Shakespeare has a tendency to punish women who are genuinely good: Cordelia is a kind and loving daughter but is disowned and banished as she could not verbalize her love for her father through words; Desdemona is the ideal wife but ends up killing herself because Othello grows to hate her due to Iago’s manipulation. He also seems to take away feminine attributes from powerful women in his plays: Queen Margaret is one of the most important characters in Richard III as it is essentially her language and curses that furthers the plot, yet she is depicted as an old hag and is disliked by other characters; the witches in Macbeth are described as ugly and manly but again, they hold all of the power to move the plot in the play; and Lady Macbeth has a famous line in which she asks the gods to “unsex” her in order to make harsh decisions. The power of women’s words are seen when Queen Margaret invokes a curse upon the characters of the play with her speech. Lady Macbeth is also a very powerful, but dangerous figure in the fact that she has control over Macbeth and a burning desire for status. Goneril describes her love to her father as “dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty” which grants her land rights and royal privileges that she then uses against the King (1.1.61). Can women be both powerful and good? In Lear, what is the relationship between femininity and goodness, or conversely between femininity and evil? How are the two linked and in what ways do these connections matter for our thinking about any of the following: gender, politics, family, the nation?
Below are two sources I chose from our classes Annotated Bibliography. Please incorporate them as secondary sources in your writing:
Source 1:
1. Fathering Herself: A Source Study of Shakespeare’s Feminism Author(s): Claire McEachern Source: Shakespeare Quarterly , Autumn, 1988, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 269- 290 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2870927