scholarly journals The Price That Women in Renaissance Drama Pay for Taking Initiative

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Jonathan S. Rebetz

The article is a close reading of Isabella’s soliloquy in act IV of The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd. Pointing at the difference between the role of women in Early Modern re­ality and their function in contemporary plays, it demonstrates the perversity of a society where women were regularly marginalized and where, even in theatre, their transgressions of the boundaries imposed on them by the patriarchal social apparatus led to extremely unfavourable repercussions. Isabella, emotionally crushed by the foul murder of her son, decides in her helplessness to take her own life. In a world dominated by men, she does not quietly accept her passive role, but works within its limitations to become a character that takes action, albeit action that ends her life. Before making the symbolic gesture of stabbing herself, she exclaims against the circumstances which drove her to it. Her speech can be seen as one of the climactic points of the play.

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-250
Author(s):  
Stephanie Dropuljic

This article examines the role of women in raising criminal actions of homicide before the central criminal court, in early modern Scotland. In doing so, it highlights the two main forms of standing women held; pursing an action for homicide alone and as part of a wider group of kin and family. The evidence presented therein challenges our current understanding of the role of women in the pursuit of crime and contributes to an under-researched area of Scots criminal legal history, gender and the law.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-211
Author(s):  
Christoph Galle

<?page nr="201"?>Abstract The question about the role of women within medieval societies associatively makes one think of witches who allegedly were up to mischief by using poison or all kinds of magic to inflict maliciously harm on other people. But this impression results too much from an uncritical reception of such propagandistic conceptions that arose from the later medieval and early modern witch-hunt ideology. This cliché of medieval witches neither does justice to the general situation nor can it be transferred to the entire Middle Ages, as a representative view into the Carolingian empire of the eighth and ninth centuries shows.


2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Womack

The approximately contemporary Jacobean plays, King Lear and Nobody and Somebody, share an ancient British setting, a preoccupation with instability in the state, and an unsettling interest in negation. Peter Womack here suggests that by reading them together we can retrieve some of the theatrical strangeness which the more famous of the two has lost through familiarity and naturalization. The dramatic mode of existence of the character called ‘Nobody’ is paradoxical, denaturing – an early modern visual and verbal Verfremdungseffekt, at once philosophical and clownish. His negativity, which is articulated in dialogue with the companion figure of ‘Somebody’, is matched in King Lear, above all in the role of Edgar, but also by a more diffused state of being (withdrawal, effacement, folly) which the play generates in reaction to its positive events. Ultimately the negation in both plays is social in character: ‘Nobody’ is the dramatic face of the poor and oppressed. Peter Womack teaches literature at the University of East Anglia. His most recent book is English Renaissance Drama (2006), in the Blackwell Guides to Literature series.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-20
Author(s):  
Mayola Andika

Abstract. Nowadays, the issues of gender become hot topics to be discussed. It caused by the reality of some society who still hold the principle of patriarchal culture. Men tend to get the privileges than women. Basically, Islam upholds equality between men and women. Islam is believed as an ideal religion that is revealed for lift level and free up women from Jahiliyyah tradition in which marginalize women’s position. Verses of the Qur'an have revealed the equality of man and women and outline the equation in between both of them. As for the difference is their level of devotion. However, in religious empirical reality, the problem of gender bias arises whilst understanding and interpreting the religion texts. The misinterpretation then brought up the problem interrelated with men and women relation, for instance injustice, subordination, discrimination, and marginalization. Thus, the author assumes that a review of the interpretations of the verses and models of interpretation that tend to marginalize the role of women is needed to be conducted. In this research, the author elaborates of how the relation betwen men and women in Al-quran’s perspective through reinterpretation of Surat An-Nisa, verse 34 in contextual. The author focuses on the gender studies and connect it with the concept of men and women equality with descriptive-analitics method. Abstrak. Dewasa ini isu gender hangat diperbincangkan. Hal itu dilatarbelakangi oleh realitas masyarakat yang sebagian masih memegang prinsip budaya patriaki. Laki-laki mendapatkan hak-hak istimewa, sedangkan kaum perempuan cenderung dinomorduakan. Islam pada dasarnya menjunjung tinggi kesetaraan. Agama Islam diyakini sebagai agama yang ideal. Diturunkan untuk mengangkat derajat dan membebaskan perempuan dari tradisi jahiliyyah yang memarginalisasi kedudukannya. Ayat al-Qur’an telah mengungkapkan kesetaraan laki-laki dan perempuan serta menggariskan persamaan kedudukan di antara keduanya. Adapun yang membedakan adalah tingkat ketaqwaan. Namun, dalam realitas empiris keagamaan timbul problem pemahaman dan penafsiran teks-teks agama yang bias gender. Hal tersebut kemudian memunculkan masalah berkaitan dengan relasi laki-laki dan perempuan, seperti ketidakadilan, subordinasi, diskriminasi, dan marginalisasi. Untuk itu penulis menganggap perlu adanya peninjauan ulang interpretasi ayat dan model penafsiran yang cenderung meminggirkan peranan kaum perempuan. Dalam penelitian ini penulis memaparkan bagaimana relasi laki-laki dan perempuan dalam perspektif al-Qur’an melalui reinterpretasi terhadap penafsiran QS an-Nisa` ayat 34 secara kontekstual. Penulis memfokuskan kajian gender dan menghubungkannya dengan konsep kesetaraan laki-laki dan perempuan dengan metode deskriptif-analitis. 


