Write about Women in Shakespeare plays? or Roles of Women in Shakespeare plays? /Contribution of Women characters in Shakespeare plays?

 

In this essay we are going to know about how the women characters placed in Shakespeare plays, how much their contribution and importance in his plays.

WOMEN IN SHAKESPEARE 

     ‘Shakespeare has no heroes , he has only heroines’ (Ruskin) Shakespeare’s women are more remarkable than his men.  Even Marlowe, who paved the way for Shakespeare, had no natural conception of womanhood.  His women are mostly distorted visions of youthful fancy, and are, therefore, in the form of exaggerated virtues, that have no prototype in realty.  The Elizabethan mind was particularly imbued with every weakness for woman; the court-life of England had the weakness of idolising woman in every form-woman’s form and beauty, her speech and action, her thoughts and manners, her virtues, and even her vices were pitched too high in the eyes of the new renaissance priests, and therefore, every woman was painted a demi-god.  Nobody considered that woman, also like man, is a creature with frailties, freaks, and fancies, with individuality and a personal stamp of her own.  Just as man cannot simply be either gods or devils but form various types so women also must form a variety with every point of difference and similarity. 

      It was Shakespeare who discovered the real mystery of woman’s nature, caught her in her very flesh and blood, and viewed her total personality in the light of earthly perfection and worldly limitation.  Every woman in ‘Shakespeare are in so natural that she forms a single character, a distinct individual, unique by herself, and although she resembles other women only in the elements of general human character et she has got her own heart, her own tongue, her own soul, and even her own limbs.  Pope has justly remarked, ‘Every single character in Shakespeare is as much an individual as those in life itself; it is as impossible to find any two alike.  Had all the speeches been printed without the very names of the persons, I believe, one might have applied them with certainty to every speaker.’  Of course, Pope goes too far in his creed of difference and ascribes to Shakespeare too much subtlety and distinction which might lead to some amount of unnaturalness and also to impossibility of generalisation.  It is not safe to generalise on human character, because it is so full of variety, change distinction, strange and unique touches; yet we can generalise only with limitation the character of Shakespeare’s  women.  Raleigh has said, ‘Shakespeare’s women are almost all practical, impatient of mere words, clear-sighted as to ends and means.  They do not accept the premises to deny the conclusion or decorate the inevitable with imaginative lendings’.

     We believe, Shakespeare’s Women are not impatient of mere words.  Although Raleigh quotes the case of Imogen, who feels tortured by the attentions of Cloten and bursts into indignity yet fails to catch the real psychology of her mind.  Imogen is not impatient of words but of the importunate advances of Cloten.  All women pretent seriousness and strict formality when they are not interested nor when they do not want to make themselves cheap otherwise they are most intolerable prattles in the world.  

     Shakespeare with his usual irony paints the affectations of womanhood.  It is not true as Raleigh says, ‘Shakespeare’s men, as a class, cannot compare with his women for practical genius.’ To say this is merely to dwarf the mind and art of Shakespeare.  Women are never more practical than men.  Of course, they are more matter-of-fact due to their want of vision.  They are also extremely sentimental and extra-imaginative Men are thoughtful, calculating, prudent and practical with a touch of imagination and sentiment.

       Raleigh says, ‘With Lady Macbeth all the details and consequences of the crime are accepted with the crime itself, and with Macbeth the murder is a single incident in the moving history of human woe; she refuses to waste precious time by speculating on the strangeness of things, and he fails to control the activities of his mind and forgets the need of the moment in the intellectual interest of his own sensations.’  If it is so, who did actually commit the murder, and who did suffer the walking in sleep?  Lady Macbeth’s retrospective imagination disabled her; her sentiments killed her in the long run; but Macbeth’s prospective imagination made him more serious, more desperate and more prophet about his doom; his sentiments did dot kill him but saved his soul with lingering agonies of death.

      In Shakespeare’s women there is no conflict of impulses, no mixture of motives.  Which lead to the complexity of character, and therefore they are mostly either good or bad.  In King Lear, the characters of Goneril and Regan are very simple.  They are witched to the backbone from the very beginning, and with all their evil designs, they are outstript by their own jealousy, malice and hypocrisy.  Cordelia is also equal simple; she is foolish, innocent and loving.  There are many women in the world like her who never think before unlocking their hearts, who can never imagine that truth does not always prevail, who know only to confess, suffer and weep all their life. 

Women by nature are instinctive, and Shakespeare also has presented them as such.  He has shown how their wit and humour their courage and lobe, hatred, nobleness, malice, jealousy and even their smiles and tears are the fruits of instinct.  Some critics believe that Shakespeare’s heroines have got more of freedom and thought, more of deliberate forwardness, more of personality and rational character, which other women lack.  It is true only so far as women are also rational creatures; they also have their will like men’s but in a much weaker form that cannot stand till the last, when instinct relieves her from the conflict.  Even Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Portia and others are not very much under the domination of their will.  Their courage also fails, their heart breaks, when the moment come for screwing it up to the sticking place.  And due to this want of will there is a confidence, a tranquillity a peaceful calm in their hearts, which is never disturbed by the storms of the mind even in the most psychological moments.  There is either complete nervous prostration or perfect equilibrium when never there is any occasion for conflict.  That is why, none of Ophelia, Desdemona or Cordelia can compare with Hamlet, Jacques or Biron.     

    There is always an indecision, a wavering of the will about Shakespeare’s men, and particularly, his heroine, who are not creatures of fate as the women are, who are not made n opportunity or have circumstance and that is why, their behaviour cannot predicted with so much certainty as in the case of women.  Mrs.  Jameson rightly says ‘Through the whole of the dialogue appropriated to Desdemona there is not one general observation.  Words are with her the vehicle of sentiment and never of reflection.’

     The behaviour of Shakespeare’s women is nothing but an impulsive response to the need of the moment.  We notice it particularly in the character of Lady Macbeth, who acts only on the initiation of her instincts n all occasions of triumph or failure, courage or nervousness, cruel temper or motherly tenderness.  This makes the character of all women comparatively simpler for purposes of analysis and generalisation.

    Some critics haves remarked that Shakespeare’s women are mostly timid, petty, shy, impulsive, and without any independent personality of their own.  It is true to some extent.  Is it not true also of life that women are mostly sentimental, instinctive, slow and hesitating only when the situation is weak, extremely passive and unintruding unless some grave self-interest is at stake, with every determination to follow but never to lead for want of judgment and foresight, nervous at a crisis but desperately bold in the beginning, inhumanly cruel, malicious and mean when once initiated to evil, but the touch of good can make them equal sublime.  Are not Goneril and Regan the most monstrous specimens of humanity, while Ophelia Desdemona and Cordelia, the sweetest dreams of womanhood? 

       Thus so far we have seen about the topic Women in Shakespeare plays.  Hope it must liked by you.