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... er issues arise. The play starts out with the typical stereotype. The women are considered weak, faith Ect... While the men are portrayed as strong and bold. This is a very common stereotype, which exists heavily today.
Some form of this stereotype can be seen in almost any play, or movie for that matter. This play starts off by portraying the two main female characters of the play, Rosalind and Celia, as the typical stereotype. These girls seem very delicate, and faith. They are considered royalty and that could be the reason they are portrayed as faith, or delicate. You get the image of the girls being soft and feathery.
But all this changes very suddenly. This change occurred because Celia was exiled from the country. And since the two girls shared such a strong loving bond they decided they could not live apart. So the girls planed to run away together.
But of course women cannot travel alone. How can a woman make it threw the wilderness by herself? Everyone knows women are not as smart as men are, they are just delicate & quot; baby-poppers& quot; . And that seemed to be the basic mentality of people back in the sixteenth-century.
So now all they need is a man on their journey. A man basically just for protection. But the two girls decide to dress up Rosalind in drag for their trip. This issue of crossdressing brings out a whole new perspective of the play. The issue of crossdressing is a prominent feature in the plot of AYLI.
The reason the issue of crossdressing has such influence on the plot is because most of Orlando's courtship of Rosalind takes place while Rosalind is disguised as a man, calling herself & quot; Ganymede. & quot; Rosalind-as-Ganymede persuades Orlando to pretend that Ganymede is his beloved 'Rosalind. & quot; In her male disguise, Rosalind takes over roles within the fiction of the play that, in its time, were exclusively male, such as the role of choosing her own mate and directing his courtship of her. These sorts of roles would conventionally belong to her father, Duke senior. Rosalind even takes over the play's epilogue, its formal farewell to the audience, commenting on how unusual it is for the female lead to do so. But, of course, as & quot; she& quot; reveals in her epilogue, & quot; she& quot; , the actor playing Rosalind on the sixteenth-century English stage, is male, as were all the actors who played female roles on the stage of Shakespeare's time. Just like in the times of Aristophanes.
We come across an interesting problem with gender in this play. And that is the complications of acting the roles of gender, where a boy plays a girl playing a boy pretending to be a girl. In today's society for a crew to go to this extent just seems silly. Our Town written by Thornton Wilder is an exceptional play. This play is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and considered an American masterpiece.
The time setting, and location in this play is a key aspect of the gender issues that arise. The women are very obviously perceived as second class citizens. They seem to be almost & quot; slave-like. & quot; The women are stuck in Grover's Corner, unless the men want to leave. This perspective of second class citizen can be easily seen when Mrs.
Gibbs wants to take a vacation to Paris. She desperately wants to go, but she cannot simply go to her husband and say & quot; I would like to go to Paris dear. & quot; She has the money, but it is up to Mr. Gibbs to take the vacation. Mr. Gibbs would have to be the person to come up with the idea and say & quot; you know what a vacation sounds good, got any ideas honey& quot; , and then Mrs. Gibbs would have to say & quot; well Paris sounds good. & quot; And if Mr.
Gibbs would not want to go, they simply wouldn't. And that was the case, Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs never made it to Paris. This can be related to AYLI, in the sense that women don't travel alone. This is just an example how women were perceived.
The men in this play seem to be the & quot; all mighty knowledgeable& quot; , while the women on the other hand are pictured to be almost stupid. Men had the go in almost every conversation. Women were just these unintelligent creatures made to take care of the home while the men provide. Very old fashion mentality threw out this play. You get a sense of suffocation and entrapment that is directed on to the women. The woman couldn't just pack there stuff and leave the town, with out ridicule and hardship.
They seemed to be & quot; stuck& quot; , in the sense that is very hard to leave a small town. & # 9; The role of the women was to get married, stay home and take care of the kids, while the man provides and puts food on the table. This view is still somewhat shared with our society today. & # 9; In conclusion it would be safe to say that all three plays relate gender issues to their time set. We can see many similarities within all three of these plays, and we can also see similarities that arise with our culture today. Even though today women are not treated as bad as they were. It is sad to say that even in the year 2000 women don't have equal rights and don't get equal treatment. Women still make. 70 cents to the dollar as men.
Their role is still to be the homemaker. And they hold such a small percentage of any policy making position. To think of all the lost talent and all the advances that could have been made to help our society is truly a sad and inhuman thought, that can get any one angry with our history. If one was to really think about it, the human race has not made much progress with the treatment of women.
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Research essay sample on Amp Quot Sixteenth Century
