Perhaps Hero’s timid nature is resultant of the non-existence of a mother figure. Then again ‘Innogen’, Hero’s mother and Leonato's wife, did exist in the Quarto edition of the play. ‘Innogen’ was excluded from performance because Shakespeare felt he lacked a place for her in the initial plot. He also needed to exclude senior female authorities from laughing or cursing at Leonato et al as they deserve because the criteria had been filled by Beatrice; it would have been too extreme to contain too many authoritative women and it was also not acceptable for a wife to question her husband’s power. ‘Innogen’ was thus kept on the shelf; Shakespeare regarded her as an ‘unrealized intention’. Hero’s tacit nature is shown in Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation; everything Hero carries out is done in silence; implied, but not expressed.
Hero comes into her own in Act III when she successfully manages to carry out the strategy that has been proposed by Don Pedro to trap Beatrice. Hero is confident and indeed witty with female counterparts
“…And bid her steal into the pleachèd bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter, like favourites…”
“…For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs
Close by the ground, to hear our conference…”
These quotations show Hero as anything but two-dimensional, she’s practically full of life, an antithesis of the Hero we have seen in earlier acts. She gives the necessary instruction, talking with great skill to Ursula to conduct the kind of conversation that will have the desired effect upon Beatrice. She understands that not everyone will spontaneously fall in love with each other, but they can be persuaded to fall in love with appropriate planning and scheduling. Her penetration of character is revealed in the style she describes Beatrice;
“…But Nature never framed a woman's heart
Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice;
Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,
Misprising what they look on, and her wit
Values itself so highly that to her
All matter else seems weak: she cannot love,
Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
She is so self-endeared…”
Hero pinpoints Beatrice's haughty and contemptuous nature as well as her vanity and self-love. Beatrice, overhearing this, is strongly influenced. She is made cognisant of her faults and rendered more vulnerable, amenable to the feeling of love. Romance almost seems to be on the brink of reality: it is made more credible. Beatrice's reaction proves the success of Hero's well-chosen remarks. Immediately Beatrice expresses her determination to cast off her pride and self-love and responds to Benedick's love in a soliloquy.
Hero and Claudio’s relationship has been labelled ‘fake’ and ‘forced’ perhaps because a modern audience cannot conceive the notion of two people falling in love so quickly, the authenticity and integrity of Claudio and Hero’s relationship is always questioned, romantic love and marriage emerge as a great theme within the play. Claudio went from putting Hero on a pedestal “In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on.” to publicly humiliating her “There, Leonato, take her back again: Give not this rotten to your friend.” These shifts took little time. Claudio perhaps fell in love with the image of a pure and chaste woman, a love lacking depth because he did not love her behind the façade; her beauty was enough to absorb him, here the theme of appearance versus reality emerges: other examples of this theme are Hero appears to be a ‘disloyal’ partner; Don John appears to be a ‘loyal’ brother. This ‘ideal’ image of a woman can be easily destroyed when feelings do not run deep, and a man cannot trust his own judgement.
Through Hero and Claudio Shakespeare was, ultimately, striving for “a love marriage between equals in which neither partner was idealized nor degraded and would thus constitute a new ideal relationship, one rooted in the reciprocity of mutuality”**. However, both Hero and Claudio have more in common than meets the eye. Claudio, like Hero, shares the same mentality of staying virtually mute in the presence of the opposite sex. On the other hand Hero might be aware of her role as the manipulator of the situation and the unsuspected dominator of Claudio.
Hero may be termed a ‘submissive’ heroine but she is the universal object of affection: Leonato’s, Claudio’s, Beatrice’s and is therefore mentioned in each and every scene. Despite the fact Hero speaks little in the play she has a degree of control; Hero is the backbone and core of if not the play, most defiantly the plot.
Hero is periodically victimized in the play, without ever expressing emotions of rage at the injustices heaped on her. In fact, she is forgiving of Claudio “One Hero died defiled, but I do live, And surely as I live, I am a maid.” Hero asks no apology of Claudio for the things he has said to and about her. For a modern audience the ‘crimes’ committed by Claudio without a doubt require a great act of forgiveness but I feel that forgiveness is of great importance in the play. For an Elizabethan audience the love of man for woman, but not of woman for man, is seen as too frail an emotion to sustain the burdens that are frequently put upon it. Man’s love fails and woman must benevolently forgive the failure. Claudio fails Hero for several reasons; he is youthful and easily influenced by friends. Even more important is the fact that he has just returned home from the war, and some say that he is more at ease on the war front than with dealing with feelings for Hero. A modern audience, however, might be disconcerted with Hero as a result of her lack of dignity for taking Claudio back and confirming her status as the weaker character; at the time; however, she was a perfect example of gracious purity: Hero has the power to forgive and the strength to survive what has happened, she prevails in the play as a virtuous, kind-hearted and admirable woman. She merely wants to marry her man and please her father. Hero, having regained her reputation can enjoy the high moral ground provided by the people who questioned her innocence, a society in which she has no autonomy.
