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Comparing and contrasting characters in the tempest
Gender roles elizabethan age
Comparing and contrasting characters in the tempest
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Similar to Hamlet, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is very male-dominated with only two prominent women: Tamora and Lavinia. These two leading ladies are complete opposites in this play, however Shakespeare structures them both to meet society’s destructive patriarchal roles. Tamora, the object of male desire and Lavinia a strong woman victimized by a male-controlled society. Lavinia and Tamora’s conflicting traits are demonstrated in Act II, Scene III when Tamora’s sons prepare to sexually assault Lavinia and Tamora refuses to acknowledge Lavinia’s pleas for her feminine compassion. Lavinia curses at Tamora, “No grace, no womanhood?
Olivia Lynch Mrs. Butterfield AP Lit 5/1/16 When you are ready to dive into the vast world of Shakespeare, you can begin by using what is known as a critical lens. The lens that may help you understand the background details of one of Shakespeare’s plays would be the Historical lens. Although there are many different lens that you can use to interpret a story, the Historical Lens is a great lens to dive into to find what really influenced the great ideas of William Shakespeare as he wrote Hamlet including the role gender plays, the comparison of Elizabeth Tudor, and the religious incorporation throughout the play. First, we can take the Historical Lens and dive into the idea of how gender roles were highly represented in Hamlet
While Sebastian is traversing Illyria, he runs into Olivia who assumes he is the disguised Viola and kisses him and continues to wed him. This play is full of homosexual references and actions that include Viola disguising herself as a boy and falling in love with Orsino while she is still a man. Countess Olivia falls in love with the disguised Viola because of ‘his’ few feminine features, and, it is a girl falling in love with a girl. Viola stated to
There is some speculation of women pretending to be men in these times to play female characters as that was the only way they could be on stage. This, however, can’t be proven. The perception in society was that the theater was better suited for men. The roles of women in English drama were all roles conceived by men, because all the ancient playwrights were men. It is a testament to how great theater of the time was that it became so popular with men speaking love soliloquies to each other.
Through his natural femininity, Cesario has a pull on Orsino’s heart; however, the duke’s love for Cesario is subconscious. His love for Cesario represents the closest thing to real love in Twelfth Night, as it is based on friendship rather than physical attraction. After Olivia marries Sebastian, confusion ensues. She continues to believe that she married Cesario. When Orsino and Cesario visit her, she alludes to her marriage to ‘Cesario’.
Twelfth Night seems to present gender as a mask to be worn and taken off at will, a fluid concept that changes to suit one’s needs and emotions. By playing Cesario, Viola partly becomes this version of herself, so Olivia, by loving Cesario, has feelings for Viola by extension. When Sebastian makes his reveal, Olivia marries him for two reasons. The first is an external piece of reasoning, being that in Elizabethan comedies such as this, heterosexual pairings must happen for the play to follow the fairly strict expectations of a comedy. The second falls to Sebastian’s demeanor.
For a woman to show interests in current affairs, express opinions, write literature was unladylike. Viola, fending for herself, in distant land, disguises herself as a boy named Cesario. Cross-dressing, in Elizabethan society, was seen as highly immoral. Viola 's male disguise “allows her to escape the confinement of a single perspective and a single voice by momentarily unfixing sexual stereotypes (184)”(Melchoir). Furthermore, Viola’s situation in Twelfth Night is not typical of an Elizabethan woman because she proves herself to be capable and intelligent.
Shakespeare created his play from many outside sources. He draws inspiration for the dilemma of Viola and Cesario from two other similar stories involving shipwrecked twins. Viola uses her disguise as a eunuch in order to get a job. Viola also has a twin brother who later comes in the play filling a significant role within this absurd love triangle. In Olivia’s aside, she
In the story it shows a love triangle between Orsino, Cesario (Viola), and Olivia. Cesario falls in love with Orsino, Viola is in love with Cesario, and Orsino is still in love with Olivia. The characters in the story all show happiness and joy throughout because it’s a story that ends in love unlike Romeo and Juliet where it ends in a tragedy. As said in Twelfth Night, “Its central plot concerns a love triangle between the Illyrian nobleman Orsino, his beloved but unattainable Olivia, and the shipwrecked Viola.” (Lee
In today’s world, gender expectations and roles of men and women are a highly debated topic. However, the reconsidering of these expectations is not a new phenomenon. Set in Verona, Italy, the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare explores the reversal and fluidity of characteristics usually assigned to a specific gender. In this play, two young people fall in love and end up tragically taking their lives as a result of their forbidden love. Shakespeare suggests that men are not necessarily masculine, women are not necessarily feminine, and that when people are forced by society to act the way their gender is “supposed” to, problems will arise.
Ariel Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden” is a work of drama that aims to provide a social commentary on the social after effects of a post dictatorial regime. Dealing with gender roles, the ambiguity of the truth, and the role of justice - Dorfman provides an outlet for victims of war crimes to question their own experiences, as well as forcing an entire society to ponder questions that seem unanswerable. Through the use of the motif of light, contrasting scene choice and an important final dialogue, Dorfman creates a moving work that leads the spectator to wonder: viewing Paulina as a victim of a patriarchal society, do her strifes and emotional conviction make us more or less sure of the authenticity of her accusations? A pivotal part of
Within the play we witness the gossiping of women, they are the only character that are given lines. We feel the presence of males, they are mentioned, a major character was Pepe, however he never speaks. This is plausibly in an attempt to illustrate how vocal women are, and to emphasize the power they maintain. The roles of males are emphasized upon, essentially we see that it is a Man that provides the woman
The first instance which supports the notion that a lapse of communication is responsible for the unsuccessful nature of heterosexual relationships is the case of Duke Orsino and Countess Olivia’s relationship. Both start the play preoccupied with their own concerns, Orsino is worried about finding love, specifically with Olivia, meanwhile she is busy mourning the death of her brother by refusing to marry anyone for seven years. However, it is Orsino’s obsession with seeking love and how he goes about pursuing Olivia that best exemplifies the problematic nature of a male and female’s relationship. Orsino opened the play by saying of love, “Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken and so die” (1.1.1-3), essentially saying that he so badly craves the feeling being in love gives him, that he would like in so great a quantity that it would end his life.
In Twelfth Night, Viola and Olivia are the central characters to the play’s plot. Each are young women that take approaches to dealing with the people around them, which are mainly men. There is much trickery that goes on in Twelfth Night, but the ending is for the most part happy. Viola marries Orsino and Olivia marries Sebastian, but the events leading up to this are more or less chaotic. Ultimately, I argue that while Olivia uses her higher social status in order to maintain control of herself and others, Viola resorts to trickery in order to bring about her desires.
In the play Twelfth Night, through the depiction of Orsino’s and Viola’s desires for romantic love, Shakespeare portrays how adjustable and self-delusional human romantic attraction can be, especially when blinded by wants and needs. Viola, who puts on the appearance of a man, makes everybody think she is a male. Her disguise becomes a sexual confusion throughout the play for several characters, creating an odd love triangle where Viola loves Duke Orsino, who loves Oliva, which then on the other hand loves Viola, in disguise as Cesario. On the other hand, Malvolio dreams of marrying his beloved Olivia, and gaining authority over his superiors, like Sir Toby. Shakespeare uses disguise in the play to show several confusions and internal conflicts between the characters, proving how malleable and deluded some human attractions can be.
