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Gender Roles In The Pirates Of Penzance

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The Pirates of Duty
In the opera The Pirates of Penzance, the viewer sees an opera that puts to question what people are expected to follow in life, their duty or their heart? They see the love spellbound Frederick put his love for Mabel, the Major General Stanley’s daughter, aside to finish out his apprenticeship with the Pirate King. However, in the end, the pirates are noticed as noblemen under the Queen of England, Ginny Horvath herself, and the pirates were able to then marry the general’s daughters. While watching the enjoyable comedic production, the way in which lights, and costume were used in the performance drew the viewer's attention in and exposed the views of women and men.
The use of female characters in the play was slightly sexist for how they displayed certain women in the production. To illustrate, the female pirate that dresses similar to the men on the ship and participated in the males attempted heinous acts goes unnoticed. That is until the production used a spotlight in the scene to draw attention to her on the top of the ship deck. On the other hand, the men pirates never realized there was a woman other than Ruth. Therefore, appealing to the ideology of how women are expected to act …show more content…

This relates to two different scenes of the performance. One of the scenes is when the girls were rejecting the idea of talking to Frederick because he was previously a pirate. In this scene, the girls grouped together hiding behind one another in protection, as they act innocently in front of the eyes of a man. Another scene is when the girls were singing and the lights shone down from above to make them appear as a gospel choir. This relates to the symbolic nature of their white clothing as they appear fully virtuous while singing on their

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