Gender Roles In Much Ado About Nothing By William Shakespeare

During Shakespearean times, women were seen as inferior to men. Their jobs were limited to taking care of the house and children. Women received little to no education, so they could not be very successful in a workplace. Women who represent virtues such as obedience, chastity, and modesty, were considered as the “ideal woman”. The roles during Shakespearean times were set: the men were the breadwinners and the women stayed quiet and compliant. In Shakespeare's plays, such as Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth, women’s roles were clearly defined in contrast where Sheryl Sandberg, in her Ted Talk, explains how today, women’s roles are more diverse, but they still restrict themselves from becoming more successful.
In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare

Shakespeare plays with gender roles in Macbeth, but at the end, he resets typical roles for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In the beginning of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is the one who persuades her husband to kill King Duncan so that he will be king, and she takes part in it, too. When Macbeth hesitates to kill Duncan, Lady Macbeth says, “How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me... Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this” (Shakespeare Act 1 Scene 7). Lady Macbeth total control to convince Macbeth to stay in the plan. She would rather kill her baby than to back away from the plan. Shakespeare depicts how Lady Macbeth is heartless and ruthless. Usually, if she were a typical woman, she would have not participated in the plan and she would have not had the power to persuade her husband into it. At the end, Shakespeare punishes Lady Macbeth not being an “ideal woman” by making her live with paranoia and guilt for Duncan’s death. Due to the excessive amount of guilt, Lady Macbeth becomes weak and she and Macbeth switch roles. Macbeth becomes the one who holds power over her. Overall, Shakespeare does not allow women to become anything other than an typical woman, so he switches Lady Macbeth and Macbeth’s roles at the end to the stereotypical

Nowadays, women have higher statuses, and they are less limited than women in Shakespearean times. Instead of every woman being like an ideal Shakespearean woman, there is a diversity. Some are housewives, some are in the engineering and medical field, and only few are at the top of their workplace like Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. She is one of the many powerful women in this world. She is very different from Shakespeare's ideal woman. She over powers many men, she makes her own decisions, and she is definitely not inferior to any man. Not only does Sandberg maintain her success, but she persuades other women to strive for their own success. During her Ted Talk, Sandberg says, “How good are we as managers of our companies and our organizations at seeing that the men are reaching for opportunities more than women? We've got to get women to sit at the table” (Sandberg). Since women are so used to being brought down, she persuades them to raise their hands, speak louder, and reach for their opportunities. Eventually, she wants women being the head of companies. Today, there are many women out there who are similar to Sheryl, yet women still have to come out of their box, open themselves up, and strive for success. In contrast to Shakespearean times, women now have more choices, more freedom, and more say in what they want to do, yet women still limit themselves