Women have more power and agency in Shakespeare’s comedies than in his tragedies, and usually there are more of them with more speaking time, so I’m pretty sure what Shakespeare’s saying is “men ruin everything” because everyone fucking dies when men are in charge but when women are in charge you get married and live happily ever after
I think you’re reading too far into things, kiddo.
Take a break from your women’s studies major and get some fresh air.Right. Well, I’m a historian, so allow me to elaborate.
One of the most important aspects of the Puritan/Protestant revolution (in the 1590’s in particular) was the foregrounding of marriage as the most appropriate way of life. It often comes as a surprise when people learn this, but Puritans took an absolutely positive view of sexuality within the context of marriage. Clergy were encouraged to lead by example and marry and have children, as opposed to Catholic clergy who prized virginity above all else. Through his comedies, Shakespeare was promoting this new way of life which had never been promoted before. The dogma, thanks to the church, had always been “durr hburr women are evil sex is bad celibacy is your ticket to salvation.” All that changed in Shakespeare’s time, and thanks to him we get a view of the world where marriage, women, and sexuality are in fact the key to salvation.
The difference between the structure of a comedy and a tragedy is that the former is cyclical, and the latter a downward curve. Comedies weren’t stupid fun about the lighter side of life. The definition of a comedy was not a funny play. They were plays that began in turmoil and ended in reconciliation and renewal. They showed the audience the path to salvation, with the comic ending of a happy marriage leaving the promise of societal regeneration intact. Meanwhile, in the tragedies, there is no such promise of regeneration or salvation. The characters destroy themselves. The world in which they live is not sustainable. It leads to a dead end, with no promise of new life.
And so, in comedies, the women are the movers and shakers. They get things done. They move the machinery of the plot along. In tragedies, though women have an important part to play, they are often morally bankrupt as compared to the women of comedies, or if they are morally sound, they are disenfranchised and ignored, and refused the chance to contribute to the society in which they live. Let’s look at some examples.
In Romeo and Juliet, the play ends in tragedy because no-one listens to Juliet. Her father and Paris both insist they know what’s right for her, and they refuse to listen to her pleas for clemency. Juliet begs them – screams, cries, manipulates, tells them outright I cannot marry, just wait a week before you make me marry Paris, just a week, please and they ignore her, and force her into increasingly desperate straits, until at last the two young lovers kill themselves. The message? This violent, hate-filled patriarchal world is unsustainable. The promise of regeneration is cut down with the deaths of these children. Compare to Othello. This is the most horrifying and intimate tragedy of all, with the climax taking place in a bedroom as a husband smothers his young wife. The tragedy here could easily have been averted if Othello had listened to Desdemona and Emilia instead of Iago. The message? This society, built on racism and misogyny and martial, masculine honour, is unsustainable, and cannot regenerate itself. The very horror of it lies in the murder of two wives.
How about Hamlet? Ophelia is a disempowered character, but if Hamlet had listened to her, and not mistreated her, and if her father hadn’t controlled every aspect of her life, then perhaps she wouldn’t have committed suicide. The final scene of carnage is prompted by Laertes and Hamlet furiously grappling over her corpse. When Ophelia dies, any chance of reconciliation dies with her. The world collapses in on itself. This society is unsustainable. King Lear – we all know that this is prompted by Cordelia’s silence, her unwillingness to bend the knee and flatter in the face of tyranny. It is Lear’s disproportionate response to this that sets off the tragedy, and we get a play that is about entropy, aging and the destruction of the social order.
There are exceptions to the rule. I’m sure a lot of you are crying out “but Lady Macbeth!” and it’s a good point. However, in terms of raw power, neither Lady Macbeth nor the witches are as powerful as they appear. The only power they possess is the ability to influence Macbeth; but ultimately it is Macbeth’s own ambition that prompts him to murder Duncan, and it is he who escalates the situation while Lady Macbeth suffers a breakdown. In this case you have women who are allowed to influence the play, but do so for the worse; they fail to be the good moral compasses needed. Goneril, Regan and Gertrude are similarly comparable; they possess a measure of power, but do not use it for good, and again society cannot renew itself.
