The Family in Four Shakespearean Plays: A Short Analysis

Introduction

This article presents a critical study of Shakespeare’s four plays: Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline. It primarily focuses on the issue of gender roles in the Elizabethan family as reflected in these plays. Shakespeare’s women, in these plays, live in a society which is male dominated. These characters face a lot of challenges and hardships. Despite the fact that they try to abide by the norms established by the society, they find themselves vulnerable. When a woman feels that it is very hard to survive with her own identity, she decides to give up the identity of a woman and consequently disguises herself as a man. Disguise is an important device in Shakespeare’s plays. This article tries to analyse gender roles prevalent in Elizabethan society through a close study of four Shakespearean plays.

Feminist Criticism and the Elizabethan Society of the 16th Century

Feminist criticism was inaugurated late in the 1960s. Later it came to be associated with many movements, particularly the feminist political movement that looked for social, legal and cultural freedom and equality of women. Even literature was not untouched by it. Many works like A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1972) by Mary Wollstonecraft, The Subjection of Women (1869) by John Stuart Mill, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) by the American Margaret Fuller marked two centuries of struggle for the recognition of women’s cultural roles and achievements and for woman’s social and political rights (Abrams, 2012, p. 121).

‘Gender’ has been the key term for researchers of humanities in the modern age. It would be very interesting to see how Shakespeare has been looked at from this angle. Lawrence Stone, an eminent critic, describes the Elizabethan society of the 16th century:

This sixteenth century aristocratic family was patrilinear, primogenitural, and patriarchal: patrilinear in that it was the male line whose ancestry was traced so diligently by the genealogists and heralds, and in almost all cases via the male line the titles were inherited; primogenitural in that most of the property went to the eldest son, the younger brothers being dispatched into the world with little more than a modest annuity or life interest in a small estate to keep them afloat; and patriarchal in that the husband and the father lorded it over his wife and children with the quasi-absolute authority of a despot. (Stone, 1967, p. 271)

Stone describes the English society of Elizabethan times. He clearly shows that this society had predetermined gender roles. A father or a husband used to be the head of the family. Women and children had to submit to his will. The inheritance of property and title was through the male line, it denotes that women were not entitled to hold property and head a family.

Literary works have been popular areas of research for gender studies and Shakespeare’s plays have been scrutinized from different perspectives particularly from the feminist perspective. Some critics find the theme of gender and identity central to many of his plays. Thus, a study of the Elizabethan family would complement the study of gender in his plays.

Gender Roles in Twelfth Night

In Twelfth Night, Viola is separated from her brother, Sebastian, due to a storm. She reaches a country where she needs a job to survive. She finds it very hard to get a job as a woman. So she decides to shed societal expectations through her disguise as a male. Shakespeare seems to have posed many questions through Viola’s decision to don a male disguise. Why did she need a male disguise? What problems would she have to face if she retained her female identity? It seems that it was very hard at that time for a woman to get a job without an insult to her dignity. Viola might have been in this position. It is probably an undeniable fact that Viola would have internalized these values. Phyllis Rackin points out: ‘During Shakespeare’s time, inequalities between each gender sanctioned by law and religion and reinforced by the duties and customs of daily life, were deeply embedded in the fabric of culture’ (Rackin, 2005, p. 27). So Viola’s decision to change her identity from female to male reflects the cultural attitudes of society towards women. Oliver Ford Davies throws light on the status of women in the Elizabethan society:

The law still allowed that the ‘husband hath dominion over his wife, and may keep her by force within the bounds of duty, and may beat her’, though not in a ‘violent or cruel manner’. It was said a man might legally beat ‘an outlaw, a traitor, a pagan, his villain, and his wife’.… The whole duty of the wife … is to acknowledge her inferiority, the next to carry herself as inferior’. She must obey even a drunken, brawling husband, for ‘it is not for a prisoner to break prison at his pleasure, because he has met with a rough jailer’. (Davies, 2017, p. 171)

Although Davies has cast light only on the status of the wife in the family, the status of woman in other roles such as that of daughter, sister and so on can be imagined.

Taming of a Woman in The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew portrays the character of a woman who starts behaving contrary to societal expectations. Katherina, the daughter of Baptista, appears to be an intractable woman when the play opens. She thereby challenges societal norms by showing her nature contrary to the prevailing cultural attitude of the time. Very soon, we observe the systematic process of her taming. A man, Petruchio, comes and starts teaching her how to behave like a woman. He seems to be justifying the popular feminist statement of Simone de Beauvoir, ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ (Beauvoir, 1949, p. 12). He makes Katherina ‘a woman’ by keeping her away from food and sleep in the first instance. Finally, we observe that he succeeds in teaching Katherina her predetermined gender role. As a wife, she submits to her husband’s will. She delivers a famous speech which is viewed by some critics as her submission to patriarchy:

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper

Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,

And for thy maintenance commits his body

To painful labour both by sea and land,

To watch the night in storms the day in cold….

