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Antony and Cleopatra relationships
Masculinity and femininity in Shakespeare
Masculinity and femininity in Shakespeare
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In this essay the role of man in marriage will be examined in relation to Shakespeare’s Richard the 2nd and Anthony and Cleopatra. Marriage in Jacobean society was a highly codified and intricate subject that would have governed the lives of almost all of the audience (Ranald 68). Within Richard the 2nd and Anthony and Cleopatra men face a multitude of marital pressures and expectations. Within this complex web of marriage, the roles of the participants would have been tightly established, and straying from the norm would have been deemed as exciting, risky, and dangerous. Consequently, deviations from conventional marriage would have challenged the audience’s standard beliefs. In this essay I shall show how in Richard the 2nd, and Anthony and Cleopatra male characters deviate dangerously from their roles, causing the marriages to end. Shakespeare demonstrates this through drawing a clear parallel between the failure of marriage and the failure of the character; as shown through Richard’s poor reign, and Anthony’s rejection of Rome. Both these failures to succeed in their roles lead to the destruction of their marriages. Whilst a failure in ones role directly poses a problem to marriage, the failure in ones role also indirectly poses a problem to marriage due to the marriages conventionality causing a tension between the male characters unconventionality.
Both Anthony and Richard are presented as rulers and statesmen. Accompanying the positions are several duties and expectations which contain both the need for success and conquest, and the religious and moral dimensions of control. The expectations and duties that characters are held to, enshrine character’s role within society, and are linked to their marital success.
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...lity is presented through the consequences of Richard and Anthony not fulfilling their roles. Due to Anthony and Richard’s failure in their roles, their marriages collapse. Failure in roles destroys marriage through the close association between marriage and the roles, and through the tension caused between unconventional characters, and conventional marriage. Despite the Anthony and Richard going through a seemingly similar process (they face similar roles and fail in similar ways), a key difference accounts for the difference circumstance of their marriages collapse. Through Anthony choosing to fail in his role, he is afforded the choice to end his marriage. Conversely, as Richard does not choose to fail in his role, Richard’s marriage is destroyed without his consent. Thus, the way in which a character fails their role influences how their marriage is destroyed.
In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer portrays a wide spectrum of marriage from what can be traditionally seen as the worst to the best. Three of these tales, The Miller's, The Franklin's, and The Wife of Bath's, support this examination of what can constitute an ideal marriage.
Richard’s disdain for humane beliefs and customs (such as religion, marriage, and family) shows when he treats them as nothing more than empty forms – this further labels him as a demon of indiscipline and rebellion. He sees virtues as contrary to his power-thirsty nature and aim, which emphasizes his pathological shamelessness and lack of hremorse. With his charisma, he woos Lady Anne in order to disempower her, revealing his disregard towards the seriousnesss of murder and respect for women: “What though I killed her husband and her father?” (I.i.156). Richard shows his disrespect towards love and marriage as he becomes her husband “ not so much for love / [but] for another secret close intent” (I.i.159-160) to benefit himself. In Act IV, Richard “prays” with ...
The aspects of marriage portrayed in the Wife of Bath’s prologue feature heavily around sexual pleasure and wealth. Her description shows the struggle for power causes conflict, occasional violence and abuse; all the while she is justifying her lifestyle and fighting for female equality. Despite no fidelity, love, or trust as deceit and affairs that seem to be commonplace the Wife of Bath ‘s description of married life is very much a comical one, which she does seem to enjoy especially if she achieves fulfillment. Altogether Chaucer’s portrait of 14th Century married life is at best a humorous battleground for independence, wealth and pleasures of the flesh.
It’s quite suspicious how the two plays Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare and The Crucible by Arthur Miller both feature a father-daughter, father-niece, and cousin-niece relationship. In this essay, the relationships between Hero, Beatrice, Leonato and Betty, Abby, and Parris will be thoroughly examined. The differences between Hero, Beatrice, Leonato (from Much Ado About Nothing) and Betty, Abby, and Parris’ (from The Crucible) relationships are striking, and they merit rigorous examination.
Martineau clearly had a strong political agenda in writing this story, however in doing so, she addresses the fundamental difference she sees in the roles of responsibility in marriage. In her mind, the husband and the wife have clearly defined roles, not so much along lines of production, but rather in terms of the household. That which is in the household, whether it is the domestic duties or financial responsibility, falls to the wife while it is the husband who is responsible for the income stream.
Imagine if we still lived in a world where gender roles in a marriage were dedicated to a specific spouse and were not equal. Now, look and ask yourself, “How are those roles different in today’s world?” Gender roles have a crucial responsibility in present day marriages, and have throughout history; however, roles in and outside of the home, including child care, have changed over time. For instance, for a significant part of the twentieth century gender roles between a husband and wife in a marriage were: the man as the provider and defender and the woman as housewife and caretaker. However, in recent years, the roles have been adjusted. Having said that, gender roles may be similar to the past in some households, but in many, gender roles are quite different when it comes to responsibilities inside and outside of the home and the roles the parents share in terms of childcare.
