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WRITINGS

Shakespeare's Women, or Viola's Great, but Twelfth Night Isn't Titled "Viola"

Writer's picture: Lucille BrooksLucille Brooks

“Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we,

For such as we are made of, such we be.”

- Viola, Twelfth Night, Act II Scene ii


 

Twelfth Night’s Viola is widely perceived as one of Shakespeare’s most strong and gender-defiant female characters. Yet, in Act II Scene ii she proclaims that women are weak by nature, because their bodies are more frail than those of men. This misogynistic insertion into the dialogue of a supposedly independent and self-sufficient woman is disheartening, and demonstrates that Viola may not be the feminist hero that audiences have made her out to be. Twelfth Night is a not so subtle reminder that, even though Shakespeare is known as the greatest writer of all time, he was probably a 15th century man. To be prominent in a Shakespearean play, women must be controlled by a men or pretend to be one.


In Tina Packer’s 2015 book, Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare’s Plays, she reports on the amount of women in Shakespeare’s plays. Packer writes, “There are usually two to four women in each of the plays--as opposed to ten to twenty men; women are always the minority, always the “other” in some way. I counted.” When examining the sheer inequity of the number of women versus men in Shakespeare’s works, it can be deduced that the men are probably the characters driving the stories. Having a spectrum of nuanced male characters while having only one or two female characters also means that the few women must represent all of womanhood amongst themselves. In other words, the fewer female characters, the more they are judged, and greater is the expectation that they will be “perfect.” For example, Saint Joan of Arc is the only major female character in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, and she is literally Joan of Arc, yet the play is called Henry VI.


Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew is one of two women in the entire play, and, although she is mentioned in the title, its derogatorily as the shrew. To highlight Katherine’s transformation over the course of this play, the following quotes are taken from the beginning and end of The Taming of the Shrew. In Act II Scene i, Katherine meets Petruchio, the pompous man intent on marrying her for her father’s mother, for the first time. She boldly responds to an insult of him calling her a wasp by retorting, “If I be waspish, best beware my sting.” This quick-witted and firey threat occuring during Katherine’s very first interaction with Petruchio starkly contrasts the following excerpt from a soliloquy she elicits in Act V Scene ii: “Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband. And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her loving lord?” In this statement, Katherine says that a wife should treat her husband as if he is a prince and she his subject. To further highlight the lengths to which Katherine has been “tamed,” she adds that a disobedient woman is a loathsome and ungrateful traitor to her husband. These two quotes alone highlight that despite this play featuring a bold and feisty female character, audiences are shown that such a woman must be dealt with, and it is a man’s job to do the dealing.


Katherine is nuanced, brave, and challenging at the beginning of her story, but the play is literally called The Taming of the Shrew., and Petruchio manages to do just that through “starving her, taking her clothes... [and] her language away from her, making her lie about what she sees and what she knows.” It should also be noted that The Taming of the Shrew is a Shakespearean comedy, because it ends in the wedding between Katherine’s sister, Bianca, and her foppish lover, Lucentio. What other message could Shakespeare be sending than abusing unruly women is the best way to make them marriage material? After all, everyone in Taming of the Shrew ends up happier because of it Petruchio’s abuse of Katherine, and there are no ramifications. If this same character existed in a play centered around her experience, simply called Katherine, she would hopefully be able to remain the complicated woman that she is in Act I.


As You Like Its Rosalind is another famous female Shakespearean protagonist. The literary critic Anne Barton has said of her, “Rosalind is extraordinarily important in As You Like It, as central and dominating a figure in her fashion as Hamlet in his own, very different play." Rosalind is without a doubt the driving force of her play, but even here, the title betrays its heroine: Hamlet is called Hamlet and As You Like It is not called Rosalind.


In As You Like It, Rosalind dresses as a man when she is banished from her uncle’s court and embarks on a journey through a forest in pursuit of freedom. The motivation for Rosalind’s cross-dressing is to protect herself from the violence she would receive if she dressed as herself. This idea reflects that Rosalind disguising herself as a man raises her status to the surrounding society, while a male character dressing as a woman would be a breach of his status. It also speaks to the gender power dynamics of the time, and today, that it made more sense for Rosalind to dress and live as her alter-ego Ganymede for her own safety.


In Act I, Scene iii, Rosalind describes her choice to dress as a man on her journey, “Were it not better, Because that I am more than common tall, That I did suit me all points like a man? A gallant curtal-ax upon my thigh, A boar-spear in my hand, and in my heart Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will, We'll have a swashing and a martial outside.” She explains that all she has to do to appear like a man is dress like one and carry several weapons, suggesting that masculinity is merely a role to be played. While this is a hopeful and progressive statement, it is then followed by her adding that she will hide her “woman’s fear” in her heart, alluding to the idea that women are naturally fearful. Rosalind’s intelligence and thoughtfulness is made apparent in this dialogue, but Shakespeare had to add a jab at the apparent weakness of emotionality and femininity, for balance. To again address the title of the play, since Rosalind is Ganyemede for the majority of As You Like It, why would the play be called Rosalind? She does not get the luxury of living truthfully as herself in this play. Rosalind, as she is, is not the focus.

Another play in which the brave female protagonist is disguised as a man for the majority of her story, is Twelfth Night. It is no coincidence that Viola, like Rosalind spends most of her story as a man; in this case the servent, Cesario. Why write stories about women pretending to be men, if he could have just made their characters the men that they pretend to be? Perhaps then, As You Like It would be called Ganymede, and Twelfth Night, Cesario.


In the Shakespearean plays that follow a female character as the main protagonist, her story always ends in marriage. Hamlet dies in Hamlet, Macbeth dies in Macbeth, King Lear dies in King Lear, and Othello dies in Othello. But Petruchio tames Katherine, Viola marries Orsino, and Rosalind marries Orlando. The oppression of married women in the Elizabethan era is made clear in Act III, Scene ii of The Taming of the Shrew, when Petruchio insists Katherine is his property, “I will be master of what is mine own. She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.” The women leads of Shakespeare inevitably belong to someone else when their stories end. The plays are called The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, because Katherine, Rosalind, and Viola’s stories are not their own. But what’s in a name?


 

Works Cited

Packer, Tina. Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays. Alfred A. Knopf,

2015.

1 comment

1 comentario


specialkao
29 oct 2019

While Shakespeare's genius for writing drama has proven to be timeless and pervades his work, you have done an excellent job pointing out that, regardless, he remains a man of his time. Unfortunately, not a whole lot has changed in the past 500 years; there remains too many Violas, Rosalinds, and Katherines. While Ophelia dies, it is not a noble death, nor is it one that instructs. Rather, it is the demise of a woman who is rejected by a man. And yet, while people and their social constructs change slowly, dear Mr. Shakespeare, they do change! Thanks for sharing your insight, Lucy - literature and art, like history, continues to instruct us: what has been, what is, and wha…

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