William Shakespeare’s famous play, Hamlet, offers detailed and often callous insights into the role of women, and men, in the Renaissance period in which the playwright lived in. Throughout this time, traditional women were often constantly criticised and treated as inferior to male counterparts. As such, Shakespeare has constructed his female characters to fulfil these traditional roles; however by taking a feminist approach these female characters appear marginalised and degraded. Ultimately, through the playwright’s representation of women, they can be see as worthless, sexual objects , both weak and inconsiderate in nature. Through a modern perception on the playwright’s female characters, women can be seen as worthless, sexually corrupt indiviudals.
Superiority and overconfidence always seem to be closely associated with dominance and gender; and is amongst the dominant perspectives expressed by Shakespeare in the play, “Richard the Third”. The conflicting viewpoints of both sexes over superiority, is developed in Richard the third in the male point of view whereby Shakespeare reveals us to a male dominated world. “Why, I can smile...And murder while I smile!” It can be interpreted from the play that the: manipulative, malicious, power-hungry, Richard the third, did not have much regards for the life of women. Richard finds women inferior to men, has no respect for their emotions, and views them as tools. As far as the two major female characters of the play are concerned, Richard's attitude towards women becomes quite evident, and furthermore reflects his attitude towards life in a whole.
One of the main reasons feminism has lost supporters is that business have worked to over-power the image that represents feminists. Feminists are portrayed as bra burning, hairy-legged, man- hating, and lesbians. This image of a theory as caused women to back down from the fight, and that’s exactly what organizations against the theory want. Many women are against being feminist, they find the word unappealing. The stereotype attached to feminism isn't considered beautiful by our cultural standards and as a result, this stance becomes unappealing to women because the worst thing you can call a woman in our culture is ugly.
By utilizing the Handmaids as a representation of the females in the Gileadean society, the author exposes the flaws of an anti-feminist society through objectification and the absence of agency. The Handmaid’s Tale illustrates women who are strongly objectified by men. An example of how Handmaids are objectified is through their names. The women are named after their assigned Commander; their name which consists of two parts is constructed with the prefix, ‘Of’, followed by the suffix of their Commander’s name. The main character’s Handmaid name is Offred, meaning that she is property of Fred.
And swear whatever you wish, and then begin all over again?”(Anouilh, 48). The presence of her masculinity implies that only masculine characters can oppose law. Because she is an undesirable female, who doesn’t follow the rules of womanhood, Anouilh resolves the presence of her character through an inevitable death, to emphasize his contempt with such women. Although male, Haemon portrays female characteristics, being over-emotional and rash, thus being incapable of fulfilling the idealistic male role. An
Both women are contrasting representations of Hedda. From the opening of the play her [Hedda’s] relationship with Aunt Julie is a strained one. Hedda views Aunt Julie as a symbol of what she herself loathes and could at the same time could quite easily become. Aunt Julie epitomises the idea of the domestic, dutiful woman with no true purpose of her own. She instead finds her purpose through the lives of the male characters and the arguably mediocre success that Tessman has had.
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.
• The tragic hero should be great, but cannot be perfect. The reader/audience should see themselves in the tragic hero/ine. o Blanche is not a “great” or a “perfect” person. She is far from being a girl scout- at least the version of Blanche we know from the play who is sexually promiscuous, manipulative, and snobbish- not knowing much about Blanch before her arrival to New Orleans, other than the fact that she was a very delicate person. o She does have plenty of flaws as noted above, most of which stem from her insecurity as a person.
As in Adam & Eve, history has proven time and time again that it is women who have always corrupted humanity. Ever since the shift from the ancient matriarchal society women have been depicted in a negative light in art and literature. Woman has been depicted as the catalyst for humanities corruption in western religions, from Christianity to Greek mythology. Whether depicted as innocent or malicious, woman always seems to corrupt man through indirect or direct methods. It is inevitable as death.
I think it’s also an insult to men. To make them believe that by just using Axe product, girls would go crazy over them. According to Huffington post, Axe's ad isn't just bad for women. The campaign also insults and undermines men. "This ad promotes the belief that all men… are incapable of controlling themselves when women are nearby," Escobar wrote.