Edipson Vinueza
Desdemona, Emilia, Gertrude, and Ophelia—these are just a few names of the many women who inhabit William Shakespeare’s works. These characters represent womanhood both in the Shakespeare’s plays and the society in which he lived during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[1] Some of these characters possess power or authority, but they are all subject to strong prejudice and, sometimes, hatred from the male characters of their respective plays. The sexism towards women and the machismo presented in Othello and Hamlet highlight the hostile environment created by a culture of imposed male superiority, not only in the plays but also during the period in which Shakespeare lived.
Misogyny is “hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women.”[2] Although the term misogyny did not exist in the Renaissance, its practice did. However, misogyny was quite different than what we see today. During this period, women who did not conform to their roles were treated in hostile and sometimes humiliating ways, and often they were not allowed to voice their opinions. Neil Keeble writes, “Women of evident intelligence themselves accepted this divorce between the private (feminine) and public (masculine) spheres” (186). Women had to adapt themselves to a society in which they were considered less valuable beings who were only meant to stay home, attend their husbands, and watch over the children. Because this commonplace prejudice against women was the norm during England’s Renaissance, when it was presented in Shakespeare’s plays, it is unlikely that it would have shocked people in the audience.
Misogyny is far from new. The hatred towards and subjugation of women has existed since the earliest days of humankind. Perhaps it was women’s “mysterious” power of bearing children and their menstruating capacities that created some innate fear among men. These fears, in turn, may have caused the introduction of many cultural and religious misconceptions about the entire feminine gender. Stephanie Du Barry explains that this fear also lead(s) to a society in which men displayed an absolute authority over their women, including both verbal and physical violence, discrimination, and limitations to what women could say in public. In such conditions, fear, superstition and religious beliefs led men to punish those women who did not cooperate with the patriarchal program. The fact that “misogyny took the particular form of witch-hunting during the 16th and 17th centuries” indicates the extremes to which this women-hating behavior could go. (Du Barry n.p.)
Objections might be made that Shakespeare’s plays could not have been misogynistic because he knew that Queen Elizabeth might see them. However, Ziegler, Dolan and Roberts explain that this was not the case since, “the queen identifies with a male protagonist; she does not, for instance, ask for a play in which Mistress Quickly is the star.” (95) The Queen would not have identified herself with the weaknesses of women in the plays. Women in this period, especially the Queen herself, apparently identified against gender in order to imagine themselves as powerful characters that had a wide range of options, could make choices, act decisively, and even be able to shape their own destinies (95).
Othello and Hamlet are very different tragedies, but the misogyny in both plays renders comparably tragic effects as far as women are concerned. One thing both plays have in common is that two of their characters, Iago and Hamlet, are driven to view womankind in the same misogynistic ways (Brustein 42). Both characters believe that women are “shrewish, ignorant, willful, avaricious, vain and above all, lecherous and adulterous” (Sturrock 311). They share these thoughts as well as the practice of first denigrating one specific woman but then shifting these opinions against all females. Attacks on women in both plays are more complex than just negative thoughts against women. The accusations encompass manipulation, verbal attacks, and physical violence.
In Othello’s case, his false suspicions about Desdemona are foreshadowed by a comment that she has been deceitful to her father. The implication is that all women are inclined to deception and therefore deserving of distrust. However, in early modern European marriage practices the cards were stacked against women. Based on property exchanges between males, in aristocratic arranged marriages the head of the woman’s family would agreed to give their daughter away for marriage, which was often done for the family’s own benefit of wealth, honors, and/or social position. Marianne Novy explains, “because of fathers’ control over their daughters, women can choose their husbands only through some deception—and that deception can forever after be held against them” (318). This so-called deception happens in Othello when Desdemona deceives her father by secretly marrying Othello, a moor. Brabantio tells Othello, “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: / She has deceived her father, and may thee” (1.3.290-291). The suggestion is that she is a manipulative and dishonest woman, a woman who will deceive anyone to get what she wants. Whereas Othello initially wanted Desdemona to disregard what her father’s wishes might be, Brabantio’s naming of this behavior as deceptive plays into the misogynistic ideas that all women are so, ideas that were compounded by the laws and practices of marriage at the time.
More evidence of misogyny in Othello includes Iago’s slander against women linked to his anger caused by rumors that his wife has slept with Othello. Iago says “I hate the Moor, / And it is thought abroad that ‘twixt my sheets / H’as done my office”(1.3.377-379). Iago’s rage at the notion of his wife’s possible infidelity expands into a distrust and hatred of all women. During his talk with Desdemona, he says that women are, “Bells in your parlours; wildcats in your kitchens, / saints in your inquiries, devils being offended, / Players in your house wifery, and hussies in your beds” (2.1.110-112). For Iago, all women are manipulating scolds and lazy whores. Even when Desdemona asks him to describe her, he is not able to find any praise for her, even though she is the wife of his general, Othello. The simple task to praise women seems to be impossible for Iago, for it “requires labor and inspiration from a source beyond himself” (Wayne 163). Iago’s hatred towards women is so intense that, even though he is such a good liar, he cannot manage to lie about his convictions about women’s lack of virtue.
