Role Of Women In Shakespeare

Elizabethan and Jacobean periods are the eras in which Shakespeare’s plays were developed and the characters of his plays were influenced by the social context. The way women were treated, their social status, the roles that they were supposed to accomplish and the expectations set for them in those times are reflecteIn the England of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, as well as in the rest of Europe, women were considered to be inferior to men and their roles were very well defined: “daughters and wives, sisters and mothers.” (Kemp Theresa D., 29). These roles, the women’s social standing and their marital status had a crucial part in defining the women. Also, it has no importance if she was a mother, a wife or a widow, her personality

33) according to the social class they belong to. Anyway, women “had little acces to trainig, skilled worked and wages.”(Crowston p. 7). The training of poor girls usually started around the age of seven, when they became apprentices to learn “ lace-making, spinning, knitting and housewifery” (Kemp p 33) and later they would work as servants or would be part of a craft or a guild, but their life would not be easy. On the other hand, women of the aristocracy and gentry were expected to “learn manners, music, dancing, needlework, and good housewifery” and “ to find suitable marriage parteners”( Kemp p. 35.) and to make favorable social connections. Another custom met among elite families was that of sending their daughters to the royal courts to be “attendants for female members of the royal courts”(Kemp p. 36). This girls would have acces to a higher education by being “tutored in languages, literature, dancing, music and other entertaiments.”(Kemp p. 36). One aspect of woman’s education was shared by almost all women regardless their social or marital status and this referred to housewifery and learning household tasks. In a period when marriage was roughly unavoidable and being a housewife was viewed more as an occupation rather than a marital status, learning how to clean the

Two misogamic views were remarked: one that claimed that all women are bad wives and celibacy was the way to a higher form of living and the other one sustained that both men and women have bad qualities.(Kemp 39) The adherents of these ideas thought that women were an error of the nature, they had a lot of flaws and they were less worthy than a man. Also, they assumed that marriage is unbearable because women are intorelable. The most radical among them had considerated that every women wants to be a man or that women are not even human.(Bock 13, 26). Despite the pro-marriage ideology promoted by the England laws, this misogamist ideas continued to flourish.(Kemp