The Role of Faminism in the Plays of Shakespeare: A Study

Abstract

This study entitled ‘Feminism in the Plays of Shakespeare’ falls within the category of research on gender studies or feminist scholarship. It sheds light on the origin and evolution of Liberal feminism and its contradictions during the period stretching from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. It focuses on the shift of paradigms of thoughts and discourse about the place of gender in the public sphere. The humanist episteme promoted the spread of the feminist discourse because of the very contradictions inherent to the liberal ideology.  This study examines the representation of women in selected plays of Shakespeare. It is seen that women play, or are made to play, roles ranging from the innocent to the complex and devious, to accommodate the needs of the text and of society. It shows that the naturalization and universalization of the woman‘s role in different societal positions cannot be seen in isolation from hidden patriarchal figurations. The Shakespearean text cannot avoid some of the socially acceptable practices in the presentation of women characters. However, the presentation of women in Shakespeare is neither a blatant exhibition of patriarchal ideology nor an uncritical celebration of its collapse.  In an attempt to prove that British feminism evolved from a sympathetic attitude reflected in the writings of the Renaissance to a defensive type during the Glorious Revolution to reach towards the end of the eighteenth century an offensive phase with Mary Wollstonecraft who broke into the public sphere and entered a fierce debate with many of her contemporary philosophers and writers, I selected six authors, three male, William Shakespeare, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and three female, Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft and Susanna Haswell Rowson as representative authors. The thesis is purely a descriptive research which used observation method.