In the course of the play, Iago’s clever manipulation and lies change Othello’s views about his faithful and fair Desdemona. Robert Brustein says that, “once Othello accepts Iago’s refusal of transcendence … he is quickly converted from a doting husband into a paranoid misogynist” (43). Othello is tormented by the thought of Desdemona cheating on him and making him a cuckold. Desdemona’s presumed cheating transforms Othello from a loving husband into a hateful man who proclaims, without any evidence, that Desdemona is a lustful and unfaithful woman. Othello does not ask Desdemona if she is unfaithful to him until very late in the course of the play, after he has already made up his mind about her guilt and has decided to kill her (5.2). The misogyny of the culture in general, and of Iago specifically, has worked upon Othello to help drive him to murder his loving wife.
In Hamlet, the transference of misogyny towards all women is found in Hamlet’s anger at his mother being transferred to his beloved, Ophelia. According to Peter Erickson, Hamlet’s outrage begins because “his ‘true mother’ has made herself a ‘harlot’ through remarriage and made him a ‘bastard’ by dispossessing him of the maternal inheritance to which he feels entitled” (191). Robert Brustein concurs, “His mother’s actions drive Hamlet to believe that all women share the same corrupt personalities, thus the same transgressions, and, so, these accusations against one woman become charges against the entire gender” (20). These accusations can be seen in Hamlet’s cruel behavior towards Ophelia when she tries to return his letters (as she had been instructed to do by her father). Hamlet says to her “be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as / snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a / nunnery, go: farewell… / for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them” (3.2.137-140). Hamlet’s “nunnery” speech makes clear his belief that in order to stop committing dreadful sins and remain virtuous, women need to be confined. This belief is compounded by the common use of nunnery as a euphemism for a brothel, a misogynist slander appropriate here, as Hamlet sees all women as dishonest and foul.[3]
Both Ophelia and Gertrude are easily manipulated by the male characters for their own purposes. Ophelia, for instance, obeys her father and brother about not responding to Hamlet’s letters. She says to Polonius, “[M]y good lord […], as you did command, / I did repel his letters and denied / His access to me” (2.1.106-108). Ophelia does possess feelings of her own, of course, as she has developed a romantic relationship with Hamlet before the action of the play, but she is easily influenced by her father to act against those feelings. According to Juliet Dusinberre, the repercussion is that “being false to herself, allowing herself to acquiesce in the deception by which her father and the king overhear her conversation with Hamlet, she is inevitably false to Hamlet” (94). Ophelia cannot win. In being obedient to her father and the king, she gives Hamlet more fuel for his belief that all women are false. Because the patriarchal culture demands obedience from women, wives as well as daughters, Ophelia is complicit with Hamlet’s enemies, but then Hamlet interprets her obedience as evidence that she, like all women, is evil and untrue.
Gendered language reflected anti-women thinking even more in the early modern period than it does now. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term woman during Shakespeare’s period, could not only refer to a specific gender, but it could also be linked with physical and emotional weaknesses.[4] So if a man showed some type of weakness, such as in action or the lack of physical power, he might be considered a woman. Juliet Dusinberre says, “If a man lacks physical power he becomes a woman, not respected because not feared, a contemptible onlooker on the world of action” (278). Shakespeare depicts this misogynistic ideal, reflected in language, in Hamlet when Hamlet is implicitly feminized by has inability to take action and avenge his father. To prove his masculinity and earn respect from fellow men, Hamlet would need to be decisive. In contrast, Laertes and Fortinbras demonstrate these masculine characteristics by taking action to avenge their fathers’ death. Hamlet contemplates the murder, needlessly kills another man, and, throughout the entire play, questions his own existence, but he never really acts to avenge his father until the very last scene, when he himself is about to die.
Although misogyny goes beyond physical violence against women, the female characters in both plays are victims of physical violence as well as the verbal and emotional threats they endure. Four out of five female characters in Othello and Hamlet end up being murdered by their husbands or they are driven to commit suicide. In Othello, two out of the only three women in the play die brutally murdered by their husbands, while in Hamlet, the only two women in the play also perish due to men’s actions. As Phyllis Rackin mentions, in both real and theatrical lives, “wife-beating was regarded as a perfectly acceptable means of resolving domestic disputes” (7). Othello does use physical violence against Desdemona and ultimately kills her because of her supposed adultery. The violence towards women in Shakespeare’s works illustrates the violent ways in which women have been treated in this and other periods. If women did not follow their social norms, such as staying quiet and obeying their master-like husbands, violent acts against them could quickly follow. Verbal violence is also presented in both plays in form of insults and harsh comments about women. These verbal slanders against women occur without anyone on the play questioning the reason for the attacks, meaning that it was not regarded as something wrong, but something usual.
