ending relevance. The universality of Shakespeare is still rejoiced due to his experiment on the core region of the human psyche which fails to alter even with high-tech service or ‘progressive’ education. Key Word: power politics,violence matrimony, domestic heirarchy, male hegemony
"Marriage, the Violent Traverse from Two to One in The Taming of the Shrew and Othello"
Journal of The Wooden O Symposium, 2009
Unlike the romantic comedies which deal with courtship and end in marriage, Shakespeare’s early comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, and his tragedy, Othello, present glimpses into newlyweds undergoing the violent transition from the individual to the joint state of marriage. The marital traverse from two to one of individual to joint being follows the Biblical blueprint of two-in-one. This religious and social model was also sanctioned by law such that the legal personhood of marriage obtained solely in the man. The examination of the traverse from two to one situates itself in the early modern discourses and debates on marital conduct. The two plays, indeed, dramatize the clash between the dominance model premised on male supremacy and the conscience model based on consensual, companionate marriage. The difficult transumption of the marital two-in-one stems from the crucial contradiction within the Biblical injunction: a wife is a spiritual equal yet submissive to the husband as the church is subject unto Christ (Ephesians 22:24). At the surface, the plotlines of both plays—in one, a husband’s taming of his shrewish wife and, in the other, a husband’s murder of his supposedly unfaithful wife—suggest that both works dramatize the dominance model featuring male authority. I argue, however, that, contrary to this expectation, both plays present subtle integrations of the dominance and the conscience models, which emphasize not so much the gender question of who’s on top in the marital hierarchy or whether the woman wields great/greater power despite male headship but rather the richly human, phenomenological experience of early modern subjects/spouses successfully (in comedy) and less successfully (in tragedy) trying to achieve a working love through what Harry Berger calls “the discipline of tempered communion.”
On Gender and Identity in Three Shakespearean Texts
2010
The purpose of the present study was to examine the role that sociocultural and political mores play in shaping male and female value systems. The aforementioned value systems were examined with respect to the role they played in the development and evolution of the individual's self-concept as well as how such persons interacted with other individuals in context of romantic/sexual relationships. To contextualize the construction of individual and collective identity as it pertains to the amorous sphere, consideration was given to culturally bound realities such as religious and political mores as they unfolded within both the Renaissance era and world of the text as constructed by its author. Findings included a great propensity towards the silencing and subjugation of women when they entered romantic relationships with men.
Review of _What You Will: Gender, Contract, and Shakespearean Social Space_, by Kathryn Schwarz.
s monograph offers an intense exploration of will and its relation to patriarchal order in early modern England. The book's chief contribution is that it brings together a rich catalogue of historical texts alongside a densely documented exploration of theory and criticism more contemporary to the reader. There can be no doubt that Schwarz's claims are all rigorously researched and she moves with astounding agility from consulting Renaissance authors, such as Elyot and Hooker, to contemporary scholars, such as Belsey, Dolan, and Paster. Sometimes the speed of this movement is dizzying and her point verges on being lost in a sea of quotations, but for the repetition she employs.
The Struggle to Against Patriarchal Dominance in Romeo and Juliet Drama
IdeBahasa
This research aimed to find out the form of Juliet's struggle against patriarchal dominance in a drama under the title Romeo and Juliet. The research was a descriptive qualitative research. The theory of feminism belonged to Simone de Beauvoir and Sylvia Walby to find out the patriarchal dominance. The results of this study indicated that women at that time were only seen as objects in patriarchal societies which placed the position of men, especially fathers as leaders and decision makers. This condition had an impact on limiting women's space and rights so that they unconsciously submitted and accepted it as something normal. Juliet was also a victim of male masculine dominance. She was an object to be exchanged in marriage and objects contested by men. Juliet's form of resistance also varied from making excuses for not getting married, eloping with Romeo and leaving her family, to drink the potion given by Friar Lawrence.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2022
This study investigates the suffocation of motherhood in the three major Plays of William Shakespeare which are The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear by using the feminist theories of Janet Adelman, Luce Irigaray, and Merry Rose Beth. The absence of motherhood in many of William Shakespeare's plays has been controversial and a point of attraction in criticism for feminist critics who are actively engaged in highlighting the patriarchal aspects of William Shakespeare's plays. According to the critics, the suffocation and absence of motherhood in the three Shakespearean plays: The Tempest, Romeo & Juliet, and King Lear was portrayed on purpose to give dominance to patriarchy. This Thesis will analyze motherhood and the absence of motherhood in the three Shakespearean plays through the works of feminist critics: Janet Adelman (1992), Mary Beth Rose (2017) and Luce Irigaray (2004), who have highlighted the patriarchal factors and elements which are directly or indirectly responsible for the suffocation of motherhood in the three Shakespearean plays. Moreover, in many of his plays, William Shakespeare gives preference to daughters over mothers, regardless of the phallocentric view which associates females with motherhood and places them through maternity. An evaluation of William Shakespeare's plays marks it obvious, that it is not only the motherson relationship or bond which is entirely suffocated, the daughters are no exception and they are also left motherless in most of William Shakespeare's plays. Thus, William Shakespeare's preference for making influential and dominant male characters while ignoring particularly mothers and generally womanly questions is not merely misogyny or just an image of historical representativeness.
Vidyasagar University, 2019
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.