Shakespeare and the Gender-Based Stereotypes.
ESSAY I : SHAKESPEARE AND GENDER-BASED STEREOTYPES.
"I could find in my heart to disgrace my man 's apparel and cry like a woman" (II. Iv : 3) is undoubtedly a statement that would make the feminists react strongly nowadays. In a society trying hard to maintain and preserve a certain equality of treatment between men and women in every aspect of everyday life, the author of such a sentence would surely be regarded as highly misogynous. But one must bear in mind that in a twenty-first century society, people are taking for granted that men and women should be treated on an equal footing, which was clearly not the case about 400 years ago. The Renaissance was a time where a woman was expected to be a docile and naive person, who bent to the will of her male superiors. Qualities such as chastity, obedience and submissiveness were greatly promoted whereas wittiness was not particularly appreciated in a woman. As for the role of men, it is showed in the following quote from Introduction to Speaking of Gender, by Elaine Showalter : "Gender is not only a question of difference, which assumes that the sexes are separate and equal; but of power, since in looking at the history of gender relations, we find sexual asymmetry, inequality, and male dominance in every known society". We can therefore assume that men were supposed to be the pillar of the community, both physically and mentally stronger than women.
Using in his plays a wide variety of what one might call today gender- based stereotypes, Shakespeare gives us a good insight into what the male-female interactions looked like at the time. The question that arises is the following : to what extent did Shakespeare want to convey his own ideas on gender through his plays ? By exploring a few Shakespeare 's plays, we are first of all going to focus on the difference of treatment between men and women in tragedies and in comedies, which will bring us to deal with the cross-gender costumes. Eventually, we will see
"I could find in my heart to disgrace my man 's apparel and cry like a woman" (II. Iv : 3) is undoubtedly a statement that would make the feminists react strongly nowadays. In a society trying hard to maintain and preserve a certain equality of treatment between men and women in every aspect of everyday life, the author of such a sentence would surely be regarded as highly misogynous. But one must bear in mind that in a twenty-first century society, people are taking for granted that men and women should be treated on an equal footing, which was clearly not the case about 400 years ago. The Renaissance was a time where a woman was expected to be a docile and naive person, who bent to the will of her male superiors. Qualities such as chastity, obedience and submissiveness were greatly promoted whereas wittiness was not particularly appreciated in a woman. As for the role of men, it is showed in the following quote from Introduction to Speaking of Gender, by Elaine Showalter : "Gender is not only a question of difference, which assumes that the sexes are separate and equal; but of power, since in looking at the history of gender relations, we find sexual asymmetry, inequality, and male dominance in every known society". We can therefore assume that men were supposed to be the pillar of the community, both physically and mentally stronger than women.
Using in his plays a wide variety of what one might call today gender- based stereotypes, Shakespeare gives us a good insight into what the male-female interactions looked like at the time. The question that arises is the following : to what extent did Shakespeare want to convey his own ideas on gender through his plays ? By exploring a few Shakespeare 's plays, we are first of all going to focus on the difference of treatment between men and women in tragedies and in comedies, which will bring us to deal with the cross-gender costumes. Eventually, we will see
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