Such duty as the subject owes the prince,

Even such a woman oweth to her husband;

And when she is forward, peevish, sullen, sour,

And not obedient to his honest will,

What is she but a foul contending rebel,

And a graceless traitor to her loving lord?

I am ashamed that women are so simple

To offer war, where they should kneel for peace;

Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,

When they are bound to serve, love, and obey..

(5.2.148–5.2.166) (Barnet, 1982, p.166)

There are many interpretations of Katherina’s final speech. Some critics view it as her ultimate triumph as her husband provides her the opportunity to give all the other nasty hypocritical women a verbal lashing and put them in their place. On the other hand, there are critics who view it as a proof of Petruchio’s success in subjugating his wife. However, no interpretation can be taken as final.

Many more of Shakespeare’s plays predominantly deal with the theme of gender and identity. From the examples above, one may say that a woman is not supposed to have a social identity of her own, rather, she has to accept predetermined gender roles. If we look at family relationships in the Elizabethan society, we find that men are at the centre. A family was usually headed by a father or a husband. A woman, on the other hand, had to be obedient, submissive and silent. Therefore, silence, obedience and chastity were considered to be the essential virtues of a woman. A father often expected a son and if he got a daughter, it was taken as divine displeasure or his lack of potency. Charles Frey underlines these issues in the following way:

Though the romances have witnessed in our supposedly liberated age a mounting tide of enthusiasm, they may be more patriarchal and patrilineal in perspective than Shakespearean interpreters have yet cared or dared to recognize. To ask the following questions is to ask, in some respects, how many children had lady Macbeth, but still Is not the engendering of a daughter in each romance taken implicitly as a guilty act which signals the impotence of the father or his receipt of divine displeasure? Else why should he have lost or in the course of the play lose wife and sons he may have had? Kings need sons. When they produce a daughter or daughters, in a patrilineal society, they do less than the optimum to further a secure succession. (Frey, 1980, p. 41)

Frey refers to Shakespeare’s romances that reflect the patriarchal structure of the 16th century English society. Daughters were unwanted in the family and sons were always welcomed. There could be different reasons for this. One of the reasons could be that sons often brought dowry for the father while daughters were a financial burden. In addition, only sons inherited property and titles, not daughters. The marriage of a daughter was considered the father’s privilege, not the right of the daughter. To choose husbands for daughters was the father’s prerogative and daughters were not supposed to interfere with the father’s privileges. Remarkably, many of Shakespeare’s plays deal with the conflict between fathers and daughters due to a clash of choices. However, ultimately the father was invariably the ultimate authority taking all the decisions in his daughter’s marriage. Davies writes:

A law of 1456 laid down that ‘at her 7th year the father may marry [his daughter].… A young woman married at 12 cannot disagree afterwards, but if she be married younger, she may dissent till she be 14. Teenage marriages, however, were found among the nobility, and by the late 1500s only 5 to 6 percent of peers wed at fifteen or younger, so that Shakespeare’s youthful brides are not representative of their class. In any case early consummation was not encouraged, as it was thought to impair a man’s physical and intellectual development, enfeeble the mother and produce stunted children. (Davies, 2017, p. 169)

Davies’s words confirm that women were not even allowed to interfere in affairs that were closely associated to their own life. Many critics also point to the prevalent system of education. Women were kept away from good education as they were supposed to master only domestic subjects like managing the household, sewing, spinning, raising children, and so on. By perusing literary works of the time, one can easily trace how gender roles were predetermined in Elizabethan society. Women were kept away from administrative and commercial education as it could make them argumentative and unruly.

Gender and Identity in The Winter’s Tale

Gender and identity is an important theme in the play The Winter’s Tale. Leontes is a king of Sicilia. When the play opens, he has everything, a well ordered kingdom, an heir to his title, a good wife, Hermione, and finally he has the happy hope of a second child as his wife is pregnant. His friend, Polixenes, is staying in his court. He wants to prolong his friend’s stay but fails to persuade him to do so. Thereafter, he seeks his wife’s help who succeeds in accomplishing this task. However, Leontes is unable to digest his wife’s success and views it otherwise. He begins to suspect that Hermione is having an illicit relationship with his friend. His sexual jealousy reaches such an extent that he imprisons his pregnant wife, completely ignoring her pitiable situation. Worse, he refuses to accept the newly born daughter, Perdita, and orders that she be left in a remote and deserted place. Harold Bloom writes on the sexual jealousy of Leontes:

