Shakespeare’s View Toward Females Through His Romances

Shakespeare’s View Toward Females Through His Romances

William Shakespeare recreated the original text of familiar myths and the bible into new works by breaking customs and stereotyped ideas. Most people know Shakespeare as a great writer who lived in Renaissance. Nonetheless, they do not know well whether Romeo and Juliet is a kind of comedy. More than half of them misunderstand the definition of comedy and tragedy. Shakespeare’s 37 plays are usually classified as four stages, depending on the staging regiment (Edward 48-49). The first stage is the etude stage (1590∼1594). During this period, he used to write historical plays and comedies such as the King Henry VI trilogy, the King Richard III, the Venus and Adonis, the Rape of Lucreece and so on. The second stage is the growth stage (1595∼1600) when the world of his comedy was expended. In that time, there were Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Merchant of Venice, the Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet and, etc. The period when he wrote his four tragedies; Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear, is the third stage: maturity stage (1601∼1607). The last stage is the tragicomedy stage (1608∼1613). The tragicomedy is not just a lively comedy. It is a comedy that main characters welcomed infinite happiness after long sorrow. At the end of his career Shakespeare experimented with a new dramatic mode that we call romance: Cymbeline, the Winter’s Tale, Pericles, Prince of Tyre and Tempest. They are tragicomedies and also romance. In that time, the four tragicomedy romances were performed, aligning with the sentimental symbols of the masses (Kim “Venice”). In his romances, his view of women was well expressed through his characters. In this paper, there will be the overview of the plot of Pericles and Cymbeline, analysis of the female characters and grasping the time Shakespeare lived, emphasizing on the opinion of females. Throughout those analyses, this will present how his thoughts toward women were described on the basis of his works, especially the romances: Pericles and Cymbeline.

Pericles and Cymbeline described the characteristics of romance well. Pericles, the prince of Tyre, tried to marry the daughter of the king, Antiochus, from The Great Antioch. However, he got his grudge, so he leaves his country, Tyre, beyond the sea and abroad. Pericles, facing a typhoon on the seas, was rescued with the help of fishermen living there. After that, he won the martial arts tournament of the court and married the princess of the country, Thaisa: the daughter of Simonides, the king of Pentapolis. On the way to Tyre, Pericles re-encountered and lost his wife, Thaisa. He left his new-born daughter to Cleon, the governor of the nearby country, Tarsus. Buried at sea and drifted back to Ephesus’s coast, Thaisa was found by Cerimon and resurrected. However, at that time of her resurrection, she believed her husband died and decided to go to the shrine of Ephesus, leaving the world behind. The queen of Tarsus, Dionyza, envied the daughter of Pericles who was grown in Tarsus, Marina. Therefore, she tried to assassinate her. Although Marina was kidnapped by pirates so she saved her life, she was sold to a Mytilene’s red light district. While looking for his daughter, Pericles got to Tarsus and was told that Marina was dead. Though, fortunately, when he anchored off Mytilene, he found out his daughter and reunited with the queen. The plot of Cymbeline is very similar to Pericles. The king of Britain, Cymbeline, brought up his only one daughter like a precious treasure after two of his sons had kidnapped. Cymbeline unofficially decided on Immogen as his successive and planned to marry her, but beautiful Immogen loved gentleman, Posthumus. The queen set a plan to have Cloten, the son between her and her ex-husband, marry Immogen and gain power. As the queen, planned Posthumus got expelled to Rome, but Immogen decided to wait for him in spite of Cloten’s wooing. At this, Cloten felt humiliated to pledge himself to revenge. On the other hand, Roman Posthumus laid a bet on Immogen’s chastity, and Jachimo went to meet Immogen to test it. Knowing Immogne’s steadfast love against Posthumus, Jachimo stole Immogen’s bracelet and showed it to him, lying that Immogen had changed her heart. Believing this, Posthumus ordered his servant to kill her. However, the servant let her know about this plan. She disguised herself and left Rome, but she got lost in Wales. In there, she met Belarius and two brothers, whom she believed dead. The fact is that Belarius, disguised under the name of Morgan, kidnapped the two sons as revenge because of his false expulsion. Posthumus and Immogen who were staying in Rome made a great contribution to the winning in the war with Roman army, which was caused by the tribute Cymbeline refused to pay. After a lot of stories and secrets were unveiled, Immogne and Posthumus were reunited and lived in harmony with Cymbeline and brothers. Basically, the representative plot of romance was that the world of tragicomedy in episodes forms the subject of separation of family, reunion through an unsettled life for a long time, reconciliation and atonement was unified to calmness like the calm before the storm as befits the end of 20-year writing life with full of adversities. Furthermore, we could see the philosophical mind of the writer who had experienced joy and sorrow of life. It was called usual romance because the story which was supposed to be a tragedy happily ended with the help of his resignation and reconciliation. His works Pericles and Cymbeline described well the characteristic of romance.

