| Popis: |
Chapter 3 examines how far Shakespeare’s plays incorporate or challenge polarized stereotypes of women as pure madonnas or promiscuous whores. Through his chaste but desiring heroines, such as Juliet, Desdemona, and Rosalind, the playwright offers a middle ground. His poem ‘Venus and Adonis’ represents fierce female libido (‘will’) sympathetically, while virginal Adonis, refusing to be seduced, reinforces the traditional dichotomy between love and lust. In contrast, Shakespeare’s early collaborative plays present females (Joan la Pucelle and Margaret in the Henry VI plays and Tamora in Titus Andronicus) as unruly women whose bold sexuality is part of their threat to patriarchy and legitimate succession. Mainly, however, it is male characters—the insecure husbands Othello, Posthumus and Leontes—who fantasize darkly about women’s ‘monstrous’ appetites and accuse their chaste wives of infidelity. The chapter concludes that even Shakespeare’s prostitutes and bawds (Mistress Quickly and Mistress Overdone) are presented as tender-hearted rather than morally corrupt. They generate sympathy as part of the vulnerable underclass in a patriarchal society. |
