Tuesday 8 May 2012
Friday 4 May 2012
Friday 27 April 2012
MY BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION!
MY BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
The evening of 23rd April is etched on my mind and in this solitude of my hostel room I am revisiting it once again with a longing as if it is just happening!
Its my home.Dusk has fallen. People are coming. The main door is opening and shutting. I am waiting anxiously. I check myself again and again. All is perfect. I am ready to join the crowd. The room is as if expectant. This is what I've dreamt. Large bouquets are placed by mom at strategic places. Colourful flowers and lush green leaves. Stiller, statelier. In their fragrance I begin to unfurl like a silken ribbon. I enter. I look around. The same known faces. Everybody neat and trim. Well-dressed for the occasion. As if the celebration of my birthday is a welcome excuse for them to flaunt themselves. They haven't come here for me. They have come for my dad and mom and my parents haven't invited them to celebrate my birthday but rather to keep all these their good contacts in good humour! I have been specifically told to celebrate my birthday bash with my friends separately the next day. I don't have any say in how to celebrate my own birthday and this is nothing new to me. So i don't complain, neither do my friends.They too have similar parents. The so-called 'upmarket' high-profile crowd, all prim and proper, who won't allow us girls to let our hair down in their presence. So be it.
But still, I want just one person to attend this party today: my Albert. He too belongs and doesn't belong to this crowd like me. His parents are invited, so he is an invitee too and my dad is helpless about it. But he is away at Paris, yet he has promised me to come.I am just waiting for him only.
And then he comes! As if the whole drab room lights up on his entry! A pleasant shiver runs down my spine. I flutter. I ripple. Like a delicate algae floating in a stream! He comes towards me. This is the moment I've been waiting for. He is here! He stands by my side. The music is now playing. I yield to its flow and stream along with its rhythm in the arms of my Albert.
now I don't care for anything n the world. I don't care for anybody save this man whose name is etched on my heart. I am least bothered whether we are acceptable to this crowd as a pair or not. We are a pair this very moment and that is all hat matters. I certain defiance wells up in me. I deliberately take a thin-stemmed glass and sip. I wince as I drink this fiery yellow liquid. Its scent,radiance and heat percolates through me. It gives me a certain relief. I want another glass but Al refrains me from that with just one smile. But a certain slackness and indifference has invaded me. I lose consciousness of the other people around us. As it is, I have stopped thinking myself to be a part of them. I know their world is immune from change. But my world is meant for change. I myself ave now changed. I am no more a teenager now. I am a woman of twenty and i will mould my world as I like. My Albert will always be there for me. I am going to change only for him. 'Happy Birthday, my Elle" Al whispers softly into my ear. I cling to him. I know I've found my own world.
-ELLE
The evening of 23rd April is etched on my mind and in this solitude of my hostel room I am revisiting it once again with a longing as if it is just happening!
Its my home.Dusk has fallen. People are coming. The main door is opening and shutting. I am waiting anxiously. I check myself again and again. All is perfect. I am ready to join the crowd. The room is as if expectant. This is what I've dreamt. Large bouquets are placed by mom at strategic places. Colourful flowers and lush green leaves. Stiller, statelier. In their fragrance I begin to unfurl like a silken ribbon. I enter. I look around. The same known faces. Everybody neat and trim. Well-dressed for the occasion. As if the celebration of my birthday is a welcome excuse for them to flaunt themselves. They haven't come here for me. They have come for my dad and mom and my parents haven't invited them to celebrate my birthday but rather to keep all these their good contacts in good humour! I have been specifically told to celebrate my birthday bash with my friends separately the next day. I don't have any say in how to celebrate my own birthday and this is nothing new to me. So i don't complain, neither do my friends.They too have similar parents. The so-called 'upmarket' high-profile crowd, all prim and proper, who won't allow us girls to let our hair down in their presence. So be it.
But still, I want just one person to attend this party today: my Albert. He too belongs and doesn't belong to this crowd like me. His parents are invited, so he is an invitee too and my dad is helpless about it. But he is away at Paris, yet he has promised me to come.I am just waiting for him only.
And then he comes! As if the whole drab room lights up on his entry! A pleasant shiver runs down my spine. I flutter. I ripple. Like a delicate algae floating in a stream! He comes towards me. This is the moment I've been waiting for. He is here! He stands by my side. The music is now playing. I yield to its flow and stream along with its rhythm in the arms of my Albert.
now I don't care for anything n the world. I don't care for anybody save this man whose name is etched on my heart. I am least bothered whether we are acceptable to this crowd as a pair or not. We are a pair this very moment and that is all hat matters. I certain defiance wells up in me. I deliberately take a thin-stemmed glass and sip. I wince as I drink this fiery yellow liquid. Its scent,radiance and heat percolates through me. It gives me a certain relief. I want another glass but Al refrains me from that with just one smile. But a certain slackness and indifference has invaded me. I lose consciousness of the other people around us. As it is, I have stopped thinking myself to be a part of them. I know their world is immune from change. But my world is meant for change. I myself ave now changed. I am no more a teenager now. I am a woman of twenty and i will mould my world as I like. My Albert will always be there for me. I am going to change only for him. 'Happy Birthday, my Elle" Al whispers softly into my ear. I cling to him. I know I've found my own world.
-ELLE
Wednesday 25 April 2012
SHAKESPEARE'S DAUGHTERS- part 2: JULIET (ROMEO AND JULIET)
ROMEO AND JULIET
Romeo and Juliet- a painting by Frank Bernard Dicksee,c 1884.
"Romeo and Juliet' is unmatched, in Shakespeare and in the world's literature, as a vision of an uncompromising mortal love that perishes of its own idealism and intensity.