Now we come to the comedies, where women do have the most control over the plot. The most powerful example is Rosalind in As You Like It. She pulls the strings in every avenue of the plot, and it is thanks to her control that reconciliation is achieved at the end, and all end up happily married. Much Ado About Nothing pivots around a woman’s anger over the abuse of her innocent cousin. If the men were left in charge in this play, no-one would be married at the end, and it would certainly end in tragedy. But Beatrice stands up and rails against men for their cruel conduct towards women and says that famous, spine-tingling line – oh God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace. And Benedick, her suitor, listens to her. He realises that his misogynistic view of the world is wrong and he takes steps to change it. He challenges his male friends for their conduct, parts company with the prince, and by doing this he wins his lady’s hand. The entire happy ending is dependent on the men realising that they must trust, love and respect women. Now it is a society that is worthy of being perpetuated. Regeneration and salvation lies in equality between the sexes and the love husbands and wives cherish for each other. The Merry Wives of Windsor – here we have men learning to trust and respect their wives, Flastaff learning his lesson for trying to seduce married women, and a daughter tricking everyone so she can marry the man she truly loves. A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The turmoil begins because three men are trying to force Hermia to marry someone she does not love, and Helena has been cruelly mistreated. At the end, happiness and harmony comes when the women are allowed to marry the men of their choosing, and it is these marriages that are blessed by the fairies.
What of the romances? In The Tempest, Prospero holds the power, but it is Miranda who is the key to salvation and a happy ending. Without his daughter, it is likely Prospero would have turned into a murderous revenger. The Winter’s Tale sees Leontes destroy himself through his own jealousy. The king becomes a vicious tyrant because he is cruel to his own wife and children, and this breach of faith in suspecting his wife of adultery almost brings ruin to his entire kingdom. Only by obeying the sensible Emilia does Leontes have a chance of achieving redemption, and the pure trust and love that exists between Perdita and Florizel redeems the mistakes of the old generation and leads to a happy ending. Cymbeline? Imogen is wronged, and it is through her love and forgiveness that redemption is achieved at the end. In all of these plays, without the influence of the women there is no happy ending.
The message is clear. Without a woman’s consent and co-operation in living together and bringing up a family, there is turmoil. Equality between the sexes and trust between husbands and wives alone will bring happiness and harmony, not only to the family unit, but to society as a whole. The Taming of the Shrew rears its ugly head as a counter-example, for here a happy ending is dependent on a woman’s absolute subservience and obedience even in the face of abuse. But this is one of Shakespeare’s early plays (and a rip-off of an older comedy called The Taming of a Shrew) and it is interesting to look at how the reception of this play changed as values evolved in this society.
As early as 1611 The Shrew was adapted by the writer John Fletcher in a play called The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed. It is both a sequel and an imitation, and it chronicles Petruchio’s search for a second wife after his disastrous marriage with Katherine (whose taming had been temporary) ended with her death. In Fletcher’s version, the men are outfoxed by the women and Petruchio is ‘tamed’ by his new wife. It ends with a rather uplifting epilogue that claims the play aimed:
To teach both sexes due equality
And as they stand bound, to love mutually.
The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed were staged back to back in 1633, and it was recorded that although Shakespeare’s Shrew was “liked”, Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed was “very well liked.” You heard it here folks; as early as 1633 audiences found Shakespeare’s message of total female submission uncomfortable, and they preferred John Fletcher’s interpretation and his message of equality between the sexes.
So yes. The message we can take away from Shakespeare is that a world in which women are powerless and cannot or do not contribute positively to society and family is unsustainable. Men, given the power and left to their own devices, will destroy themselves. But if men and women can work together and live in harmony, then the whole community has a chance at salvation, renewal and happiness.
In the immortal words of the bard himself: fucking annihilated.
instead of reporting the murder, i would like to help you bury thE BODY CAUSE DAAMN
Tag: analysis
dramatic irony (n) in which the audience knows more about a character’s situation than the character does, foreseeing an outcome contrary to the character’s expectations, and thus ascribing a sharply different sense to some of the character’s own statements
Chris Baldick, Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms
When a line is repeated four times in scenes featuring the same two characters in the space of less than a year, something is up.
As the audience, we have a distinct vantage point when engaging with a text. A lot of the time we are given information within the story that the characters themselves aren’t privy to. Sometimes it’s something obvious – it’s the audience knowing that Juliet isn’t really dead when Romeo kills himself over her sleeping body out of grief. But sometimes it’s more subtle than that. Sometimes we only get a hint of the information that the characters don’t know, but that hint is enough to make something feel slightly off, or like it’s more significant than it seems at first glance.