Shakespeare utilized his female characters as a tool for what women should do by using good versus evil. If someone asks us to say the female characters in Shakespeare’s works, we might say Opillia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and so on. Because of the shortage of our knowledge, we are under a misapprehension that there were only kind-hearted and virtuous women in his works. However, there were not only those women but also diverse images of women whom we are usually not able to remember. Among them, a variety of female characters showed up in his works, especially his romances. In general, Shakespeare extremely divided such female characters into good and evil. Major females always had good features in his works. When seeing his romances; Pericles and Cymbeline, we are easily able to find that he described the major female characters as the typical good women such as Thaisa and Marina, the wife and daughter of Pericles, in Pericles and Immogen, the daughter of Cymbeline, in Cymbeline. In contrast to that, the minor female characters were expressed as a symbol of vice. In Pericles, the minors, such as Antiochus Daughter, Dionyza, Bawd, conducted bad behaviors usually annoying and putting in danger the majors. Also, the Queen, a stepmother of Immogen, was described as the vice who tried to marry her foster daughter to her son. There were diverse female images in his works. In addition, they could confirm that Shakespeare described that women were evil, except a minority of main characters. By reading his works, we could identify the major female characters defended their fidelity in spite of the difficulty and unfavorable situations that they faced. Thaisa and Immogen, the heroines in those plays, were sincere, expressed love to their spouses and devoted themselves to their family. Through those things, the writer stated who the typical and ideal image of women was. Cooperating with the description of sub-characters, through dialogues between characters, we could find the writer’s thought about women’s fidelity. For example, the dialogue in Pericles with Bawd, a pimp, and the heroine, Marina: “Bawd: what would you have me be, an I be not a woman? Marina: An honest woman, or not a woman. (Shakespeare et al 1549)” Even though she was captured in a brothel and forced into prostitution, Marina told Bawd, described as vice, “is not a woman.” In other words, she criticized the immorality of Bawd, described as a villain, with the method of a metaphorical expression, such as a woman who was just a dishonest woman if not keeping own fidelity. In this part, it was drawn as a conclusion that Shakespeare, the writer, wanted to say that a woman must maintain fidelity and if not, she had no value of women as seen in the words of Marina. This could be seen in Posthumus’s, who misunderstood that her wife, Immogen was faithless in Cymbeline:

. . .

Could I find out

The woman’s part in me – for there’s no motion

That tends to vice in man, but I affirm

It is the woman’s part: be it lying, note it,

The woman’s; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;

Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;

Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,

Nice longing, slanders, mutability,

All faults that name, nay, that hell knows,

Why hers, in part or all; but rather, all;

For even to vice

. . . (qtd. in Cymbeline, Shakespeare et al 1583-1584)

Posthumus furiously criticized his wife, Immogen because he thought she had shared a bed with Jachimo so, she lost his trust of her fidelity. In his blame, it is easy to identify his thought: a woman is the source of evil. He was lashing out women who did not guard their fidelity just like Pericles at the same time, taking the attitude that the writer hated woman itself. Through Pericles and Cymbeline, finally, Shakespeare tried to tell the readers about the duty of women: Fidelity and Purity. That is, he regarded chastity as the view toward women very highly among Renaissance women’s value; Silence, Chastity and Obedience.

