Nimble Negotiations: A Study of Shakespeare’s Sagacious Female Characters
Keywords:
Shakespeare, Women, Patriarchy, Patriarchal Bargains.Abstract
This study aims to examine Shakespeare’s female characters as timeless in disposition. It is significant to observe the strong and intelligent women in plays of Shakespeare who know how to negotiate with patriarchal oppression that blur the line of time and space in depicting innate female nature. In this paper I argued that women are intelligent to manuevre the hostility of patriarchal society to her ease for which I examine Taming of the Shrew. It is significant to find parallels in Kandiyoti’s theorization of patriarchal bargains with reference to women in Shakespeare’s plays. The onstage female characters demonstrate prodigy and prudence that enables them power in male dominated society. His female artifice is beyond the stereotypical notions of defiance and deference, obedience and disobedience. These characters appear to be realistic and natural in the situations they have put in. His female antagonist is as sympathetic as admirable his protagonist. This study perceives his plays as suggesting contemporary women who are living in strong patriarchal constraints to devise strategic negotiations by using their inherent wit and intelligence for creating ease and comfort in the hostile ambiance.
References
Bean, John. "Comic structure and the humanising of Kate in The Taming of Shrew." In The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, edited by Gayle Greene, Carol Thomas Neely Carolyn S. Lenz, 65-78. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1980.
Bhasin, K. What Is Patriarchy. New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2006.
Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998.
Brooks, Charles. "Shakespeare’s Romantic Shrews." Shakespeare Quarterly 11, no. 3 (1960): 351-356.
Connell, Robert. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Connell, Robert W. Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987.
Craig, W. J., ed. Shakespeare Complete Works. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.
Crocker, H. "Affective resistance: performing passivity and playing a-part in the Taming of the Shrew." Shakespeare Quarterly 54, no. 2 (2003): 142-157.
Dusinberre, Juliet. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Engels, Frederick. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. London : Lawrence and Wishart, 1940.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Grene, Nicholas. Shakespeare's Tragic Imagination. New York: Springer, 1992.
Gubar, Sandra Gilbert and Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic: the Women Writer and the Ninteeth Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
Hankey, Julie. "Victorian Portias: Shakespeare’s Borderline Heroine." Shakespeare Quarterly 45, no. 4 (1994): 426-448.
Hardy, Barbara. Shakespeare’s Storytellers. London: Peter Owen, 1997.
Hazlitt, William. Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays. Edited by J. H. Lobban. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Hutcheon, Elisabeth. "From shrew to subject: Petruchio’s humanist education of Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew." Comparative Drama, 2001: 315-337.
Kahn, Coppelia. "Taming of the Shrew: Shakespeare’s mirror of marriage." In The authority of experience: essays in feminist criticism, edited by Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards, 84-100. Amherst: University of Massachussetts, 1977.
Kandiyoti, Deniz. "Bargaining with Patriarchy." Gender and Society, 1988: 274-290.
Newman, Karen. "Renaissance family politics and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew." In Essaying Shakespeare, edited by Gary F. Waller, 23-37. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
Rackin, Phyllis. Shakespeare and Women. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Rebhorn, Wayne. "Petruchio's 'Rope Tricks': The Taming of the Shrew and the Renaissance Discourse of Rehtoric." Modern Philogy, 1995: 294-327.
Tillyard, E. M. Shakespeare’s early comedies. London: Athlone Press, 1992.
Walby, S. Key concepts in feminist theory. Alborg: Alborg University, 1996.
—. Theorizing Patriarchy. London: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1990.
Walby, Sylvia. Gender Transformations. London and New York: Routledge, 2005.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. London: Penguin Classics, 2000.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Sadaf Mehmood
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
LEGALOPEDIA EDUCATINIA (PVT) LTD