Representation of Women in Hamlet and The Rover - Book Report/Review Example

Running Head: Representation of women in 'Hamlet' and 'The Rover' Representation of women in 'Hamlet' and 'The Rover' Institution Name Women played a variety of active roles in both the stories its thematic center is their faithfulness. 'Hamlet' view that women are frail because their reason gives way to passion. 'The Rover', itself was of woman creation and has leading role in the play. In 'Hamlet', we are forced to consider in a new light the oldest prejudice against women: what is it that they do with their bodies, that, in men's eyes, is less than and antithetical to what men do with their minds' As Plato put it, men in their sexual relations with women produce babies, but in their sublimated relations with other men ("Platonic"), they produce philosophy. (Winnicott D. W.,1971). Whence springs this bias against women for being of this world, honest and unpretentious observers of life as it are lived' When Gertrude says of the Player Queen, after her lengthy insistence that she will, as a widow, never remarry, "The lady cloth protest too much, methinks," she speaks both for herself and for all honest persons: "Do not pretend that life can be lived by principle and precept; in its constantly changing circumstances, one can only adapt and yield." Whereas, The Rover was brought on stage anonymously. Its dashing portrayal of the exiled royalists made it a favorite of the King and the Duke of York, and the latter requested a sequel, which was dedicated to him in 1681. Besides being presented at Court, The Rover became a permanent repertory piece, with performances well into the eighteenth century. All feature of The Rover that has to do with women is great. The Rover is a femininity comedy; it is a strong allegory about impel for gender equality. A symbol of theater itself, The Rover has a lot to proffer. There are as a minimum five idealistically linked couples and the equivalent number of plot filament, not to mention various sustaining characters. But compare to a fine deal of other theatrical practice, this one presents a welcome jerk of energy and narrative intricacy. In The Rover, Aphra overcame her scruples. The contemptuous prologue to Aphra's next play, Sir Patient Fancy, summarized the lessons she had gleaned from the popularity of The Rover: We write not Now, as th'Ancient Poets writ, For your Applause of Nature, Sense and Wit; But, like good Tradesmen, what's in fashion vent, And Cozen you, to give ye all Content. . . Who at the vast Expence of Wit would treat, That might so cheaply please the Appetite'. . . And if this chance to please you, by that rule, He that writes Wit is much the greater Fool. So much for her opinion of her recent triumph. The epilogue renewed hostilities mentioned in The Rover 's postscript, with new jibes for the anti-feminist critics and neo-Jonsonians. It echoed Aphra's preface to The Dutch Lover, except that her defence of women now assumed an aggressive tone. I here, and there, o'erheard a Coxcomb cry, Ah, Rott it--'tis a Woman's Comedy. . . Why in this Age has Heaven allow'd you more And Women less of Wit than hertofore' We once were fam'd in Story, and could write Equal to men; cou'd Govern, nay, cou'd fight. . . (Francis Barker, 1985) On the other hand, Hamlet doth philosophize too much. Conventional critics since the late eighteenth century have said so, but the observation takes on new meaning in the context of feminist criticism. Throughout Shakespeare's career -- in all four of the dramatic genres in which he created (history, comedy, tragedy, romance), as well as in his lyric and narrative poems -- he always insisted on the superiority of experienced reality over theory or idealism. Thus, as early as Romeo and Juliet, he deconstructed the courtly love tradition: Juliet does not want to be worshipped from afar, as Romeo had worshipped Rosaline, but rather to be approached intimately and physically, to be treated as a woman of flesh and blood and desire rather than as a statue or an ideal, the Lady. It is unreasonable to assume that he would suddenly reverse his career and turn backward in Hamlet by validating Hamlet's dismissal of Gertrude as a whore. Rather we are to see him wrong, as we see Claudio wrong in Much Ado, Bertram wrong in All's Well, and Leontes wrong in The Winter's Tale. (Johnson S. 1948) Men who judge women by absolute standards -- she is either a virgin or a whore -- are wrong: they depend on theory rather than experience; they worship at the altar of what Bacon calls the "idols of the mind." It is strange, indeed, but true, that contemporary criticism -- at the end of the twentieth century -- has only now caught up with the epistemology ("theory of knowledge") at the end of the sixteenth century. The materialist and political brand of feminist criticism -- mostly British and American -- is balanced and complemented by a more theoretical brand of feminism, based in the philosophy of language, which is primarily French. The question is raised by critics such as Kristeva and Irigaray -- immediately