Relationships Between Men and Women in The Winters Tale by William Sha

Relationships Between Men and Women in The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare The Winter's Tale was written in 1611, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The play is one of Shakespeare's romance titles, though it could be more justly referred to as a 'tragi-comedy' due to the instances of accusation, death, repentance and reunion. To successfully study how Shakespeare presents relationships between men and women in The Winter's Tale there are four main relationships to examine - Hermione and Leontes, Paulina and Antigonus, Perdita and Florizel, and Leontes and Paulina. Shakespeare's view of women, and generally the Elizabethan view, suggested that women had less capability for evil - can only assist in a man's corruption or downfall, evidence for this can be found by examining particular types of literature from this period, such as T.E. (?)'s didactic 'The Law's Resolution of Women's Rights'. Likewise in The Winter's Tale, only to a lesser extent, women can be seen as temptresses. Hermione was the supposed adulteress in The Winter's Tale. Many would argue that Shakespeare depicted the condition of women within a patriarchal system and created female characters, which in their richness transcend the limitations of his time. Shapiro, for example, goes so far as to claim that Shakespeare was 'the noblest feminist of them all.' Though Shakespeare pays more attention to the roles that men play in society and many of the female characters are constricted in their experiences. They do not have the same ability to be as fully human as the men. They do not learn by their experiences, except Paulina who is eventually chastised and pa... ...sion. It could be argued that Shakespeare only goes so far with the gender roles - the women are eventually silenced or pacified - because the suspension of disbelief can only be maintained so far - the traditional view of women was confined within rigid boundaries. In The Winter's Tale all the women are badly treated - incidentally, at the hands of men. Our perspective of the actions of the men we believe to be harsh, though to Shakespeare's contemporaries they were likely to be justified - in fact chastisement would probably be justified to a more brutal extent. There is however little authentic evidence in the plays, that Shakespeare strove either to uphold or to subvert, however covertly, the established order. Works Cited: Shakespeare, William. The Winter's Tale. Ed. J. H. P. Pafford (London: Methuen, 1963).