In conclusion the attitudes towards women in the plays Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida and As You Like It are that women are weak. This weakness is shown in different ways

Changes into a man convinced that all women are whores; that the women who seem most pure are inside black with corruption and sexual desires.

        The chastity of women is an issue that the play Hamlet deals with. Chastity was seen as an important virtue in women. With the changing society t could be seen ‘as a private ideal in which men and women adopted not the standards of social etiquette but standards of truthfulness dictated by their own consciences.’The chastity of Ophelia is mocked by Prince Hamlet because she involves herself in Claudius’s and her father’s deception of Hamlet. Hamlet asks her: ‘are you honest?’ Here the word ‘honest’ means chaste.

The other female character in Hamlet is the fair Queen Gertrude. As mentioned before, due to his anger Hamlet says ‘Frailty; thy name is woman.’ This opinion of woman in general was sparked off by his anger towards his mother. This view can be seen as an adequate way to describe Gertrude’s character. Queen Gertrude seems as though she is morally frail:

She never exhibits the ability to thin critically about her situation, but seems merely to move instinctively towards seemingly safe choices.

This highlighted when she turns to tell her husband after a confrontation with her son, Hamlet.

        

In Hamlet, Prince Hamlet’s ethics show that he sees man and wife as one whole. This is apparent when he says addressing Claudius before he leaves for England: ‘My mother- father and mother is man and wide, man and wife is one flesh, and so my mother’ Here it shows an absence of identity similar to the absence of identity with the character of Ophelia. It shows that unmarried women were dominated and shaped by the views of their father until marriage. Then when they are married, ‘the union of man and wife meant loss of separate identity for the woman’

In conclusion Shakespeare’s play Hamlet portrays women as secondary characters which are weak and dependant on the male characters. The women don’t form their own views and opinions. They are shown as obedient to the male characters. The portrayal of women in this way shows that the attitude towards them in the play Hamlet is not one of equality. Women are seen as the inferior sex.

        The main female character in Troilus and Cressida is the character of Cressida. She is the love interest of Troilus. There are similarities to Hamlet in the attitudes towards women. Cressida’s lover is Troilus, when they unite as lovers she makes a promise to him that she will not be false to him. She says if she is false then let people use her name as a way of to call people false:

        Yea, let the say, to stick the heart of falsehood

        ‘As false as Cressid’

However, this promise is later broken when she is taken when she is taken into the Greek camp. Like Gertrude it does not take her long to transform and forget her love and the promise she made. She greets the Greek generals who each kiss her in turn. It seem as though she ‘is excited by the attention and has a light, quick answer for each.’It is Ulysses’ idea that everyone should kiss her. After the kisses are accepted and there is no complaint about them Ulysses calls her a loose, unvirtuous woman:

        Fie, fie upon her:        

        There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip;

        Nay her foot speaks. Her wanton spirits look out        

        At every joint and motive in her body

Due to Cressida’s broken promise ‘Troilus struggles to separate condemnation of Cressida from the traducing of women in general.’ This is similar to the way Hamlet condemns women. Troilus struggle with his condemnation is when he says:

        Let it not be believed for womanhood        

        Think: we had mothers. Do not give advantage

        To stubborn critics, apt without a theme,

        For deprivation to square the general sex

        By Cressida’s rule

        Cressida’s fall to Diomedes a short while after her pledge to Troilus links to the attitude from Hamlet that women are frail. ‘If frailty is endemic to the sex, the individual woman feels less responsibility for her own weakness.’ This idea seems to be apparent in Troilus and Cressida. A fitting example of this in the play would be when Cressida gives in to Diomedes, she sighs and says:

        Ah, poor our sex! This fault in us I find

        The error of out eye directs our mind

Cressida welcomes this ‘satirists judgment of women’because she can use it as an excuse and therefore feel less guilt. By having this perception it blinds her to the good in other women by generalizing all women to be like her.

        As in Hamlet chastity is a big issue that is concerned with women. Basically if you slept with a man and were unchaste it would cheapen you as a woman. It was a way of society during that time and women did not really have any alternative but to try and follow. ‘For women like Cressida the forms of chaste behavior usurp the fact. They follow the rules meticulously because they cannot afford not to’

        

        In Troilus and Cressida, Cressida is taken to the Greek camp as an exchange for a Trojan hero. She has no alternative but to go to the camp. This shows a male dominance and the inequality of the genders. This inequality can be highlighted further when Cressida says:

        And yet, good faith, wished myself a man,

        Or that we women had men’s privilege

        Of speaking first

Here we are able to see the inferiority of women as men have what is described here as a privilege. In conclusion yet again the attitudes towards women are that they are weak. One of the ways this weakness is shown is by the women giving in so easily. We also see that women are seen as inferior to men. This was seen as normal at the time:

That women occupied a position subordinate to men in the early modern period is beyond dispute: that this was the “natural’ state of affairs was almost beyond dispute.

