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Shakespeare Gender Roles Essay

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Recommended: The history of the portrayal of women in literature

Shakespeare’s Views on Gender Roles Gender roles in Shakespeare’s time played a crucial role in all of his plays, sonnets, and writings in general. Even though during his time, the views on gender roles were much different than today, Shakespeare still found a way to make his views of the various roles of men and women very clear. Through the art of language and poetry, Shakespeare’s views of men and women in society were well known and portrayed to his audiences, whether it was in 1597 or 2016. When Shakespeare began writing, he was writing during the Elizabethan age. Gender roles then were very straight forward and strict. Males were to provide money and food for the family and “tame” their wives and children. As when women were at home …show more content…

In consonance with his books he blended his beliefs, as clarified in the article “An analysis of Shakespeare 's Women” by Nicole Smith, it states that, “Nevertheless, the careful reader notices a curious trend in many of Shakespeare’s plays: many of Shakespeare’s female characters exercise a rather great deal of subtle forms of power and influence, and often do so in unusual and even subversive ways that challenge traditional gender roles. Although the male characters generally fail to notice or refuse to acknowledge women’s authority and influence openly, they are affected by it.” It was not only in a few of Shakespeare’s plays that women portrayed men’s characteristics and men showed some of women 's characteristics it was in almost all of them. To go even deeper Jenna Thomas the author of the article “Romeo and Juliet: An Exploration on gender roles” she alleges in her article that, “However, Romeo challenges this idea of masculinity and is portrayed with more feminine and submissive traits. He speaks with a poetic melancholy contrary to that of the other men: ‘Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs, / Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes.’” Romeo in a sense was a very feminine, but still filled the role of a strong and romantic man. Shakespeare very carefully crafted Romeo with his words and by doing this he pushed and tested the gender roles of his

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