The features about revival and reunion, represented in his various works, were also shown in these two works; Pericles and Cymbeline. As a part of them, his female characters suffered death by absurdities. In spite of high purity level virtue of the women in the two plays, they underwent senseless killings, whether audiences know the truth of the death or not. However, they came to life again and met the separated families in the wake of chance. The features were shown as the birth and death of Thaisa in the ocean, the death of Marina by her foster parents, the death of Immogen invoked by Posthumus’ misunderstanding of her and the revival of them from death, etc in the plays. The three women, known as death, returned and reunited with their loves and families. The writer emphasized what the virtue of women was with those experiences: overcoming big ordeals. In other words, heroines in each plays suffered death by the irrationalism of their lovers but their honest and pure moralities repelled the death caused by misapprehension, jealousy and so on. He expressed rescues by accident from the death, which heroines had been suffering because of misbehaviors of her lovers or husbands. All the heroines: Thaisa, Marina and Immogen, underwent adverse circumstances and were left alone. Otherwise, they led lives with losing their identities such as social standings. They were known to be dead, but welcomed the dramatic reconciliation and harmony in the end. The audiences knew the female characters were not dead but the actors did not know that so thought they were dead. Those features could be easily found in the themes of the tempest, of rebirth, of resurrection. In a related assertion, Hallett Smith said, “The finding of what has been lost is often commented with larger reflections on the emergence of harmony from discard.”(Shakespeare et al 1529) Their revival & reunion were very similar to the Orpheus Myth. Through those parts, we could conjecture Shakespeare loves the mythological stories and quotes from many parts of them when writing his works. By borrowing those sources, Shakespeare described their ill fortunes and sufferings very well with expressions and symbols of windstorms, separations, distress and divine power in the two plays such as the death of Thaisa when giving birth to her baby on the sea, Marina murdered by her stepparents, Immogen killed by her lovers and her step mother. As a result, to sum up, Shakespeare assumed an attitude with veneration toward women who defended own fidelity despite of unfavorable circumstances and afflictions.

             Furthemore, it is possible to understand Shakespeare’s view toward women by identifying how the writer let heroines coped with an adversity. When the heroines met the adversity, they assumed different attitudes in each works. In case of Thaisa in Pericles, she dealt with separation from her husband, Pericles, passively. Although her husband was a king of a nation, when she became alone, she had never thought to try to find her husband or turn back to her kingdom of husband or father. The way she had chosen was to renounce the world and went into a sanctuary. Marina, by contrast, resisted them and tried to make them consent by displaying her own abilities when facing dangers and deaths. In case of Immogen, she disguised herself as dead and took her way to find her husband, Posthumus, unlike other female heroines. During the travel, she misunderstood that husband died. Because of that, she swore that she would avenge on him and went to the sword of vengeance actively. As you see, Shakespeare described women with not a single point of view but various views toward them. He showed opposite females such as Thaisa and Marina, in just one play, Pericles. Simply put, Shakespeare had no definite standard to describe the heroines. Rather, he had an opaque standard toward women than the other contemporary writers.

When Shakespeare was active in the age of the latter period of Renaissance, the patriarchal system, taking for granted that women were dominated by men, was a significant influence. At that time, humanism emphasized the education of women. However, the virtue of women was as submission as ever and many people expressed concern about the movement of extension of women’s rights. The records in those days supposed a family as a miniature universe or a mall form of a nation. The father or husband was the sovereign of that world, but women were the public who had to obey their orders. The writing of Cleaver and Tilney could be documentary records showing structures of patriarchal powers and marriage customs those days as well. All of characters in the Woman Hater of Beaumont and Fletcher and Gualter in the Flower of Friendship of Tilney were representative figures commanding misogyny as discussed by (Beaumont and Fletcher and Tilney). According to Vaughan, Cleaver warned if a wife did not obey and do as her pleases resisting her husband; it would bring to ruin certainly (72). In addition, Tilney emphasized obey and purity of wife for husband and defined insubordination of wife as a behavior breaking the order of statelet (128). Not a few records, though, showed the resistance of women toward patriarchy system and the social fear about those women from after 1560s to the mid-17^th century. At that time, the women who violated public orders and traditional practices made by men were the object of contempt and evasion. In spite of that, the defiant, assertive and harsh women were brought to public notice more than any other periods. Although violent women infringed on patriarchal social order regulations and practices, what about male dominated or chauvinistic was a target of contempt and evasion at that time, there were lots of tries to surface tough women who had resisted men than ever before. The exclusive possession of women’s independent discourses was regarded as a threat to the authority of patriarch, so cucking-stools and collars for dragging wagons were executed as public hatred of women for blocking female’s menaces (Newman “Renaissance” 91-92). Even though the patriarchy society set up a rule for all women to follow and compelled them to meet criteria, the resist of women was not easy to deal with and the more forces the more anxiety about disobeying. Hence, that period was the peak of imposing sanctions to the rowdy women. Evidence of this could be seen in the witch trials of that period. The violation of women’s cruising radius defined by the patriarchy was continued on the misogyny discourse. That is, insubordination to men and sexual desire of women meant infringement of the action guild line. When looking at these aspects, it is easy to find resistance by the women to a chauvinistic society. There were Thaisa in Pericles, who followed the traditional role of women and guarded fidelity with passive attitude, Immogen in Cymbeline, who was against the will of the father and married with Posthumus, and various females, who stood against the authority of males. Those female characters could be read into the threat to the authority of the patriarchal and frontal challenges. Despite of them, heroines greeted happy endings. All of these things provided a clue that Shakespeare took relatively progressive attitudes than many of the other writers.