This shows that it was almost like an unwritten rule that men are superior and women inferior.

Shakespeare’s As You Like It  is a complicated play in the context of women. When Rosalind is banished from the kingdom by Duke Frederick, her uncle, Rosalind and Celia decide to go to the forest to seek Rosalind’s father. They realize the danger of traveling through the forest as young women:

        Alas, what danger will it be to us

        (Maids as we are) to travel so forth so far?

        Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold

To overcome this problem Rosalind decides to disguise herself as a man. This is to protect the women. Here there is a double meaning of protection. Rosalind is protecting herself in two ways be dressing up as a man. Firstly if a male is present there is less danger to a woman. She is also protecting herself by attire because women did not wear underclothes. Therefore she is protecting herself, physically and socially. The fact that they need a male presence for protection shows the weakness of women.

        Women were not seen on the same level as men. They seem to be ‘permanently  providing light relief to serious men.’ This is apparent due to the way Shakespeare aligns women with professional fools. Examples of this kind of alignment are Viola and Feste in Twelfth Night, Cordelia and the fool in King Lear and Celia and Touchstone in As You Like It Celia’s father Duke Frederick refers to Celia as a fool in Act one, Scene three, line seventy when she takes her cousin’s side. ‘Thou art a fool: she robs thee of thy name’ Then again in line seventy-seven ‘You are a fool.’ This reference alongside the alignment of women with Fools shows that:

The values of women and Fools are an irritant to men: their function is to entertain, not to censure; but as critics they are not dangerous because they have no power.

This shows the lack of power women have and their inferiority to men. Women and fools can be seen as similar because ‘Both stand on the periphery of the serious world of men, assessing its wisdom from the perspective of not being of any account.’ This further highlights the attitudes towards women that they are inferior and not of any serious use. Women are never men’s equals. Their inferiority and lack of freedom shows their inequality next to men. Therefore society would rather class them with boys rather than men. This is shown when Rosalind disguised as Ganymede gives Ganymede’s view:

        And for no passion truly anything,

        Boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour

Rosalind as a female character is aware of the inequality of men and women in society. She is aware of female inferiority. Rosalind disguised as Ganymede loves the freedom that comes along with pretending to be a man. As she’s in fact a woman she is enjoying not being a woman:

I thank god I am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as he hath generally taxed their whole sex withal.

Finally in As You Like It the epilogue is delivered by Rosalind. This is unusual and is noted by Rosalind herself: ‘It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue’

This task is usually delivered by a male character. Although this time it is given by Rosalind, the fact that it is noted by Rosalind as unusual shows that women are not seen as important enough to deliver the epilogue. When this is delivered we have to remember that women could not perform on stage in Shakespearian England. Therefore Rosalind would have been played by a male character, showing again the limitations of women.

        In conclusion the attitudes towards women in the plays Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida and As You Like It are that women are weak. This weakness is shown in different ways. In Hamlet and in Troilus and Cressida it is shown by women giving in to temptation and not being strong enough to withhold from it. However in As You Like It the form of weakness is shown by the need of a male presence. Due to the position of women in Shakespearian society all these plays show women as the inferior sex. They are seen as unimportant and not serious. Although As You Like It shows a gradual progression of female characters all the plays studied reflect the dominant gender values at the time. Therefore in conclusion the attitudes towards women in the plays studies are in fact mainly negative attitudes in all three of the plays.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

As You Like It, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, William Shakespeare, Edited by Phillip Edwards, Cambridge University Press 1985, 2003

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, William Shakespeare,  Edited by Phillip Edwards, Cambridge University Press 1985, 2003,

Shakespeare and The Nature of Women, Juliet Dusinberre, Macmillan Press Ltd 1975

The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare, An Introduction with Documents, Russ Mcdonald, Macmillan Press Ltd

The Oxford Shakespeare, Comedies, William Shakespeare, (Troilus And Cressida), Oxford University Press Ltd 1987

Shakespeare’s Tragedies, G.B. Harrison, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd 1951

Shakespeare and Society, Critical Studies in Shakespearian Drama, Terence Eagleton, Chatto & Windus Ltd. 1967

New Casebooks, Hamlet, Contemporary Critical Essays, Edited by Martin Coyle. Macmillan Education Ltd 1992

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/canalysis.html

Mabillard, Amanda, Shakespeare’s Ophelia 2000, <http://www.shakespeare-online.com/opheliachor.html>

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