Leontes, who beholds the spider in the cup even when it is not there, is Shakespeare’s most frightening study of paranoid sexual jealousy, surpassing Othello’s agonies, if only because there is so little foregrounding provided for Leontes’ madness. He is his own Iago. There is a suggestion of a repressed homoeroticism in his idyllic boyhood with Polixenes, but his collapse lacks the symptom of over-determination that we might expect. (Bloom, 2010, p. x)

Bloom seems to be suggesting that Leontes’ problem is his own but he victimizes Hermione, his wife. Her only fault is that she succeeds in the task at which her husband failed. The male-dominated society cannot accept a wife besting her husband. Leontes fails in his attempt to persuade Polixenes to prolong his stay. When his wife succeeds in doing so, he is probably ashamed of his intimacy with Polixenes (as Bloom insinuates). Now Hermione stands as a reproach to his conscience and thus she must be daubed with slime. In the whole scenario, we find that a woman is punished without being guilty, a woman’s self-dignity is hurt and her fidelity questioned. Leontes publicly accuses her of adultery and refuses to accept even the oracle of Apollo who declares her pure and innocent. Now she stands defenceless, only Paulina, the wife of Antigonus, supports her. Though she tries to convince Leontes that Hermione is innocent, Leontes does not listen her. Later in the play, Paulina declares that Hermione is dead (probably this was the only way to liberate Hermione from the atrocities of her tyrannous husband). If we look closely at the situation, we find that the presence of the queen is insignificant in Leontes’s family. Though Hermione is a queen, she is powerless. She actually does not die, but has to accept social death. In other words, she has to show herself as non-existent in order to survive. During Shakespeare’s times did gender decide power in a family? If one looks at the Leontes’s family, one can say ‘yes’.

Gender Roles in Cymbeline

Cymbeline is one more interesting play by Shakespeare that deals with the theme of gender and identity. Here, the father–daughter relationship is central to the play. King Cymbeline has a daughter, Imogen. He marries a second time as his first wife might have died. Shakespeare is silent on the name of his second wife, he only addresses her as ‘Queen’. She marries Cymbeline driven by a great ambition to enthrone her son and to gain power and glory. However, there is a problem in the fulfilment of her desire. Cymbeline has only one daughter, Imogen, and so her husband would be entitled to the throne. The Queen plans to get her son married to Imogen and thereby ensure power and position for her and her son. But Imogen frustrates her by secretly marrying Posthumous, a worthy man whom she loves. The Queen cleverly presents Imogen’s action as an act of disobedience towards her father. In this way, she turns Cymbeline’s mind against his daughter. However, it must be acknowledged that Cymbeline’s passivity is more complicit in it than her own efforts.

Imogen’s father questions her ‘obedience’ and her husband questions her ‘chastity’. As mentioned earlier, obedience, chastity and silence were considered to be the essential virtues of an Elizabethan woman. Significantly, these very virtues are being sought in Imogen. If we look at Hermione’s situation, she is attacked from all sides. Her father banishes her husband and confines her to the walls of the palace, Belarius takes away her brothers, the Queen tries to force a remarriage on her, Cloten tries to ravish her honour and finally her own husband questions her chastity. In this way, we find that she stands all alone while men try to denigrate her identity. When she finds herself vulnerable around such people, she decides to give up her identity. Now the male disguise is the only way out.

Conclusion

In the analysis of these plays, we have observed that when a woman feels unsafe in her female identity, male disguise remains the only means of survival. To a great extent, this is indicative of the gender-based social hierarchy of the Elizabethan era. For instance, when Imogen gives up her identity and becomes a male in disguise, she is warmly welcomed at the cave of Belarius. Thus, we find that Shakespeare’s women are compelled to give up their identities as it becomes very hard for them to survive in a patriarchal society. Women were not supposed to challenge or go against ordained gender roles. In the discussion of Shakespeare’s portrayal of women, many aspects of gender and identity have been explored. We have seen that the Elizabethan family was male dominated. Wives and daughters did not seem to enjoy freedom of thought and action. Certain female virtues like obedience and chastity were considered essential for a woman. If any of these virtues was violated by a woman, her other virtue was also questioned. Imogen disobeys her father by marrying a person of her own choice and later her husband, Posthumous, questions her chastity. Shakespeare was undoubtedly catering to a particular audience but a critical and discursive analysis of his plays leads us to a deep layer of meanings exposing the patriarchy of the times.