Something’s up between Kara and Lena, and I think it lies in the dramatic irony at play throughout the continued repetition of the line “That’s what friends are for.” and its variations in scenes featuring the two of them.
If we look at the first use of the line in Luthors, we can track how dramatic irony is working in their dialogue. The unspoken act that Kara referred to when she said “Well, that’s what friends are for.” is her striking out against the people who she loves and trusts the most to defend Lena. The unspoken act was Kara ignoring seemingly concrete evidence of Lena’s guilt because of a look she saw in her eyes, despite knowing her for a fraction of the time that she’s known someone like James or Alex. The unspoken act was Kara risking her own life in Lex’s bunker to save her. Because we know all of this, “friend” in this context registers immediately as an understatement, but despite not knowing the full picture, Lena herself highlights that it’s an understatement in the following line:
No. I’ve never had friends like you before. Come to think of it, I’ve never had family like you before.
“No.” As in, No, that’s not what friends are for. Even Lena doesn’t know how to explicitly say that, though. This line, and its repetitive and dramatically ironic nature, represent their relationship as a whole. From the start, this line is established as a way to emphasise the fact that Kara and Lena are going above and beyond the bounds of friendship to care for each other, but are unaware of it, leaving the implications of their actions unsaid.
From our vantage point we can see their dedication, we can see the lengths they continue to go to in ensuring each others safety and happiness. Working from Baldick’s definition, because we know more about Kara and Lena’s situation than they do, the statement is “ascrib[ed] a sharply different sense” than it ordinarily would. Each time this line is used, it begs a lingering question to the audience: “Friend” just doesn’t really begin to cover it, does it?
There’s something slightly heartbreaking in that discrepancy between action and words. There’s bittersweetness in the contrast between what should be an earnestly platonic statement from Kara and the fond, wistful smiles she and Lena exchange as she says it. It’s as if the immensity of their feeling for each other is too much to make sense of, too intense to examine – and, in turn, too steeped in distinctly romantic implications for the text to fully recognise if they intend for Kara and Lena to just be “friends”.
[gifs by @redkrypto]
While we’re having a lot of lovely discourse on here about how Joss Whedon writes heroines and how people in general write heroines based on the leaked WW script, I’ like to actually address another part of the problem: how you write the dudes in the story. Because the guys will inevitably interact with the heroine and therefore their writing has an effect on how the film views her.
“Feminist Fantasy” is a term I sometimes see used to describe fantasy/sci fi/supernatural stories that have powerful female characters. Thing is, feminist fantasy, much like feminist theory, evolves as time goes on. What would still be acceptable as FF back in the 90s may come across as cliche or even regressive today because opinions change as time goes on. And that’s a huge part of why the leak WW script rubs people the wrong way, especially how the guys act and how they impact Diana’s role.
The idea of “prove the boys wrong” is one that has been done to death since my childhood. It’s a typical plot or subplot. Girl wants to do X thing, boys say she can’t since she’s a girl, girl proves boys wrong, boys learn their lesson. Here’s the thing: that is no longer feminist fantasy. Because that is real life for so many women, having to constantly prove themselves to men over and over and still be looked over next time due to being a woman and have to do it all over again. Feminist Fantasy has moved into the realm of Fury Road and Wonder Woman 2017–where the woman never has to “prove” anything, at least not to the men on her side. She’s accepted as a capable human without a whole arc proving herself such.
Max never questions Furiosa or even the wives because they are women. The times he does argue or question are purely logistical and have nothing to do with belittling them or asserting his preconceived superiority as a man–he’s usually just checking the plan. While Capable does comfort Nux, it’s Nux who proves himself to the wives by getting the rig rolling again. While Nux learns to see them as people, the onus is not on the wives and other women to make that happen. Steve only offers the barest concern for Diana being a woman, mostly just related to how she dresses in London. Other than that his main issue is the Ares thing which he does not ever use to declare Diana naive and in fact it’s noted in-universe that she may even have a point before Ares shows up. He doesn’t just humor her about Ares, its treated more as a conclusion he disagrees with but can’t prove wrong so they simply operate based on their differing conclusions (Diana’s of “Ludendorf is Ares” and Steve’s of “idc if he is or not we’ve got to stop the chemicals”) until the Ares question becomes unavoidable. The other men similarly don’t belittle Diana or creep on her, the most we get is Sameer’s “
both frightened… and aroused” joke when she beats a guy up and Sameer jokingly commenting on wanting to see her island.
