I am overwhelmed, sometimes, by the amount of misfortune in the world. To be a feminist and follow current events is often acutely painful. But there is also good in the world, and feminists have come a long way. So I've decided to try, about once a week, to remember something I came across that made me smile-- something gender-related, of course.
I'll start with Romeo and Juliet.
I've been with a theater company that does Shakespeare for four years now, and in that time I've been exposed to a lot of his plays. Many of them are truly problematic from a feminist standpoint. Thus, I was quite pleased to learn that Romeo and Juliet was the play we would do this year.
Since I've been looking for good cultural reference points to introduce my friends to feminism, I was overjoyed. The more I look at the play, the more I like it. Some highlights:
-- the destructiveness of the feud illustrates the damage done by male gender roles
-- The interactions between Romeo, and Mercutio illustrate homosociality
-- Juliet makes her own decisions, and even possesses explicitly sexual desires
-- the abusive, controlling father is revealed for what he is-- abusive and controlling
-- Romeo's downfall is caused by his murder of Tybalt -- motivated explicitly by a desire to conform to masculinity
I'm sure everyone here knows this already; I know there is a substantial body of gender-based Shakespeare scholarship. But I've got to post something, and this makes me smile.
Now I should go finish learning my lines...
6 comments:
I've never actually looked at R&J through a feminist lens...thanks for the insight!
So--who are you playing?
Romeo.
Yes, Shakespeare is very itneresting through a feminist lens. Many of his plays have serious gender problems, but here and there you get glimmers of insight.
"The Winter's Tale," for instance, begins with the patriarch exposed as the jealous tyrant he is, and features Paulina, an extremely assertive woman portrayed sympathetically, but by the end of the play convention has been restored and everyone is happily married off.
That's why I've never thought of Shakespeare as especially feminist-friendly. There are often characters wo act against their gender roles, but they tend to either be punished for it or else they "see the light" and by the end they are right back in their place. Look at Much Ado About Nothing: Both Benedict and Beatrice start out by eschewing the trappings of conventional gender relations, but the happy ending is when they give in and marry one another.
I would very much like to hear your analysis of Romeo and Juliet in more detail, though. It has always seemed to me that whenever Shakespeare introduces a maverick character they either lose out in the end or they are just there for comic relief, and I'd like to hear a different interpretation.
Yes, Much Ado is a problematic one, mainly because of the almost total disenfranchisement of Hero.
When I played Benedick, it was something we struggled with.
Although the original context may not have been terribly enlightened, there are ways one can djust the presentation of the play to make it a little better.
I'm not sure it's intellectually honest, but we chose to read the play's finale as an example of healthy ompromise with society. It's true that Benedick and beatrice do marry, but there's no evidence that their marriage is a conventional one.
BENEDICK: A miracle! here's our own hands against our hearts. [95]
Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take
thee for pity.
BEATRICE: I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield
upon great persuasion; and partly to save your life,
for I was told you were in a consumption. [100]
This exchange, it seems to me, implies that Beatrice has *not* surrendered her identity to marriage.
I was going to write a comment about Romeo and Juliet, but it got so long I think I'll make it into a post.
I find Shakespear to be capable of being read through a feminist lens, it really is up to interpretation, and since his plays did not have elaborate stage-cues, there are kinds of delivery that you can do with it that are incredibly feminist.
I wrote quite a bit, when finishing my English degree, about a feminist perspective of "The Taming of the Shrew", largely eschewed to be his least feminist-friendly play. But what most people don't see is that the play itself is framed (its a play within a play) in such a way as to change how we look at the story (because the story takes place within the mind of a hen-pecked, drunk narrator)
Shakespeare is incredibly complex stuff; there are a lot of ways to read it, interpret it, and also to reformulate it. that's why I'm a sucker for Shakespearean interpretations during the Fringe Festival (theatre festival in most major cities): there's usually another way to look at it.
That said, i also hadn't thought of R&J in that light, so thanks for the info.
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