or indirectly influenced by the psychoanalytic critic and philosopher Jacques Lacan -- whether women are adequately represented in the patriarchal languages of Western civilization. Language itself is seen as driven by desire: words represent absent objects; we speak only what we do not possess. But language is a system that alienates us from ourselves: it cannot express our own peculiar desires but only generic desires. We therefore demand the fulfillment of our desires in language, but this very expression cancels and/or sublimates our objects into abstract qualities. This is particularly true of the maternal object: the male child first speaks his desire for the mother, but then under the pressure of oedipal anxiety, she becomes the symbol of all his deprivations. As, we know ourselves only through negation: the male child's fantasized punishment for wishing to take the father's place in the mother's bed is castration. As in the metaphysical systems of Plato and Hegel, actual experience here and now is canceled and raised to higher levels, which are more and more idealized. The mother becomes the lady of the courtly love tradition, or that ultimate paradox, the Virgin Mother Mary. Thus, the only other woman in Hamlet is Ophelia, and she too has suffered misrepresentation in the essentially male critical tradition. Showalter has recently shown that in the nineteenth century, Ophelia became the prototype of the hysteric: artists depicted her in romantic abandon, and actual hysterics then imitated her postures. More and more, in both criticism and performance, Ophelia is being shown to suffer under male dominance. First her father and brother force her to renounce her claim on Hamlet's affections, and then Hamlet abuses her for plotting with his enemies against him. The final break with reality comes with Hamlet's murder of her father. It is tempting to see Ophelia's madness, characterized by sexual fantasy, as a mirror of Hamlet's feigned madness. Following the Freudian perception that Hamlet identifies with Claudius because Claudius carried out Hamlet's own oedipal fantasy, we might see Ophelia's madness as induced by guilt: her father's death represents the fulfillment of her own fantasy to escape her father's rule to be united with her lover. Like Desdemona, Ophelia is no longer seen as simply the passive object of male manipulation; rather it is precisely the strength of her spirit that causes her to react so violently to her circumstances. The Rover was Aphra's more creative effort. Her source The Rover ( 1677) an interminable semi-autobiographical fantasy by Thomas Killigrew, her old friend and employer. Although Aphra retained Killigrew's plot, his characters, and many of his best lines, the play was transformed from a closet piece into a fast-paced comedy. Aphra added one major character, impudent Hellena, an improved version of Betty Goodfield of The Woman Turn'd Bully. Like most Behn heroines, Hellena masquerades in disguise, taking advantage of her incognito to propose made to Willmore 'rather than put your Modesty to the blush, by asking me. . .'. Thus she puts into practice the philosophy she has just expounded to her older sister: Florinda. . .who will like thee well enough to have thee, that hears what a mad Wench thou art' Hellena Like me! I don't intend every he that likes me shall have me, but he that I like. . . http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/'rbear/rover1.html Although Hellena is an original creation infused with Aphra's own spirit, the other characters were left as Killigrew created them, notably Thomaso, now called Willmore 'The Rover' . Willmore is a stud bull in human form, with the habit of assaulting anything in petticoats. 'Thou know'st there's but one way for a Woman to oblige me', he explains. His amorous solicitations are expressed in alimentary analogies: 'Oh, I long to come first to the Banquet of Love! and such a swinging Appetite I bring'. http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/'rbear/rover1.html Deciphering Behn's emblematic signature obliges us to read the social and sexual discourses that complicate and obscure its inscription The Rover, contradictory relations of gender and apparatus that signified in Behn's culture and are, as these readings will indicate, symptomatic of our own. (Toril Moi, 1984) The Rover is also implicitly gestic, raising questions about women's material destiny in life as well as in comic representation: FLORINDA What an impertinent thing is a young girl bred in a nunnery! How full of questions! Prithee no more, Hellena; I have told thee more than thou understand'st already. http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/b/behn/aphra/b42r/part3.html HELLENA The more's my grief. I would fain know as much as you, which makes me so inquisitive' http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/b/behn/aphra/b42r/part3.html Hellena dons masquerade because she desires not a particular lover but a wider knowledge. Given the conventions of Restoration comedy, this wish to know 'more than' she already understands is