Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

6-1988

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

Norman Sanders

Committee Members

Joseph Trahern, Jack Armisted, Paul Pinckney

Abstract

This study explores a pattern of growth in characters in four of Shakespeare's plays as they mature within their personal relationships. His emphasis places the characters within specific communities that follow patriarchal social codes. He shows how the characters' ability to honor and value friendships and love (marital) relationships affects the social environment for all. In The Comedy of Errors, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale the protagonists' ability to reach a mature balancing of relationships, in particular within marriage, is inhibited by immature, unrealistic acceptance of patriarchal beliefs, including courtly love rituals. Marital jealousy ensues from unfounded questions about a spouse's chastity within the marriage, bringing about chaos and despair. Yet these negative effects also generate serious questions about the gender designations for behavior and beliefs within a patriarchy. The wives challenge their lack of autonomy and personal freedom, in particular their inability to assert their own integrity because of the superficial link between a woman's chastity and a man's honor accepted by their society. Once under suspicion, they change their attitudes, which in turn forces changes in their husbands' acceptance of stereotypical beliefs. Friends and family join the wives in asserting new values that offer the jealous husbands growth and reintegration in the marriage as well as the establishment of new social values permitting more power and autonomy for women within the community and the marriage. In particular, the attitudes about a wife's chastity come under question and ultimately alter to put the characteristic on a more realistic scale with other human qualities rather than making it the identifying criteria for an honorable wife. Shakespeare never questions the importance of chastity (fidelity); rather, his characters reassess their simplistic attitudes towards it and the effects such attitudes can have on other aspects of their society.

Each of these plays is discussed in a separate chapter. The argument for this interpretation relies upon history of the gender roles and philosophical arguments by the Humanists and Puritan leaders about women's place within society during the Renaissance period.

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