Summing up of the article The Gender Principles by Marylin French
Autor: Conto e Encanto | Publicado: 2011-12-29T19:24:00-08:00


FRENCH, Marylin. The gender principles.&nbsp; in: Shakespeare’s Division of Experience. New York: Ballantine Books, 1981. chapter 1. p.13-24.
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&nbsp;By Profª. Drª. Bárbara de Fátima.&nbsp;






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We used to study gender as a division between masculine and feminine types. The author presents this subject as a kind of myth which gives to the men all the right to subordinate women’s wishing and thoughts. According to this myth the women must stay at home while their husbands or fellows go to the work; another myth is showed when Adam ate the apple given by Eve, this action brings all the women’s suffering ant they lost the paradise.&nbsp;

The nature created the women and gave to them the ability to produce milk, to give birth, to menstruate, and these natural abilities brought up all the men’s fears in relation to them, but their domination over the women went on.

The women’s performance is fully described through these myths principles. Their role in society and in literature is showed in a very deep way according to their thoughts, writings, active presence, and as a human being who has intelligence and experience to present.

&nbsp;The study of the women was presented in many of the Shakespeare’s plays. For example, in The Comedy of Errors, the male characters appear to show a world made of love, kindness, emotion, and mainly domination over the female characters. One of the female characters is Adriana who shows her feelings in relation to the marriage, her rebellion makes it clear because she was not able to accept the man’s power over her. Here we have the presence of the outlaw feminine principle; but at the end she accepts her destiny of subordinated woman. In this case, she will belong to the inlaw feminine principle.

To the men is given all right to fall and to raise. It is a natural principle. But in relation to the women nothing is allowed in relation to their behavior. If a woman falls, she will have no opportunity to raise because it will require a great redemption in order to return to an insignificance place in the world as an object of men’s world.&nbsp;

In Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew, the author presents Petruchio, the central male character who becomes himself the tamer of Kate, his wife. He uses his money and his power to buy her from her father as an object. He uses terrible methods and as a taskmaster he fails. She is a rebel, a woman of opinion, a shrew, representing at first the outlaw feminine principle, but in the end, she accepts all her husband’s domination and oppression.

Another character who must be emphasized is Bianca, Kate’s sister, who is kind and easily adjusted to the inlaw feminine principle and the men who fall in love with her present the same inlaw principle. Their behavior is naturally accepted by the interested audience. It is very difficult to understand when the female characters try to perform according to the outlaw principle (the male model), they try to change everything and very often, they adjust themselves to a world which is completely rejected by their male principles.