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- Submitted by: anuksi
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- Category: English: Shakespeare
- Date Submitted: 10/26/2013 03:35 AM
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ANALYSIS OF MAJOR FEMALE CHARACTERS IN SHAKESPEARE’S OTHELLO AND HAMLET
The third phase of Shakespeare’s life (1600-1607) was that of gloom and depression in which he wrote most of his tragedies and sonnets with the note of personal disappointment. His great tragedies include Hamlet,King Lear, Macbeth,Othello and Julius Caesar.
And finally a period of restored serenity and calm, after storm marked the years of his literary work. Here he wrote The Winter’s Tale,The Tempest etc.
I have tried to deal with three famous tragedies of Shakespeare Othello and Hamlet and tried to analyse them from a woman’s perspective. But before analysing them we need to take a deeper look into the Elizabethan society and the norms prevailing in the society.
Shakespeare’s plays display a staggering variety of relationships between men and women. But in each relation whether it is in between husband and wife or brother-sister,the men dominate over the women. Shakespeare seems to be inclined to hold the traditional view that it is the husband or brother or in general men who are the master of the house and all rights are reserved to him. They are free to do anything on their own but women have to follow the typical traditional ways. In Elizabethan age,it was a general conception that for a women fidelity is very important. They were haunted by the fear of deception and cuckoldry. Women by nature are weak and their falseness does not require any strong impelling motive.
In Elizabethan time, men were expected to be breadwinners and women to be housewives and mothers. Childbearing was a great honour. Elizabethan society was patriarchal. Women were regarded ad=s the weaker sex not just in terms of physical strength but emotionally and intellectually too. Also,they were not given any choice in matters related to marriage. They were supposed to act like dolls. It was believed that their loyalty before marriage belongs to father and later on to their husbands. A very lucid example of...
The third phase of Shakespeare’s life (1600-1607) was that of gloom and depression in which he wrote most of his tragedies and sonnets with the note of personal disappointment. His great tragedies include Hamlet,King Lear, Macbeth,Othello and Julius Caesar.
And finally a period of restored serenity and calm, after storm marked the years of his literary work. Here he wrote The Winter’s Tale,The Tempest etc.
I have tried to deal with three famous tragedies of Shakespeare Othello and Hamlet and tried to analyse them from a woman’s perspective. But before analysing them we need to take a deeper look into the Elizabethan society and the norms prevailing in the society.
Shakespeare’s plays display a staggering variety of relationships between men and women. But in each relation whether it is in between husband and wife or brother-sister,the men dominate over the women. Shakespeare seems to be inclined to hold the traditional view that it is the husband or brother or in general men who are the master of the house and all rights are reserved to him. They are free to do anything on their own but women have to follow the typical traditional ways. In Elizabethan age,it was a general conception that for a women fidelity is very important. They were haunted by the fear of deception and cuckoldry. Women by nature are weak and their falseness does not require any strong impelling motive.
In Elizabethan time, men were expected to be breadwinners and women to be housewives and mothers. Childbearing was a great honour. Elizabethan society was patriarchal. Women were regarded ad=s the weaker sex not just in terms of physical strength but emotionally and intellectually too. Also,they were not given any choice in matters related to marriage. They were supposed to act like dolls. It was believed that their loyalty before marriage belongs to father and later on to their husbands. A very lucid example of...