ipl-logo

Gender Roles In Shakespeare's As You Like It

2423 Words10 Pages

I. Introduction
Gender roles have always changed over the years. During the Elizabethan Age, the idea that women were superior to men and that men were not ruled by emotion was popular. Three major characters of William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It blur the lines between these roles: Rosalind, who later disguises herself as the man Ganymede, melancholic Jaques, and comic Touchstone show this change in As You Like It perfectly. All the characters have their obvious character traits that fit into the well-known scheme of male and female gender roles. Nevertheless, they show a deconstruction of social norm and gender roles. All three characters go through a character development during the play in which they reveal that every single one of them also has another side which is not directly visible when watching the play. Especially the characters of Touchstone and Jaques, who appear to be very contradictory, develop another facet that is exactly the opposite of …show more content…

Her role is in total contrast to the role of women in Elizabethan England. Women, so the social norm, belonged to the husband and therefore worked “behind the doors”; their business was domestic. The public image of women and men was that men were in the public and women in the private part of life . Also, the roles of women in Shakespearian plays are usually no exact portrayal to the role of women in Elizabethan England. In the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, all female roles on stage were played by men. Women used to be part of the staff behind the scenes in the theatre but they were not seen on stage . This means that the role of Rosalind was played by a man, too, and this makes her role even more important and significant to the play. The female roles were played by well-trained boys. This may also be a reason for the small number of female roles in the plays from these

Show More
Related
865 Words | 4 Pages

In comparison to the movie, the play undermines male dominance by focusing on women’s efforts to solve their own problems. First of all, there aren’t even men in the cast of the play,

Read More
476 Words | 2 Pages

From the point of view of humanity, Zeus’s punishment of Prometheus is unjustified and comes from a desire to exert control rather than justice. In Hesiod’s Theogony, Prometheus is portrayed is a deceiver who likes to test Zeus with no apparent care for humankind. Prometheus is characterized as “devious” (Theogony lines 511 and 521), his actions are described using verb forms of “deceive” (lines 537 and 565), and his deed of giving Zeus the bad parts of the meal are labeled as a “trick” (lines 547, 550, 551, 560, and 562). Hesiod briefly mentions that Prometheus gave the good parts of the meal to the humans, but only as a supplement to the main point, which is that Prometheus wanted to sneakily give Zeus the bad parts of the meal.

Read More
1249 Words | 5 Pages

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

Read More
1551 Words | 7 Pages

In Euripides’s The Bacchae and in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, I found the gender roles in these particular plays to be very interesting because this was my first exposure to cross-dressing in works of literature. In The Bacchae, women play a huge role because women are often portrayed as feminine and inferior in many past works, however, in The Bacchae, the women of Thebes decide to rebel against the men and join the Greek God of grape harvesting, wine, fertility, and partying, in the woods. The women were manipulated by Dionysus and were turned into maenads because they joined Dionysus and rejected the norms for women, to stay in their place and they all went from the first world they were living in, Thebes, to the second world,

Read More
1454 Words | 6 Pages

Much of the preservations in the play are for men who have even denied the women their privacy. Susan Glaspell shows women as weak and only able to do weak responsibilities such as housekeeping and staying at their

Read More
1910 Words | 8 Pages

Throughout history, men have always dominated. They never let a woman rise to power or have the same rights. This sexism has been ingrained in society for thousands of years, so much so that it has defined some of the most famous works of literature, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This play was written during the Elizabethan Era, an era in which a woman had all the power imaginable (Queen Elizabeth), and yet, women were still severely discriminated against. Women had no say whatsoever in their society; they were not allowed to vote and they had very few legal rights (Papp, Joseph, Kirkland).

Read More
959 Words | 4 Pages

A woman 's place in this play and in this time period was in the house taking care of the chores and children, than their other job was to go to church and make sure their family goes to church. Women are always doing anything the men ask them to do without a hesitation, if they didn’t want to do it they would make their wife or servant do it for them, because they have more power than the women did. A

Read More
1514 Words | 7 Pages

Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, focuses on the tumultuous events that surround a regicide. Despite being the shortest of Shakespeare’s plays, in his critical study of the play A. C. Bradley concludes that due to its vehement nature the audience is left with an impression “not of brevity but of speed” . The principal female character of Lady Macbeth is arguably one of his most contentious. Consumed with intense passion, ambition and greed she challenges the subservient role of the traditional Elizabethan woman. She has disturbed, horrified and intrigued both contemporary and modern audiences alike through her powerful diction.

Read More
787 Words | 4 Pages

It’s no surprise, that Shakespeare’s Macbeth was clearly constructed as a rebellion against femininity roles of the time. During the Elizabethan era, women were raised to believe they were inferior to men since men obtained desired masculine qualities such as strength, and loyalty, whereas women were viewed as figures of hospitality (1; 6; 28-31). Obviously, not being tempted by the luxury of subservient women, William Shakespeare rebuked this twisted belief, applying that women deserve more respect than their kitchen tables.

Read More
1505 Words | 7 Pages

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.

Read More
542 Words | 3 Pages

Each female character is treated by men as a possession. However, there are also moments when they are presented as confident and challenge a male authority. This would have been exiting for Shakespeare’s female Elizabethan audience as women

Read More
1898 Words | 8 Pages

“And though she be but little, she is fierce” -William Shakespeare. In today’s day and age, one of the greatest topics of debate is gender roles. It is evident everywhere, from cyberspace to the streets of home, from online petitions to marches across the country such as the Women’s March. Shakespeare lived in the Elizabethan Era of England, where Queen Elizabeth I, the virgin queen ruled.

Read More
465 Words | 2 Pages

Also, the gender roles surface in the beginning of the play when they meet Bianca, and at the end when Kate was shockingly tamed into the ideal

Read More
1408 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
1478 Words | 6 Pages

Throughout Hamlet, the thoughts, intentions, and actions of all of the characters can be explained through predisposed gender roles in the play. Hamlet is a tragedy in which the main character, Hamlet, attempts to seek vengeance for his father’s murder, while the relationships with him and around him begin to strain. In the play, gender plays a huge role in assuming the capability and worth of people. Women are most commonly depicted as being weak, powerless, and confused, while men are commonly shown as being strong, analytical, and intuitive. Hamlet features Ophelia and Gertrude as the only two female roles, and even then they show little independence from the males.

Read More

More about Gender Roles In Shakespeare's As You Like It

Related Topics

Open Document