As is the case now, in the early modern period, women of higher social ranks had more privileges than their social inferiors, but women of all ranks still had many qualities common. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, higher-class women were able to have some education, but all women were prohibited from the universities, thus depriving them from obtaining higher professions (Rackin 7). If the family was wealthy enough, like the royal families or the upper class, they could pay for a tutor to teach their daughters at home, since there were no schools for girls. Ophelia’s situation of total reliance on her father and the royal family reflects this restriction on women’s education. The young male characters are expected to go to university. Claudius suggests Hamlet, “For your intent / In going back to school in Wittenberg, / It is most retrograde to our desire (Hamlet 1.2.112-114). Even Ophelia’s brother, Laertes, goes to study in France. The young men in Hamlet are encouraged to attend school and pursue higher education. Yet the play never mentions Ophelia pursuing any education. She is always around her father and following him everywhere he goes. Ophelia, like the women in the Renaissance period, does not need an education; she only needs to stay home, be quiet, and follow the commands of the male.
In contrast to the universally “bad” featured in misogynistic thinking, a “good” woman during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was one who was completely subject to the power of men. As Valerie Wayne says, “Only a woman who admits men’s restrictions on her behavior deserves to be a person” (165). Women in this period were coerced to succumb completely to the authority of their male superiors so as to be the “excellent” women society expected them to be. Also, they were discouraged or forbidden to involve themselves in civic or financial business and instead to commit to their household work and taking care of the children. As Neil Keeble notes, “Woman’s place was within doors, her business domestic” (186). The perfect woman is the one who happily and quietly complies without wondering why she should be put in such position.
In conclusion, careful readers of Othello and Hamlet will and should continue to ask, as Brustein does: “How do we explain those poisonous explosions of sex nausea and anger toward woman’s unfaithfulness that often permeate the poems and saturate the plays? Reflections of contemporary attitudes? Examples of personal prejudice?” (23). The relentless hated towards women presented in Hamlet and Othello makes it difficult, if not impossible, to see these plays as reflecting a neutral position towards women. Shakespeare wrote his plays in a society governed by many different laws and customs than those we have today. In today’s civilized society, most women have equal rights and opportunities as men, and violent acts towards them are against the law and punishable with prison time. Modern laws regarding women notwithstanding, however, the ideology of prejudice against women and misogynistic language continue to persist, even if they are often hidden. Consequently, one answer to the question of why we should continue to discuss the hatred expressed in these plays is that by noticing the patterns of thought Shakespeare gives both his villains and his heroes, we may become increasingly more aware of our own.
Works Cited
Brustein, Robert. The Tainted Muse: Prejudice and Presumption in Shakespeare and His Time, Yale UP, 2009.
Du Barry, Stephanie. “‘Witches!’ An Extra-Ordinary Expression of Misogyny in the 16th & 17th Centuries,” witchtrials.co.uk, https://www.witchtrials.co.uk/misogyny.html. Accessed 25 Apr. 2016.
Dusinberre, Juliet. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women. 3rd ed, Macmillan, 2003.
Erickson, Peter. “Maternal Images and Male Bonds in Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.” (1985) Shakespeare Criticism, vol. 44, edited by Michelle Lee, Gale Research, 1999, pp. 189-195.
Keeble, Neil. The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth-Century Woman, Routledge, 1994.
Miola, Robert S., ed. Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Norton, 2011.
Novy, Marianne. “Marriage and Mutuality in Othello.” (1984). Shakespeare Criticism, vol. 53, edited by Michelle Lee, Gale Research, 2000, pp. 315-324.
Pechter, Edward, ed. Othello by William Shakespeare, Norton, 2004.
Rackin, Phyllis. Shakespeare and Women, Oxford UP, 2005.
Sturrock, June. “Othello: Women and ‘Woman’.” Shakespeare Criticism, vol. 53, edited by Michelle Lee, Gale Research, 2000, pp. 310-314.
Wayne, Valerie. The Matter of Difference: Materialistic Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, Cornell UP, 1991.
Ziegler, Georgianna, Frances Dolan, and Jeanne Roberts. Shakespeare’s Unruly Women, Folger Shakespeare Library, 1997.
[1] Shakespeare did, in fact, create strong female characters, such as Rosalind, Beatrice, Juliet, and Lady Macbeth; however, these female figures would have been considered radical. As Juliet Dusinberre notes, “In the sixteenth century the idea that women had consciousness which might operate independently from men’s, might even judge and oppose the male conscience, was revolutionary” (86). No doubt independent-minded women existed, but they clearly seem to have contradicted the prevailing social order.
[2] Oxford English Dictionary, “misogyny.”
[3] Oxford English Dictionary, “nunnery,” 1. b.
[4] Oxford English Dictionary, “woman,” 3. b. and 5.