Hero and Beatrice have a close relationship; they're cousins and best friends. Hero is overshadowed by Beatrice;
“…there's her cousin an she
were not possessed with a fury, exceeds her as
much in beauty as the first of May doth the last
of December…”
“…Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy
and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all
that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else
make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please
me.'…”
Beatrice, it appears, would liberate her cousin Hero from patriarchal repression. While virtually every character in the play is conspiring to arrange Hero’s marriage, Beatrice counsels Hero to follow her own desires, despite contemporary custom. Beatrice is far more than a cousin to Hero; Beatrice takes on the lacking maternal role when she gives motherly advice to a powerless Hero.
Hero’s innocence is maintained in Scene Ш Act Three when she admonishes Margaret for being crude:
“…Fie upon thee, art not ashamed…”
Hero is shocked by Margaret’s earthy attitudes towards the realities of marriage; she is ashamed of sexual desire. This scene focuses on her innocence and purity; dramatically re-enforcing the enormity of the accusations against her in the following scene.
Shakespeare has put great thought into the female characters in the play, realizing the absolute contrast in characters would emphasise and contradict social chimera; the chaste, the clever and the whore. Shakespeare permitted many of his female characters to step outside their confined roles (wife, daughter and niece) and to show intelligence and capabilities which went far beyond what were conventionally expected of an Elizabethan woman. However, usually at the end, marriage triumphed in line with contemporary expectations.
Hero is not self-willed. She is completely under the control of her father Leonato, especially with regard to courtship. When Hero’s uncle asks her whether she would consent to Don Pedro's proposal, she tells her father, “Father, as it please you.” This quotation shows Hero’s wishes to aspire to her father’s expectations. Hereditary status is fundamental to Hero. Throughout the play Hero seeks to prove or corroborate worthiness of what she is, eventually, to inherit. Leonato apparently enforces heavy discipline; this does not correspond with Shakespeare’s portrayal of Leonato. It is argued that Hero “bankrupts the patriarchal power of language to hold sway over women” I do not think this is convincing. I think Hero invents the personal language she needs to survive.
Leonato, however, does appear to have little trust of Hero at this point in the play;
“…Wherefore! Why, doth not every earthly thing
Cry shame upon her? Could she here deny
The story that is printed in her blood?…”
Leonato does show authority when Claudio challenges him to use his fatherly power to demand an answer from Hero; “I charge the do so, as thou art my child” honour and pride are great themes within the play.
Although Beatrice is perhaps easier to show affection for, because of her outward nature, one may criticise that Leonato sets the standards and expectations for Hero and then rejects the consequences of these standards. Hero does not, nevertheless, always correspond to the expectations of her father Leonato
“…So you walk softly and look sweetly and say nothing,
I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away…”
Here Hero is defined as quite rebellious towards Don John; she is masked at the time which grants her additional confidence.
An Elizabethan audience would consider it a father’s responsibility to guard the well-being of his daughter and, in keeping with this, give or present her to a man worthy of her hand. Leonato clearly demonstrates the image of this ceremonious role at the first wedding ceremony between Hero and Claudio. “Come, Friar Francis, be brief. Only to the plain form of marriage and you shall recount particular duties afterwards”. He is eager and in good spirits as he banters with the Friar before the ceremony. He proudly does his fatherly duty when Claudio asks, “Father, by your leave, Will you with free and unconstrained soul Give me this maid, your daughter?” Leonato’s response appears simple when he concedes, “As freely, son, as God did give her to me”. However, something deeper than ceremonious language can be seen. Sincere emotions and love seem to pour out of Leonato when he speaks of God giving Hero to him and he portrays an almost motherly compassion instead. Hero follows the cultural norm of the obedient child but finds her voice, once she is no longer under her father’s responsibility. Therefore, I am forced to consider Hero as an individual to an extent, hindered rather than helped by her father’s dominance. Hero’s lack of power is re-enforced following Leonato’s extreme and irrational out burst: when Hero is accused at the altar of being unfaithful, she is so timid she does not even press her truth and faints to the ground. Hero’s lack of power is further re-enforced by the way the others take control after the disaster and invent the death subterfuge. Even at the point of her unmasking Hero is acting under the direction of others. Shakespeare uses Hero as a device to heighten the drama of her accused dishonour.
Modern audiences typecast Hero as the vacuous trophy wife. I believe Hero is anything but ‘two dimensional’ and ‘unworldly’. Hero is the unconventional conventional heroine; cunning and astute if fair, passive, mild and meek on the exterior. Shakespeare has clearly set out to emphasise Beatrice and Benedick as the people’s couple, playing down the apparently ‘wet’ Hero and Claudio, and Beatrice as the overall more real, raw and likeable female character, one must not, however, waive Hero’s relevance to the plot for without her it would surely be non-existent. In my opinion Hero becomes and is the play; through a fake resurrection, Hero dies to live, the tragic chasm is bridged to achieve an aesthetically pleasing happy ending. Hero is the silent female character who ultimately speaks volumes.
** Hays, Janice. "Those ‘soft and delicate desires’ Much Ado and the Distrust of Women."
