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Normalizing Homosexuality Through Heterosexuality
The topic of homosexuality has always been one approached with caution due to its taboo nature derived from its deviation from the heterosexual norm. Traditionally, and across several cultures, homosexuality has been successfully discussed through normalizing the behaviour through heterosexual representation. Gender reversal or amplification of feminine qualities of male characters have often been means by which authors are able to subtly introduce the foreign idea of homosexuality and equate it to its more formal and accepted counterpart, heterosexuality. The works of Shakespeare and Li Yu have assisted in exposing homosexual relationships while still maintaining them under the heterosexual norm, whether it be through direct or metaphorical representations.
Li Yu's Male Mencius's Mother epitomizes the normalization of homosexuality through the characters' strict adherence to Confucian gender norms. While initially a condemnation of homosexuality citing the rebelliousness towards the divine design of heterosexuality and the complementary nature of male and female, the story instead romanticizes the self-sacrifice and devotion of the homosexual relationship of two men. The presentation of the homosexual relationship is designed to maximize the acceptance of homosexuality through the application of heterosexual components, such as the definition of a "male" and "female" to Jifang and Ruilang respectively. Jifang establishes his dominance as "male" through his taking of a wife and fathering a child, while Ruilang accepts his "female" definition through the physical transformation of castration and psychological transformation into the Confucian chaste wife and dutiful mother.
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...on and condemnation of “southern mode.” The Renaissance period allowed a more progressive, albeit periphery, discussion through the subtle works of Shakespeare and his storylines and supporting characters. However, both approached the ideology of homosexuality through application of the heterosexual norms to the homosexual relationship, minimizing criticism and legitimizing homoeroticism.
References
Hanan, Partick and Yu Li. Silent Operas. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night Or What You Will. Ed. Kenneth Deighton. London: Macmillan, 1889. Shakespeare Online. 20 Dec. 2010.
Traub, Valerie. Desire and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama. London, Routledge, 1992.
Wayne, Valerie, ed. The Matter of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1991.
Ekici, Sara (2009). Feminist Criticism: Female Characters in Shakespeare's Plays Othello and Hamlet. Munich: GRIN Publishing.
William, Shakespeare Twelfth Night. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume B. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. 1079-1139.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California, 1988.
The topic of homosexuality elicits many reactions. It is forever played upon in pop culture for it's shock value if nothing else. Some demonize it, holding things like religion as proving, "alternative lifestyles," to be wrong. Some have erotisied homosexuality as in many of Anne Rice's vampire novels. Some laugh at homosexuality or people who are homosexual, calling it, "weird". Some react violently, as in the case of Matthew Shepard. And yet others have gradually turned towards acceptance shown (debatably) in such movies as, " To Wong-Fu Love Julie Newmar" and " In and Out".
“...So long as men can breathe or eyes can see/So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” So ends the famous Sonnet 18, possibly Shakespeare’s best-loved sonnet of all. Shakespeare’s fame today comes almost exclusively for his writing that deals with feelings of love. Sonnet 18. Romeo and Juliet. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hamlet and Ophelia and Antipholus and Luciana and Beatrice and Benedick and Antony and Cleopatra. All these examples of the guy falling in love with the girl and skipping off into the sunset with her. However, new evidence shows that he wrote almost half of his sonnets to a man, including that oft-quoted “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” sonnet. As we look closer and closer at his cross-dressing, male-centric, “fabulous” plays, Shakespeare scholars argue that it’s very possible he swung the other way, or at least been an ally for those who did. Fast forward about four hundred years and we live in a thoroughly(though not yet quite totally) accepting society, with multiple organizations dedicated only to making LGBT kids feel safe in their own community, universally legal gay marriage undoubtedly coming up on the horizon, and non-gender-binary people winning major beauty-centric competitions. The very reason that so much research has been done on Shakespeare’s sexuality is that we accept so many in today’s modern, free spoken society. The majority of today’s society opens and accepts all, and I like to believe that the bard himself strove for a world like this. There are still a few people who still believe that their love-thy-neighbor religion does not apply to those who do not fit within the societal construct of a book written thousands of years ago, but people who have grown to love far overpowe...
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare, ed. Sylvan Barnet, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1972.
Kemp, Theresa D. Women in the Age of Shakespeare. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2009. Print.
Garner, Shirley Nelson, and Madelon Sprengnether, eds. Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indian U, 1996.
7- J.M. Lothian and T.W. Craik, "In troduction," The Arden Shakespeare: Twelfth Night , ed. Lothian and Craik (New York: Routledge, 1991) lvi.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, Or, What You Will. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009. Print.
In a romantic forest setting, rich with the songs of birds, the fragrance of fresh spring flowers, and the leafy hum of trees whistling in the wind, one young man courts another. A lady clings to her childhood friend with a desperate and erotic passion, and a girl is instantly captivated by a youth whose physical features are uncannily feminine. Oddly enough, the object of desire in each of these instances is the same person. In As You Like It, William Shakespeare explores the homoerotic possibilities of his many characters. At the resolution he establishes a tenuous re-affirmation of their heterosexuality. In this essay I will show how individual characters flirt with their homoerotic inclinations, and finally reject these impulses in favor of the traditional and socially accepted heterosexual lifestyle. I will explore male to male eroticism through the all-male court in the forest and through Orlando's attraction to Ganymede. I will inspect female to female attraction through Celia's attachment to Rosalind and through Phebe's instant attraction to the effeminate boy, Ganymede.
Kathleen McLuskie. "The patriarchal bard: feminist criticism and Shakespeare: King Lear and Measure for Measure" in Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, ed. Jonathan Dollimor and Alan Sinfield. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985, 88-108.
Kiernander states the effects that plays such as Twelfth Night, a play that obviously presents controversial issues, has on certain audiences in certain regions (127). For example, he describes a passionate kiss on-stage between Sebastian and Antonio and states that in New Zealand these men could have been arrested at the time because homosexuality was illegal at the time (Kiernander 127). Not only might there be legal consequences, but what do these controversial issues mean for further acceptance of this behavior in our modern society? There has obviously been an increase in acceptance because if there was not, we would not be discussing the differences between now and Shakespeare’s time. Holland describes the “constituency” of Shakespeare’s plays as a group that has developed from “high-school curriculum or the culture wars of the 1980s… (385). If we accept this belief, we can accept the evolution of beliefs about Twelfth Night as a product of the fearless society we live
Leininger, Lorie Jerrel. “The Miranda Trap: Sexism and Racism in Shakespeare’s Tempest.” The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Eds Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz et al. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983. 285-294
Women Reading Shakespeare 1660-1900, An anthology of criticism, ed. Ann Thompson and Sasha Roberts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 17-18.