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Shira Weiss

Within the texts of the Bible, there are seductresses who are portrayed as resisting the patriarchal values of biblical society by employing their feminine wiles to manipulate powerful males. These women sacrifice their own virtue by taking initiative in sexually daring acts and subordinating their victim of seduction to further their pursuits. Numerous female biblical figures are praised after utilizing their feminine weapons to achieve their ends; however, these seducers, some of whom are married, engage in questionable means. Since the Bible does not render an explicit evaluation, I aim to investigate such seductive behavior in an effort to assess the conduct of biblical seductresses and illuminate the role of women depicted in the Bible. A close reading of the texts and an examination of rabbinic interpretations of episodes in which Lot’s daughters, Tamar, Jael, Ruth and Esther each perform seductive acts can be used as a resource to further support contemporary feminist readings which justify biblical female characters’ use of morally dubious means to accomplish noble aims.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Mykola Yuriiovych Bulanyi

The article contains the evolution of the right of patronage using for example women-patronesses from princely families and using them patronage in presenting church lands and giving church positions at the first half of the 16th century at the reign of the Jagiellonian dynasty. Important position for building the image of patroness in Early Modern time was acted in interaction masculine and feminine natures, which were continued traditional community around of some important Church problems in that time. Beside this research was described whole developing of womenʼs patronage though of prism of family relatoins. That's why at women patronage the most ponderable was influence death of relatives or marriages. Also in the article was displayed the development of relationships between different kinds of patrons and described the role of women on the uses of patronage for improvement of Orthodox Church.


Author(s):  
Emily C. Nacol

This chapter returns to the lessons of the eighteenth century in discussing risk, in particular exploring the role of liberalism in early modern Britain's preoccupation with risk. Preoccupation with uncertainty, a view of risk as hazard, and profound feelings of insecurity marked eighteenth-century efforts to understand the present and imagine the future. While this perspective, which frequently elides the difference between risk and loss, would go on to find firmer footing in the nineteenth century, it gained a toehold in the eighteenth century, as shown by work on probability, risk, and political economy. The chapter also argues that the in this study who accept uncertainty are also the ones who are able to embrace and develop a notion of risk as central to politics and political economy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Jennifer Binczewski

Catholics in post-Reformation England faced new challenges in their resolution to remain faithful to Rome following the passage of anti-Catholic laws in the 1580s. These legislative attempts to root out Catholicism resulted in the creation of a clandestine community where private households became essential sites for the survival of Catholic worship. This article extends prior studies of the role of women in the English Catholic community by considering how marital status affected an individual’s ability to protect the ‘old faith’. By merging the study of widowhood with spatial analyses of Catholic households, I argue that early modern patriarchal structures provided specific opportunities inherent in widowhood that were unavailable to other men and women, whether married or single. While widowhood, in history and historiography, is frequently considered a weak, liminal, or potentially threatening status for women, in the harsh realities of a clandestine religious minority community, these weaknesses became catalysts for successful subversion of Protestant authority. Assisted by their legal autonomy, economic independence, and the manipulation of gendered cultural stereotypes, many Catholic widows used their households to harbour priests and outmanoeuvre searchers. This argument maintains that a broader interpretation of the role of women and marital status is essential to understanding the gendered nature of post-Reformation England.


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