How does Shakespeare present attitudes to women in Act 1 in Much Ado About Nothing Much Ado About Nothing shows the attitudes of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan audience to women through the two main female characters, Hero and Beatrice. Hero defines all that is expected of women at the time. She is a gentle character and the only time we hear of her in Act 1 is when she is reacting to a comment made by another, she never seems to make a comment of her own accord, exactly how a woman in these times should act. Beatrice is the cousin of Hero and the two could not be less alike. Beatrice is cynical and witty; she doesn’t conform when it comes to the role of women in Elizabethan time.
Your place in society was extremely important and made a huge impact on who you married. Upper and lower classes were not to be mixed and if done so, you were looked down upon. This concept is shown when Lady Bracknell interviews John before allowing her daughter, Gwendolen, to be with him. She has no interest in approving of John until she finds out that he is in fact from a very wealthy background. Wilde also does a good job of mocking the way men and women think of each other.
The gender dichotomy in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles has allowed the variant of critical opinions of Glaspell's main themes of women’s power within law and justice. Most literary critics focus on female unity as a means of gaining power; however, as Karen Alkalay-Gut notes, "Underlying this attitude is the assumption that . . . women's lives are individually trivial, and their only strength and/or success can come from banding together" (1).
Which in reality most women with weight are comfortable with it. These two attitudes clash because conversation comes to “girl you can wear that and I can’t” or “I don’t have any butt for jeans like that”. Your attitude determines your altitude, and skinny girls don’t fly to high in my book. Confidence is what larger women have the most of, being able to go with the social stereotypes, over the years are able to be happy with them. Skinny women are told that there what everyone wants, but when they see men going after larger women they feel some type of way.
The book is written for modern Americans, and modern Americans would find it in severe distaste to see a girl being blindly obedient to her father even when what he asks of her goes against her own wishes. Modern Americans want to see a strong female character that fights the norms to do what she wants. This is something that is highly valued in modern American culture. For instance, the suffragettes are highly respected historical figures because although it went against all cultural norms, they fought for what they believed in. Similarly, Birdy fights for what she believes in; the right to pick who she marries: I saw Shaggy Beard’s messengers in the yard, talking solemnly to each other.
)” Comparing the film to the story itself they are very much identical to one another with a few alterations from the story itself. The mother’s character being one as she is portrayed in the story as being rather jealous of her daughter’s beauty in a way sees much of herself in Connie, which caused her to envy her daughter for carrying on her once young and beautiful genes, and in return she chose to favor Connie’s rather odd and out of place sister June instead; we tend to see less of her character in the film acting towards Connie with that attitude. Another difference from the film is the concluding scene, which we witness Arnold actually return Connie after he has gotten what he came to steal from her, and after the way her mother greets her at, hugging and apologizing for the fight they got in to previously that Sunday morning which we know would never have happened in the stories character of the mother. A last thing that Oates’ quotes about in her last paragraph in the essay response on the film which I didn’t even
It isn’t just who’s running for president or should we pass a law but most importantly who can vote to pass these laws. In history women have been the underdog. Often treated unfairly because they are seen as inferior In conclusion to that they have been given less rights throughout history such as the right to vote. Along with the chance to provide for their families, by having a job during the end of World War II women also finally got the right to vote. Harvard professor, Emma Lapsansky-Wener, stated that the right for women to vote would give citizens a stronger faith in the government, that only then they will be ensured protection throughout their lives.
A Gender Criticism of Shakespeare’s Anthony & Cleopatra During Elizabethan times woman were viewed only as the lesser gender. They did not have any power, they also took the submissive role in the relationship, and did just as their would say. Even with a Queen that herself refused to marry due possibly to refusal to lose her throne to her husband who would be King they still were view this way. Men were always the lead in a relationship and always had the power. Although Anthony in Shakespeare’s Anthony & Cleopatra does undergo a gender role reversal, it is Cleopatra’s role reversal that make her one of the most fascinating female characters in the Shakespearean canon and Anthony & Cleopatra one of the most complex Shakespearean plays.
Woolf interprets the contrast between the women in fiction and the real women of the period as evidence that the famous characters are nothing but impossibilities imagined upon by men. She argues that only a female writer could have created characters endowed with women’s hindered possibilities. But perhaps the women portrayed in Elizabethan fiction weren’t just men being conveniently portrayed as women like Woolf claims. Perhaps Shakespeare and other authors created these strong characters as symbols of what women could’ve been, barring the legal and social injustices they faced. Lady Macbeth is undoubtedly Shakespeare’s most vicious and cunning female character.
William Shakespeare, although often accused of chauvinism, broke the norms and expectations of an otherwise sexist era and developed some of the strongest female characters in theatre’s history, thus establishing matriarchs that would later provide examples for the ideals of the feminist movement. Shakespeare’s time, more broadly defined at the Elizabethan era, was bleak for women. Even though Queen Elizabeth I was unmarried, powerful, and highly educated, the society did not heed her example and regard the rest of the female population accordingly. The Queen was an anomaly; most other women were fragile and dependent, not allowed to fend for themselves even if they desired to do so. Women were regarded as inferior.