Gender Roles

All’s Well That Ends Well? All’s well that ends will? Apparently Shakespeare does not believe this to be true, depicted by his twisted rendition of William Painter’s story in the book of The Palace of Pleasure (citation). In the story Helen, an indigent and low class woman falls in love with the story’s antagonist Count Roussillon, a rich and powerful French aristocrat, who turns out to be a real piece of work. The main concept of the play is to portray the way women’s roles and gender roles in general were, and how they were challenged in the 1600’s. The production had many stand out themes that help show case Shakespeare’s concept of gender roles. He used themes such as marriage, values, sex, society, and Marxism to highlight the concept of female roles and how he did not always agree with them.

Throughout the story Helen is forced to confront the sexual and stereotypical issues as she tries to pursue the man she loves, she is forced to dress as a man and complete seemingly impossible tasks in order to win over the Count Roussillon. These tasks thrust upon her only because her family or lack thereof was not highly ostentatious and in the 1600’s Marxism was thick and it was hard to marry above your class. Shakespeare demonstrates the theme of Marxism when Helen talks about thinking she is not good enough to marry Bretham because she lacked money and therefore was not of the noble class, and not in Bretham’s social class. By having Helene say these things Shakespeare is highlighting the theme of Marxism even further, which helps add to the main concept of challenging societal roles because it depicts the struggle of breaking free of an expectation brought on by society according to economical