Feminism in Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (2024)

Politics in the Representation of Women in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Humanities and Social Sciences Journal

The major concern of this paper is to study on how women are represented in the comedy Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. In the drama, the women characters Viola, Olivia and Maria stand as a challenge to the patriarchy in the society. All of them resist the convention that dominates women. They can work equally well independently as males do in everyday life. In fact, they represent the voice for equality between men and women. The drama reflects the social situation in England during the renaissance when consciousness about women’s rights and capability starts growing. The drama shows that women are also courageous, creative and competent if they are given the opportunity. This study is based on qualitative research methodology. So, I as a researcher have consulted various books and journal articles for support. It applies the concept of feminism seeking equality between men and women. This study will be a help for the coming researchers in the area.

Feminism and Gender Equality in the plays of Shakespeare

Shakespeare's courageous women include an extensive variety of portrayals and types. Inside the exhibition of female characters, Shakespeare's female characters show incredible knowledge, essentialness, and a solid feeling of individual autonomy. These characteristics have driven a few faultfinders to look at Shakespeare as a victor of womankind and a pioneer who left pointedly from level, stereotyped portrayals of females basic to his counterparts and prior producers. Contrastingly, different reporters take note of that even Shakespeare's most positively depicted females have characters that are tempered by negative characteristics. William Shakespeare lived amid the Elizabethan period and composed every one of his works dependent on the general public of that time. The Elizabethan period was a period when females were depicted to be weaker than males. Amid that time it was said that "women are to be seen, and not heard." In this paper an endeavour has been taken to investigate

Feminism in Shakespearean Literature: Role of Women in Shakespeare's Play, Hamlet

2021

This paper is a feminist based reading and comparison of women portrayed in Shakespearean plays. The reading although compared from the feminist perspective, is not a completely blown feminist reading of Shakespeare’s works. The focus of the study consists of the social circumstances and the wonderful actions of the male characters and how these impact on the lives of the female characters. The relationships between the man and the women characters are often identified by the physical and the psychological deception and their feelings. Men allow their egos and attitudes to persuade their decisions, attack spiritually and destroy virtuous women who are forced to become victims of political intrigues and machinations. This paper also tries to analyse the way Shakespeare tried to portray women as energetic, independent and not inferior to the patriarchal behaviour and nature of men during those times. He enjoyed the element of cross dressing men and women in order to hide the gender di...

Shakespeare: A Heterosexual Feminist

isara solutions, 2019

The present paper attempts to examine Shakespeare as one who could be seen as exposing rather than reinforcing the patriarchal ways of life which subordinate women to men. This paper focuses on Shakespeare’s Problem Plays such as Troilus and Cressida, Much Ado About Nothing, All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure.

Gender Identity and Gender Performativity in Shakespeare’s Selected Plays: Macbeth, Hamlet and Merry Wives of Windsor

Advances in Language and Literary Studies

The main argument of this article is focused on three plays by William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Hamlet and Merry Wives of Windsor. There are several points in these plays which deal with woman and their rights. This article deals with Shakespeare’s plays in relation to feminism, which pays more attention to the rights of women and their true identity. In all societies women are defined in terms of their relations to men as the center of power to which women have limited or no access. Judith Butler's performativity is significance on understandings of gender identity. Butler believes that gender is produced in society; also it can be changed in society. Feminism should aim to create a society in which, one's sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, and what one does. Shakespeare’s view of a woman is shown through his representation of female characters in his plays specifically in Macbeth, Hamlet and Merry Wives of Windsor.

