Theme Of Feminism In Shakespeare's 'Romeo And Juliet'

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Early modern England was a highly patriarchal society. One of the many preconceptions of Shakespeare’s audience was ideas about gender. At that time, people valued certain characteristics in women and a completely different set in men. Women experienced suppression and were expected to be obedient. Shakespeare’s society was highly invested in the domination of women. Obedience was not just desirable - it was considered necessary. For the male-dominated society to function, women had to submit to the rules of men. A large component of obedience in women was that they were expected to be seen and not heard. This silence was synonymous with chastity, whereas expression was perceived as a sign of promiscuity. Thus, the audience valued meek, obedient and silent women; anything else threatened their conceptions of proper female behaviour. In his plays, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare challenges the social ideologies by creating a rebellious daughter who refuses to be subservient to her father. The daughter struggles to negotiate a passage into adulthood and marriage with her father’s blessing; while the father struggles to relinquish the young woman to another man – her future husband.

The earlier appraisals, dating to the 1970s and early 1980s, are typically more sympathetic to the fathers, finding the struggles between them and their daughters to be among the expected hurdles of normal family life. The later readings, however, find a tyrannical possessiveness in excess of normal parental affection in the father’s behaviour. Whilst some critics discern an incestuous desire for the daughter in the father’s motivation, others see the father’s possessiveness as a love corrupted by the power a patriarchal society confers on hi...

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...ay - it’s unlikely that we will be able to talk to him anytime soon. On one hand, it shows misogyny and his hatred of women. But on the other hand, it could just be Shakespeare trying to accumulate funds by writing plays that would sell tickets; plays that would intrigue audiences and keep them coming back for more. In addition, to support my point about Shakespeare writing plays to intrigue audiences, his play The Tempest also follows a similar narrative of a rebellious daughter. However the thing that make this play different from King Lear and Romeo and Juliet is that the daughter does not have to be silenced, Even though her father, Prospero, uses magic to control her, she still ends up with her love. This completely defies what was expected in society and therefore could suggest that Shakespeare was not misogynistic. But we can never be totally sure, can we?

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