Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T22:40:43.404Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Feminist Thematics and Shakespearean Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Richard Levin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The thematic approach adopted by a number of feminist critics of Shakespearean tragedy raises serious problems. Some of these are inherent in thematism itself, such as the need to select the facts of the play to fit the theme and to manipulate the theme to fit the facts. But other problems are peculiar to their choice of “gender conflict” or “patriarchy” as the central theme that is the subject of these tragedies and the cause of their outcomes. This leads to the confusion of a necessary condition with a sufficient cause and to difficulties in their treatments of the protagonists, the emotional effects, the tragic genre, and the role of the author, who is supposed to be condemning “patriarchy” in these plays. Further problems arise because of the particular conception of masculinity that some of these critics bring to their readings.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 103 , Issue 2 , March 1988 , pp. 125 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bamber, Linda. Comic Women, Tragic Men: A Study of Gender and Genre in Shakespeare. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Belsey, Catherine. The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama. London: Methuen, 1985.Google Scholar
Berger, Harry. “Text against Performance in Shakespeare: The Example of Macbeth.” Genre 15 (1982): 49–79.Google Scholar
Dash, Irene. Wooing, Wedding, and Power: Women in Shakespeare's Plays. New York: Columbia UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Dickes, Robert. “Desdemona: An Innocent Victim?” American Imago 27 (1970): 279–97.Google Scholar
Dreher, Diane. Domination and Defiance: Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1986.Google Scholar
Dusinberre, Juliet. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women. London: Macmillan, 1975.Google Scholar
Erickson, Peter. Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeare's Plays. Berkeley: U of California P, 1985.Google Scholar
Erickson, Peter. Rev. of Shakespeare's Division of Experience, by Marilyn French. Greene and Swift 189–201.Google Scholar
Erickson, Peter. “Shakespeare and the ‘Author-Function.‘” Erickson and Kahn 245–55.Google Scholar
Erickson, Peter, and Kahn, Coppélia, eds. Shakespeare's “Rough Magic”: Renaissance Essays in Honor of C. L. Barber. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1985.Google Scholar
Fitz, L. T. “Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony and Cleopatra Criticism.” Shakespeare Quarterly 28 (1977): 297–316.Google Scholar
French, Marilyn. Shakespeare's Division of Experience. 1981. New York: Ballantine, 1983.Google Scholar
Garner, Shirley Nelson. “Shakespeare's Desdemona.” Shakespeare Studies 9 (1976): 233–52.Google Scholar
Gohlke, Madelon. “‘All That Is Spoke Is Marred’: Language and Consciousness in Othello.” Greene and Swift 157–76.Google Scholar
Gohlke, Madelon. “‘I Wooed Thee with My Sword’: Shakespeare's Tragic Paradigms.” Lenz et al. 150–70.Google Scholar
Greene, Gayle. “Feminist and Marxist Criticism: An Argument for Alliances.” Greene and Swift 29–45.Google Scholar
Greene, Gayle. “Feminist Criticism and Marilyn French: With Such Friends, Who Needs Enemies?” Shakespeare Quarterly 34 (1983): 479–86.Google Scholar
Greene, Gayle. “‘This That You Call Love’: Sexual and Social Tragedy in Othello.” Journal of Women's Studies in Literature 1 (1979): 16–32.Google Scholar
Greene, Gayle, and Swift, Carolyn Ruth, eds. Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. 2 spec. issues of Women's Studies 9 (1981–82): 1–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jardine, Lisa. Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. Brighton: Harvester, 1983.Google Scholar
Kahn, Coppélia. Man's Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare. Berkeley: U of California P, 1981.Google Scholar
Kimbrough, Robert. “Macbeth: The Prisoner of Gender.” Shakespeare Studies 16 (1983): 175–90.Google Scholar
Leininger, Lorie Jerrell. “The Miranda Trap: Sexism and Racism in Shakespeare's Tempest.” Lenz et al. 285–94.Google Scholar
Lenz, Carolyn Ruth Swift, Greene, Gayle, and Neely, Carol Thomas, eds. The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1980.Google Scholar
Leverenz, David. “The Woman in Hamlet: An Interpersonal View.” Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays. Ed. Schwartz, Murray and Kahn, Coppélia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980. 110–28.Google Scholar
McLuskie, Kathleen. “The Patriarchal Bard: Feminist Criticism and Shakespeare: King Lear and Measure for Measure.” Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism. Ed. Dollimore, Jonathan and Sinfield, Alan. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985. 88–108.Google Scholar
Neely, Carol Thomas. Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare's Plays. New Haven: Yale UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Neely, Carol Thomas. “Feminist Modes of Shakespearean Criticism: Compensatory, Justificatory, Transformational.” Greene and Swift 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Novy, Marianne. Love's Argument: Gender Relations in Shakespeare. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1984.Google Scholar
Park, Clara Claiborne. “As We Like It: How a Girl Can Be Smart and Still Popular.” Lenz et al. 100–16.Google Scholar
Riefer, Marcia. “‘Instruments of Some More Mightier Member’: The Constriction of Female Power in Measure for Measure.” Shakespeare Quarterly 35 (1984): 157–69.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. Boston: Houghton, 1979.Google Scholar
Smith, Rebecca. “A Heart Cleft in Twain: The Dilemma of Shakespeare's Gertrude.” Lenz et al. 194–210.Google Scholar
Snow, Edward. “Sexual Anxiety and the Male Order of Things in Othello.” English Literary Renaissance 10 (1980): 384–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheeler, Richard. “‘And My Loud Crying Still’: The Sonnets, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello.” Erickson and Kahn 193–209.Google Scholar
Wilt, Judith. “Comment on David Leverenz's ‘The Woman in Hamlet.‘” Greene and Swift 93–97.Google Scholar