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Nobody is ever totally free from the assumptions of his/her
culture - which is one of the many reasons why people
are interested in writings bt renaissance women - because
they have insights about gender which are quite radical,
but because even they show signs of having had to think things
out from within a worldview in which hierarchical differences between
men and women are assumed.A Woman Killed With Kindness compares nicely with Othello,
since both are domestic tragedies dealing with jealousy. And since
Frankford is able to do what Othello wishes he could: test
his worries, and they do away with love or jealousy.But the plays seem to have different attitudes toward
women. Desdemona (like the Duchess of Malfi) seems like
a woman who has done something shocking (to elope, and with a
moor!) but who we see as more sane and healthy than her
husband. If he has a pathology, it's her pathological
obedience to Othello. Anne, in AWKWK, falls for Wendoll
as if automatically. Heywood doesn't see her as having the
mental wherewithal to resist.So both plays deal with male anxieties about women, but
Heywood's play seems to endorse them while Shakespeare's
seems to critique them. It amazes me that when Iago and
Roderigo wake Brabantio up in the middle of the night to
tell him that his daughter has eloped with Othello - a
disobedience so shockingly unnatural to him that he later asserts
it proves Othello used magic! - Brabantio admits that he's
just been having a nightmare about the very same thing. Well,
if the fathers of venice are lying there dreaming about their
daughter's infidelities, those infidelities are not exactly
unthinkable! So Shakespeare seems to be interested - there -
and elsewhere - in male hysteria about women.Heywood seems merely to be writing his play to confirm it.
Does that mean that the historical person "Shakespeare" (sorry
Oxfordians) was a feminist? Not necessarily. I bet he was as likely to
say misogynistic or anti-semitic or racist things as any of
his peers. But he seems to have been fascinated by the way
that Others (women, jews, moors, "salvages," etc) provoke
crises of thought.Nobody can totally escape from the assumptions of their
time. But some writers can - for some reason - explore
the promblem areas in these assumptions. And so Shakespeare
unlike Heywood seems to have been fascinated with the
intellectual and emotionsl problems which women (and others)
posed for european men.Whaddaya think?
Posted by Cloten on April 21, 1997 at 09:55:30
In Reply to "Can we venture away from the Bard without risking death here?" posted by Elizabeth on April 20, 1997 at 18:47:40
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 4.2.97: Top | Help