How the men act is important compared to the WW 06 script, because the 06 script is much more regressive. Both the heroic and villainous men act like creeps and belittle Diana, sexualize Diana, lecture Diana. Essentially, guys treating Diana badly is a thing both the bad guys and the good guys do and she just has to deal with it. Which is just shit, from a feminist perspective. The idea that the guys who are heroes are going to treat women as badly (or even just almost as badly) as the bad guys and the only difference is the heroic guys are the ones who change their minds when she “proves herself” is really, really old. It’s simultaneously discouraging to women and insulting to men by saying that all men are pigs and women just have to deal with that, and it’s the “strong” women who do and change the mind of the “good” men…who are still going to be pigs but maybe less so towards you since you proved yourself. The idea of a guy who’s not a pig is not a thing.
Feminist Fantasy has moved beyond that. Feminist Fantasy is no longer where women are able to constantly prove men wrong–it’s when they don’t have to prove men wrong before being taken seriously as people. Because that shows a future, a past, a world where a woman can simply be accepted as a potential expert, or a warrior, or whatever else the character is doing without having to “prove” it to any man in the vicinity because that still places the men as having power over her. It’s not that they can’t prove men wrong–some still will sometimes and all of them could if directly challenged to–it’s that they don’t have to. Guys who are on their side simply accept that yeah, a woman can be that badass while guys who aren’t on their side, well the opinions those guys have a) don’t matter as much and b) because they’re the bad guys, she’s more focused on stopping their plans than proving her worth to them.
Women having to “prove” ourselves more than men before being taken seriously is not aspirational fantasy anymore–it’s where we are, more often than not. The fantasy is that we only have to prove ourselves to the same degree as any man written in the same situation would, and be treated equally to them. We already know the real world is not there yet (see every “Rey is a Mary-Sue compared to Luke and Anakin” argument ever) but the idea that escapist fiction can’t be a bit ahead of the curve on that should be eyeroll inducing at this point.
OH FUCK YES ALL OF THIS THANK YOU
CHECK OUT your differences in wand technique here and how fluidly and casually Ron throws a curse in comparison to Harry and Hermione Hermione has done the reading and is technically perfect of course Elbow straight; wrist bent Wand tip aligned with left sightline left arm held loosely behind her for balance Harry hasn’t ever done the reading Grip too tight; elbow locked Shoulders raised Left elbow cranked in awkwardly against his body Kids’ll imitate his awful technique and Junior Aurors it’ll make their parents nuts; don’t twist your neck like that I don’t care what Auror Potter does When you save wizardkind you can hold your wand however you want until then drop your shoulders Ron’s been around wand users since birth practiced with twigs and then his brothers’ wands Look at how the movement flows from his center the way he uses his whole body throws out his opposite hand behind him to counterbalance the movement Harry and Hermione get their wands into position and then throw the curse Ron’s spell starts mid-motion because he knows his wand will be in position in time (helenish)
Mmmmmmm, yes.
There will be a day when I see this and I will scroll past.
Today is not that day
Plus Ron is casting his curse non-verbally. That’s very difficult and it requires training and practice to successfully cast a nonverbal spell. It’s success is determined by the amount of concentration and mental discipline of the witch or wizard. But this is Ron Weasley he likely didn’t put training and practice into casting non-verbal spells, this advanced magic comes to him naturally. The only other time we see him cast a non-verbal spell is when he accidentally made it snow in the great hall, and that was only because Lavender was glaring him down after he said Hermione’s name while he was unconscious in the hospital wing. He felt crappy and his emotions were so intense he unknowingly made it snow. Here he’s trapped in a muggle cafe, with his best friend and the girl he loves. He’s probably scared, and angry but most of all protective. He wants to defeat these Death Eaters without anything happening to his team. His emotions are intense again and that allows him to cast a powerful non-verbal spell. No, not even a spell, a curse. We’ve seen Hermione cast non-verbal spells loads of times but even here she says the curse to ensure it’s potency. Ron is concentrated and disciplined enough in this moment to curse a Death Eater without any words at all.
Question of Smoke 