The Mary Sue: When we look at works from a different era, it’s often hard to judge them by our modern standards of feminism and progressiveness. There are a lot of great works of art that are terrible when it comes to their gender politics or their subtext (or main text) about race. That’s just something we have to deal with when it comes to art in a world that is constantly evolving and changing.
7 comments:
While I agree that Shakespeare wrote some strong female characters, some of his works do not have the most feminist of messages. Typically, they have some pretty strong messaging about virginity and purity which is considered antiquated and usually very anti-feminist considering how the concept of virginity is only applied to women. That said, I don’t really think liking Shakespeare says anything about whether you are a feminist or not, unless the reason you love Shakespeare is his values, but most people like Shakespeare because of his mastery of language. You can appreciate an artist who is good at their craft, even if you disagree with their messaging, as long as your enjoyment of their work does not promote destructive values or monetarily support a bad person. Obviously, Shakespeare is long dead, and we do not seriously believe in the death penalty for premarital sex in this country. There is no harm in enjoying his wit, and it says very little about your values as a feminist.
This is something that I often think about, as when we admire iconic work from years past, there are themes that come up that do not align with the expectations that we hold in modern-day. In a world in which cancel culture has become so ingrained in our brains, it is hard to avoid noticing these red flags. However, as someone who has really loved and admired Shakespeare's work, I find it really encouraging that even though a modern-day feminist lens, he measures up. A major example of this is Lady Macbeth in the Scottish Play. While many of the actions, especially the infamous murder, is performed by Lord Macbeth, there is a huge argument to be made that Lady Macbeth is the one who has the control and pushes her husband to do these things. She is an incredibly powerful female character. Another example of this is in Much Ado About Nothing, where Beatrice clearly defies the traditional female stereotype of being starry-eyed over a man and is outwardly disgusted by Benedick. While I think Shakespeare was influenced by the time period and in his comedies characters end married or in love, on the whole, he created female characters who are driven, powerful and in most cases not at a man's disposal. Elena Keogh
I'm currently taking a Shakespeare class at CMU and, though it's not focused on Shakespeare's female characters, we've had a lot of interesting conversations about them and their roles in the plays. One important consideration I've found is the importance of intention. Do you or do you not care about WHY Shakespeare wrote his female characters the way he did? If you do, you probably won't find many feminist themes in his works. The truth is, most of the instances where Shakespeare characters break tradition, it's to contribute to the "coming apart" of tradition in a comedy, just to later be put back together. But, if you're looking at the results rather than the intentions, you can find a lot of feminist themes. This is the road I tend to go down. I think the cultural impacts of Shakespeare's plays and characters are much more important than his intentions. To me, the beauty of Shakespeare's female characters is their diversity of personality and desires. Most of Shakespeare's female characters is developed differently and very well. But if you compare characters like Beatrice and Katherine to characters like Juliet and Ophelia to characters like Lady Macbeth, it's easy to see that Shakespeare wasn't writing one dimensional, cookie-cutter female characters.
This was a really lovely article. I am a huge lover and advocate of old media, but with that usually comes a lot of explanations. “Don’t be thrown off about how they treat women, it's still very well written!” or “You have to understand times were different and these things that are horrendous today were acceptable then!” and it becomes a slippery slope of respecting art made long ago and still respecting the beauty of modern day diversity and the complicated past that got us to a place of acceptance and mutual respect. So when I can advocate for a piece of art from yesteryear without having to defend its value against egregious humanitarian offenses. I am not a huge Shakespeare buff, simply because I prefer seeing his plays over reading them, and there have not been a ton of Shakespeare performances near me, but I respect what he did through his work a lot, and I agree with this article that he consistently created very well-rounded and dynamic female characters, even if they were originally portrayed by men.
Feminism in Shakespeare is a controversial topic. I remember back in middle school having to write a paper about whether or not we thought Taming of the Shrew was feminist or not. I do think the article credits Shakespeare a little too highly since his work does contain flaws in his portrayal of female characters. However, I do agree with Mason that the most admirable aspect of Shakespeare’s female character is that they are actually people and not treated as objects. Obviously, women at the time were not nearly as respected as they are now (for the most part), but Shakespeare gave his female characters a personality. The women did fall into stereotypes, but they were complex and made actions based on their own motivations that broke beyond loving a man. In some cases, like Othello, the women are the ones who solve the mystery and resolve the conflict, even if it may end in tragedy. That is something worth praising, especially for the time it was written.
I am no expert on Shakespeare, nor an expert on feminism, but I do observe, or so I like to think. Few things come out of my mouth that are more fact than opinion, and I like to preface as such. While I have not read enough Shakespeare plays to pass judgment on him and his writing as a whole, I can render an opinion on what plays I have consumed. The essence of the matter is this: While his women seem to have simpler goals (want the man or kill the man, really, is what I've observed so far), he writes his two genders both alike in dignity, which is to say he writes competently to make both his men and his women very incompetent. Bravo for making Ophelia pine for Hamlet and then throw herself into a river in madness. Good on him for making Romeo the strangest, silliest little bastard to walk in Italy.
I wouldn’t necessarily sing Shakespeare’s praises as a “feminist,” in the sense that he was ahead of his time and doing tons for women. Instead, I agree with the article that Shakespeare just saw women as people, and therefore was able to portray them well, and in a variety of ways, in his work. While he missed more often than hit when it came to race and religion, he consistently wrote powerful, stunning female characters. And more importantly, they were present in a range: morally good, morally bad, morally grey; raging against men, loving men, antagonizing men, being sweet and demure. There are ultra feminine characters, like Miranda from the Tempest; there are strong, queenly characters like Hermione in Winter’s Tale; and of course there are evil, manipulative female characters, like Lady Macbeth. Just like in real life, Shakespeare’s women are not inherently “pure” or idolized; they are simply allowed to be, which is what makes them so compelling.
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