Unlike academia, Shakespeare could be interpreted as a person who did not dislike women. The common sense toward Shakespeare in academia is that he was extremely misogynistic owing to the progressive attitudes of Shakespeare, getting out of traditional notions for women. Of course, he would have had that idea. However, it might be right that he had misogyny but, only because it had such part, it was a hasty generalization to treat that he was full of misogyny. In my opinion, the Shakespeare’s standard of view toward women was just a little higher or severe than others. That is, because of his progressive characteristic, various types of women figures that depicted good and evil appear in his work. Positive and negative figures of women coexist in his work, which implies Shakespeare's intention to highlight diverse values of women in the patriarchal society at that time. Of the mentioned until now, just one thing could be spoken for certain; whether he had misogyny or not, in his works, there were a variety of women characters.

             Comparing his romances, especially Pericles and Cymbeline, we could see Shakespeare’s characters and how he thought about women. There were happy endings after suffering tragedy based on the themes of the long years of wanderings, reunions, reconciliations and atonements. In those typical distinguishing marks, female characters gave us some room for later discussion that Shakespeare must have loathed women by connecting the view of the world at that time. However, it would be a hasty generalization error that he was a womanophobe because of the clues. As shown above, his major female characters and the others showed not the absolute good and evil but also the conversion of character traits from good to evil. In addition, it was easily able to see the obedient female images obeying men’s authority and command. In contrast, there were a lot of the other women who resisted those authorities of men in various ways. The outlook on the world that was prevalent in his time considered women to be men’s property, where male chauvinism was dominant. Thus, it could not be certain that he was not influenced by misogynism. Despite that, he could be interpreted as having a generous viewpoint toward women than the other men at that time through a variety of female images mentioned above. He showed us that he has an opaque standard toward women, but in there, we could find his misogyny, definite standard for women’s virtues.

 

Works Cited

Beaumont, Francis, and John Fletcher. The Woman Hater. London: Printed for

Humphrey Moseley, and Are to Be Sold at His Shop, 1648. Print.

Edward, Dowden. Shakespeare: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art. New York: Appleton,

1881. 48-49. Print.

Kim, Jonghwan. “Portia's Transvestism and the Ring Trick in The Merchant of Venice.”

English Language and Literature 53.4 (2007): 673-690. Print.

Newman, Karen. “Renaissance Family Politics and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.”

             English Literary Renaissance 16.1 (1986): 86-100. Print.

Shakespeare, William, et al. Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. 2nd ed. New York:

W.W. Norton, 2008. 1549. Print.

---. Cymbeline. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. 2nd ed. New York:

W.W. Norton, 2008. 1583-1584. Print.

---. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton,

2008. 1529. Print.

Tilney, Edmund. The Flower of Friendship: A Renaissance Dialogue Contesting Marriage.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1992. Print.

---. The Flower of Friendship: A Renaissance Dialogue Contesting Marriage.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1992. 128. Print.

Vaughan, Virginia Mason. Othello: A Contextual History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.

             72. Print.