troped as a wish for sexual adventure. But if we hear this dialogue gestically-in its social register-other meanings are accessible. Women's lack of access to institutions of knowledge spurred protest from writers as diverse as Margaret Cavendish, Bathusua Makin, Mary Astell, and Judith Drake. Aphra Behn's Hellena seeks knowledge 'more than' or beyond the gender script provided for her. She rejects not only her brother's decision to place her in a nunnery, but also the cultural narrative of portion, jointure, and legal dependency in which she is written not as subject but as object of exchange. Yet Hellena, too, oscillates, both departing from and reinforcing her social script. Her lines following those cited above seem, at first, to complicate and defer the romantic closure of the marriage plot. To have a lover, Hellena conjectures, means to 'sigh, and sing, and blush, and wish, and dream and wish, and long and wish to see the man'1. This thrice-reiterated wishing will result in three changes of costume, three suitors and three marriages. As with the repetitions of 'interest,' 'credit,' and 'value'-commodity signifiers that circulate through the play and slip like the vizard from face to hand to face this repetition invokes the processes underlying all wishing, to desire that will not, like a brother's spousal contract, find its 'completion.' (Francis Barker, 1985) Yet, as Behn well knew, there is means of validation, one which guarantees patriarchy's stake in portion, jointure, and the woman's body: the hymen. In Restoration comedy no witty unmarried woman was really witty unless she had property and a maidenhead. Behn's virgins may re-'design' their cast of characters but they cannot change their plot. Ultimately their masquerade is dissimulation in the classic representational sense, a veil that hides a material truth. Hellena's mask merely replicates the membrane behind which lies the 'true nature' of woman: the equipment to make the requisite patrilineal heir. Thus Willmore's masterful response to Hellena's 'lying look' is a mock-blazon of her facial features, ending in a fetishistic flourish: 'Those soft round melting cherry lips and small even white teeth! Not to be expressed, but silently adored!'.2 The play in Hellena's discourse between knowing and desiring, which extends through the masquerade, completes itself in the marriage game. She exercises her will only by pursuing and winning Willmore, for as it turns out he has the 'more' she 'would fain know.' Willmore acts not only as the rover but as signifier for the play's phallic logic. His name metaphorizes the trajectory of desire as he roves from bed to bed 'willing more,' making all satisfactions temporary and unsatisfying. Desire's subject, Willmore never disguises himself (he comes on stage holding his mask). Until enriched by the courtesan Angellica Bianca, he remains in 'buff' or leather military coat. In another sense, though, Willmore is already in disguise, or rather the entity 'Willmore' covers a range of linguistic and social signifiers. As noted earlier, Behn's model for Willmore (like Etherege's for Dorimont) was reputedly the Earl of Rochester, whose name, John Wilmot, contains the word ( mot ) 'will.' And we mentioned that Rochester was also the lover and mentor of Elizabeth Barry, the actress who first played Behn's Hellena. In Tory mythology Charles II, on the verge of fleeing England, dis guised himself in buff-a leather doublet. Indeed Willmore's first lines refer to the offstage Prince who, in exile during the Commonwealth, was also a rover. Doubled mimetically and semiotically with both Rochester and the Merry Monarch (who attended at least one performance of The Rover before the play was restaged at Whitehall), Willmore needs no mask to effect his ends; his libertine desire is guaranteed and upheld by patriarchal law. Hellena's playful rovings, on the other hand, and her numerous disguises, signal both ingenuity and vulnerability. Ironically, the virgins' first costume, the gypsy masquerade, represents their actual standing in the marriage market-exotic retailers of fortunes or portions. Their masquerade defers but does not alter the structure of patriarchal exchange nor does it dismantle the economy of gender representation; rather both are firmly upheld. Thus, the success of The Rover had proven that the way to ensure a full house was to write bawdy farce. She might be attacked for literary whoredom as a result, but at least she would not starve. References http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/'rbear/rover1.html http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/b/behn/aphra/b42r/part3.html The Harcourt Anthology of Drama: Brief Edition. Forth Worth,Texes:Harcourt,2002 Francis Barker, The Tremulous Private Body: Essays on Subjection (London: Methuen, 1984), pp. 18-21. Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 17. Winnicott D. W. Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock, 1971. Johnson S. Johnson on Shakespeare. Edited by Walter Raleigh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948. Read More