Hermione from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale is one of my favorite characters in all of literary history. Shakespeare doesn't often create fully fleshed-out female characters, but Hermione is awesome. She's amazingly steadfast and strong. I think it's fascinating when she's contrasted with Leontes. Leontes is her perfect foil: the second a seed of doubt was planted in his head, he turned on his wife.
The question is often raised as to whether Shakespeare was a misogynist. I don't know whether he was or not. It's true that there are few female characters in his work, but we have to consider the fact that women weren't legally allowed to act on stage. The lack of female characters could have been logistical, as much as anything else.
Then, of course, there's the issue of the culture of the time. It's true that England had a female monarch ruling single-handedly, but there was quite a bit of turmoil on that subject. Most people, including most women, still genuinely believed that women were inferior and subordinate to men, and that men were set above women by God. Misogyny is a disgusting and horrible thing, but that was the world at the time. I don't think it was right, but that was the culture Shakespeare lived in.
In general, I think that most writers have trouble writing about their opposite gender. Men can write about men, and women can write about women, but I think that things tend to get dicey when men try to write female characters or women try to write male characters. Shakespeare wasn't a woman. He could only guess what being a woman is actually like. He knew women, and he probably liked some women, but that doesn't mean that he understood why women of his age did the things they did.
On the other hand, there are some amazing women in Shakespeare's writing. Some of them, like Catherine from the Taming of the Shrew, got a bad rap of being un-womanish, but others, like Hermione, were fascinating and complex portraits of life as a woman. Interestingly, Hermione embodies some traditionally "masculine" characteristics - she's brave, she's tough, and she's insanely loyal. I think her characterization adds so much to the play as a whole.
Also, The Winter's Tale has the distinction of having a man eaten by a bear for no discernable reason, so that's exciting.
I have found that as I write (for fun) I am afraid to write guy characters because I am not very acquainted with their motives and their behaviors. I can see that Shakespeare had a hard time writing women characters. But I still think that he is amazing so he did write all of his characters well, even if they are a little farther from reality than we can completely believe.
ReplyDeleteAnd it would be kind of creepy if he did write women characters perfectly.