Feminist Perspectives and Post Feminist Possibilities: A Reading of Selected Texts of Shakespeare

Shakespeare Next: A Reappraisal, Vol. 1, Eds. Sunita Sinha & Carole Rozzonelli, published by Atlantic Publishers and Distributors: New Delhi, India, 2015. ISBN: 978-81-269-1962-8. P. 208-220, 2015

Abstract: Contemporary readings of Shakespeare’s writings have opened up critical apertures that enable multidimensional approaches to his canonical texts. One such approach has been the post-colonial feminist approach, which not only addresses the issue of women as colonized subjects or objectified “other” in his plays and poems, but also interrogates the political positioning of the much celebrated heroines of his tragedies and comedies, which seem to represent distinctly diverse strands of his aesthetic consciousness of the feminine. His sonnets on the other hand represent a complex aesthetic vision which subvert traditional concepts of feminine beauty, masculinity and hetero-normative love. The present study posits that Shakespeare possessed a rare and unique bi-gender vision/consciousness, which could, by virtue of its double lens and gender fluidity, lend keen insights into human psyche and bring the verve and texture of life to his writings. This paper would attempt to look at selected texts of Shakespeare from a feminist literary critical perspective but further, look beyond a feminist deconstruction to a post-feminist reconstruction of these texts as enduring literary masterpieces.

Gender Theater: The Problems with Twelfth Night's Gender Theory

A modern queer reading of Shakespeare's problem play reveals a great many problems that lie beneath the surface. Superficially, it delves into the complexities of gender performativity, and portrays those who exist outside a strict gender binary as powerful figures that demand respect. However, upon closer inspection, the play often undercuts its own messages and consistently stumbles in an effort to explain non-gender normative behaviors to a heteronormative audience.

THE VISION OF GENDER CROSS-DRESSING IN SHAKESPEARES 'TWELFTH NIGHT'

Women in 'The Taming of the Shrew' and 'Twelfth Night': “Fake” Feminism in Film Adaptations of Shakespeare’s Comedies

In some modern film adaptations of Shakespeare’s comedies, the female characters appear to yield power over the male characters. It is essential to look beyond the deceptive surfaces of the plays and films, and scrutinise the representation of seemingly empowered females in the comedies. Organised in three sections, this paper focuses on the portrayal of women in film adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night. Firstly, Franco Zeffirelli’s popular version of The Taming of the Shrew (1967) is contrasted with a contemporary teenage adaptation, 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). Secondly, Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night (1996) is compared to another teenage adaptation, She's The Man (2006). In these films, Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew and Viola in Twelfth Night are associated with female empowerment and popular notions of “Girl Power”. It appears that these modern adaptations promote liberal views of gender and identity as the female characters are depicted to possess great autonomy and freedom. Beneath the illusion of popular notions of women’s empowerment, the film adaptations undermine the authority of strong female characters. I posit that the films’ representations of feminism constitute a form of “fake” feminism that creates a mirage of empowered female characters who, on closer inspection, are subjected to conservative models of gender essentialism and compulsory heterosexuality. As stated by Keller and Stratyner, Shakespeare’s work has become the twenty-first century’s mythology, a cultural shorthand for dispositions, predicaments, preoccupations, aesthetics, poetics, and ideologies (3). Hence, this paper concludes in the third section by examining how Shakespeare’s cultural authority is employed by the films to endorse patriarchal ideologies and “fake” feminism.

Understanding the Gender Complexities of Shakespeare

The dramatists of Shakespeare are often characterized as being feminists because of the frankness of Cordelia in King Lear, the shrewdness or Portia in The Merchant of Venice, and the psychological manipulation of Volumnia in Coriolanus. For over four hundred years we have performed the incredible representations of men and women and their various roles and responsibilities in society during the latter Renaissance period, where male actors would have pretended to be the character of Viola in Twelfth Night, while pretending to be her brother Sebastian, as a male character. This seems to be quite a complex idea in the latter sixteenth century. Some scholars have suggested that feminism did not exist during this era. I will prove in this paper that these assertions are fatally flawed – feminism was alive and well during that era. However, the dramatists of Shakespeare were not feminists, per say, they were in fact Master Kabbalists teaching the gender complexities of the ancient Zohar and the Tree of Life, where one can allow ego to ruin one’s life, or shut down our reactive system and be transformed to the supernal (heavenly) realm of perfection beyond human perception and repair the world.