Much Ado About Nothing Gender Roles

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Directions: Please type your entire synthesis essay on this document. Be sure to leave time to proofread your essay to avoid losing points for grammatical errors like capitalization.

According to the society, men are suppose to be masculine, independent and self-reliant; women are suppose to be dependent, passive, and refined. Gender roles have changed dramatically over the course of history because women are more successful, educated, and are working more outside of the home. Women now know what they want and their worth.

First, gender roles have changed because women are more successful and educated today than they were in the past. They are becoming more successful in jobs outside of the home. They’re becoming the new “woMAN”. More …show more content…

25 years ago Michael Kimmel, a sociologist, says that he asked the women in his classes, “What does it mean to be a woman?” and they replied “‘Well, you have to be nice and pretty and smart and smile a lot’. In Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing, Hero plays the role in what a “woman” suppose to be. She’s always nice, she’s pretty, and she doesn’t talk a lot. She’s shy and it’s like she doesn’t have a mind of her own because she does whatever her father tells her to do. Michael says “And you ask the mow, you know what they say?’ “‘I can be anything I want. I can do anything…’ Women are finally getting the picture that they can be whoever and whatever they want to be in life as long as they set their mind to it. Now Beatrice, who’s Hero’s cousin, she plays the role of what a “woman” is today. Beatrice is confident in herself, speaks her mind, tells it like it is, and she knows her worth, rather than Hero who is looking for whoever she thinks others will like. Beatrice is criticized because she’s this way. She asks “Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much?” (line 109) Because she’s criticised for being this way, she tries to change herself and it doesn’t work, so she stays as she is and is loved for who she is. The thought that women have of theirself has