Gender roles play a large part within a marriage as well. As explained in our text, there are many roles for men and women involved in the beginning a marriage. Just in the act of courting and proposal, common customs include bride service (man must work for his bride’s family either before or after marriage), bridewealth (goods presented by the groom’s kin to the bride’s kin to seal a marriage), or the giving of a dowry, in which the bride’s kin gives the groom’s kin goods (Nanda, Serena, and Richard L. Warms 161-162). Within American society, the gender roles are quite stratified. Although times are changing, there is still a great deal of stress put on women to stay in the home and for men to be the breadwinners. This is related to what our text calls the private/public dichotomy, in which women’s status is lowered due to their association with childbearing and homemaking while men’s status is heightened by being linked with power and economy (Nanda, Serena, and Richard L. Warms 192). This also relates to the “How to be a Good Wife” scenarios we read for class, in which a 1950’s housewife is compared to a modern housewife. These scenarios prove just how much has changed within the last half-century or so pertaining to women’s rights. However, while women in the workplace are much more common nowadays, there is still a very heavy weight put on wives to be both mothers and working women. As discussed in Society: The Basics, by John Macionis, many working mothers today experience what is known as the “second shift”: “As women have entered the labor force, the amount of housework women do has gone down, but the share done by women has stayed the same…[women] do significantly more housework than men” (Macionis, John J. 281)...
When we think of marriage, the first thing that comes to mind is having a lasting relationship. Marriage is a commitment of two people to one another and to each other?s family, bonded by holy matrimony. When a couple plans to marry, they think of raising a family together, dedicating their life to each other. That?s the circle of life--our natural instinct to live and produce children and have those children demonstrate your own good morals. I have never been married; but I don?t understand why when two people get married and vow to be together for richer and poorer, better or worse, decide to just forget about that commitment. A marriage should be the most important decision a person makes in his or her life.
Throughout the historical literary periods, many writers underrepresented and undervalued the role of women in society, even more, they did not choose to yield the benefits of the numerous uses of the female character concerning the roles which women could accomplish as plot devices and literary tools. William Shakespeare was one playwright who found several uses for female characters in his works. Despite the fact that in Shakespeare's history play, Richard II, he did not use women in order to implement the facts regarding the historical events. Instead, he focused the use of women roles by making it clear that female characters significantly enriched the literary and theatrical facets of his work. Furthermore in Shakespeare’s history play, King Richard II, many critics have debated the role that women play, especially the queen. One of the arguments is that Shakespeare uses the queen’s role as every women’s role to show domestic life and emotion. Jo McMurtry explains the role of all women in his book, Understanding Shakespeare’s England A Companion for the American Reader, he states, “Women were seen, legally and socially, as wives. Marriage was a permanent state” (5). McMurtry argues that every woman’s role in the Elizabethan society is understood to be a legal permanent state that is socially correct as wives and mothers. Other critics believe that the role of the queen was to soften King Richard II’s personality for the nobles and commoners opinion of him. Shakespeare gives the queen only a few speaking scenes with limited lines in Acts two, four, and five through-out the play. Also, she is mentioned only a few times by several other of the characters of the play and is in multiple scenes wit...
The aim of this paper is to analyze the themes of love and sexuality in one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, Hamlet. As a playwright, Shakespeare depicted human nature profoundly, therefore, in Hamlet we may find as many kinds of love as the number of relationships that are described and intermingled. There is romantic love, paternal and maternal love, and friendship, which is love among people of the same rank, class or sex. The love present in some of these relationships is sometimes connected or overlapped with sexuality, even in cases where it is not expected to. In the following pages we will try to illustrate how two attributes which all human beings posses are shown and experienced by the characters in Hamlet.
In spite of the weaknesses, Ivanhoe and King Richard demonstrate true chivalric characteristics. They exemplify integrity, loyalty to the king, a love for adventure and bravery. Through this book, the reader learns the meaning of moral guidelines due to the examples set by King Richard and Ivanhoe. These examples challenge us to search for our own moral guidelines. Without these, we have nothing to strive for.
is the most usual in which a man and a woman unite themselves in the
The debate of which individual should have the authority in a marriage, the man or the woman, is a topic that has remained unanswered for centuries. While he does not solve this debate, Geoffrey Chaucer attempts to unpack the different elements that factor into it. In Canterbury Tales, primarily in the prologue of the Wife of Bath and both tales of the Wife of Bath and the Clerk, Chaucer displays different types of marriages. These marriages analyze how a man or woman can gain authority over the other. These marriages vary in terms of their dynamics due to the unique individuals and their environments. Through an analysis of the marriages depicted by Chaucer in the prologue and tales of the Clerk and the Wife of Bath, one can see the different
Love conquers everything. Or at least, that’s what Romeo and Juliet thought. But marriage and love can be complicated, and some argue that marrying someone who shares your religious beliefs can make things much easier. Is having the same religious and spiritual beliefs part of criteria many people use when seeking a marriage partner? It is strongly felt that the person they are going to marry should have the same traditions and customs, and intensity of belief as they themselves do. For them, it is an imperative part of marriage. A correlation exists between religious shared beliefs in marriage and marital satisfaction, although the nature of the relationship is not certain. History says that religion starts wars. If that is true, what will it do to a dual-religion marriage? This paper will discuss people’s views on why it is actually a major criterion to have a partner that has the same religious beliefs.
To give a little background on the play; the pursuit of marriage is the driving force behind the play. “I now pronounce you, man and wife.” This traditional saying, commonly used to announce a newlywed couple during a wedding ceremony, marks the happily ever after that many dream of today. In today’s society, marriage is an expression of love between two individuals. Marriage has not, however, always been an act of love. In the Victorian era, marriage was almost a chore. Most people married out of need rather than want. In the Play this is evident when Lady Bracknell objects to Gwendolen and Ernest’s engagement on the basis of his lack of legitimate background. On the other hand, Jack objects to the marriage of Cecily and Algernon’s