Shakespeare wrote this play much earlier in his career, probably in 1594 . It at once gained a popularity which it has never lost and can never lose and it has now gained a mythic intensity. Shakespeare was still young when he wrote this play and it has youth in its every scene. It is his first independent essay in tragedy and he writes it like one whose imagination is steeped in the raptures and the disasters of love.
It seems from the way the events are put by him and their result worked out, that he conceived 'a power' behind the master-event who caused it and meant the conclusion to, which it was brought. That's why at the very outset in the prologue he names the lovers as 'a pair of star-crossed lovers'. This power may be called 'Destiny ' or 'Nemesis'. What Shakespeare does seem to think is : that, in the affairs of man, long-continued evil, such as the hatred of the Montagues and Capulets ( Romeo and Juliet's parents and clans) or the civil wars in England, was certain to be tragically broken up by the suffering it caused, and to be dissolved in a reconciliation which should confess evil and establish its opposite good; and that this was the work of divine Justice.
This is the idea which Shakespeare makes preside over 'Romeo and Juliet'. Here the work of justice is done through the sorrow and death of the innocent and the evil's attack is nullified through the sacrifice of the guiltless. Justice, as Shakespeare saw her, moving to issues which concern the whole, takes little note of the sufferings of individuals. She uses therm, if they are good and loving, for her great purposes, as if that were enough to make them not only acquiescent but happy! Romeo and Juliet, who are guiltless of the hatred of their clans, and who embody the loving-kindness which would do away with them, are condemned to mortal pain and sorrow of death.
Shakespeare accepted the apparent injustice; and the impression made at the end upon us, which impression does not arise from the story itself, but steals into us from the whole work of Shakespeare on the story, is that Justice may have done right, though we do not understand her ways. Usually after the death of Romeo and Juliet the audience's interest in the play noticeably flags and the reconciliation of he Montagues and the Capulets makes little impression on them. But this reconciliation is the very victory of Romeo and Juliet's self-sacrifice on the altar of love!
The tender love of the two lovers and its beauty, seen in their suffering, awakens so much pity and love that the guilty are turned away from their evil hatreds and the evil itself is destroyed. and with regard to the sufferings themselves, there is that - we feel with Shakespeare- in their pain and death which not only redeems and blesses the world they have left but which also lifts them into that high region of the soul where suffering and death seem changed into joy and life. We think of them, but in a way we can not explain, no longer with pity, but with a certainty that all is well with them, that they have arisen into a true happiness. Instead of mourning over their fate, we are content. We feel rather subconsciously that they are in that kingdom of the soul, and worthy of it, where the pain and death of earth are like dreams when one awakens, where what they have become through sufferings lives for the inspiration of humanity and attracts its love.
Here Shakespeare has shown us what befalls a young pair of lovers during a short span of just four days. It seems that he felt, and we all feel, that if such love as their can be taken up into a complete character, modified and controlled by the other noble qualities which go to form a large and generous nature , the world would be the better for such pure and sacred passion. Such, it appears to me, are the ethics of this play.
And the personages by whom the lovers are encircled are so conceived as to become critics of ideal love from their several points of view, honouring and exalting it by the inadequacy of their criticism. To old Capulet (Juliet's father), it seems that the passions of the heart are to be determined by parental authority. To Lady Capulet (Juliet's mother) marriage is an affair of worldly convenience. To the Nurse (attending on Juliet) it is satisfaction of a pleasurable instinct. Mercutio (Romeo's witty friend) is too intellectual to be capable of a passion in which the heart shows that it is superior to the brain and hence he mocks at love. The Friar (who tries his best to help the young lovers) views human passion from the quietude of the cloisters and fails to understand that botany (in which he is an expert) is not the science of life.
Night is the medium through which this play is felt and in which the lovers are most at home-night, together with fires that blaze in its depths for contrast and romance. 'Romeo and Juliet' maintains a brilliant shutter-movement of black and white, of cloud and lightening, of midnight and morning. At any rate the lovers' career derives its brilliance from the contrast we are made to feel between their notion of day and night and the normal thought about such things. For them night is comfort and day is the image of distress. Normality is their foe, as it is at last their nemesis.
One of the reasons for the fame of this play is that it has so completely and closely isolated the experience of romantic love. It has let such love speak for itself. The lovers' deep interest for us lies in their being alone in a world which does not understand them.
The characters created by Shakespeare change and grow in the course of action and in their growth they overtake each other. In this play Juliet overtakes Romeo. Let us now see the wonderful development of Juliet.
In describing Juliet through Romeo's words, Shakespeare has underlined that radiance is the essence of her beauty which is in fact the expression of the purity of her soul:
-'O she doth teach the torches to burn bright,
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Aetheop's ear.'
purity and innocence are inherent qualities of Juliet. The Nurse, who has little of moral conscience, has brought her up, but has not been able to spoil her. When Juliet is lifted into womanhood by love, and gains thereby moral power and spiritual passion, she sees the consciencelesss character of this old woman, and when this nurse advices her to marry Paris, she flings the old wretch out of her heart:
"Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!
Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain."
the real crisis in the story as well as in the brief life of Juliet comes when she is pressed to marry Paris, Romeo being banished and away at Mantua. Her father is most insistant and her mother too leaves her to her fate, "Do as thou wilt, for i have done with thee." When she then turns to the Nurse, the old woman advices her to marry Paris. Despair now stares her in the face. here we realise her tragic loneliness. But she makes up her mind at once. She goes to see the Friar. and there she meets Paris. Though her heart is writhing within, she has sense and intelligence enough to to put him off by pretending that she has come to confess. After Paris takes his leave, Juliet seeks the Friar's advice in the critical and desperate situation (past hope, past cure, past help). All that she can think of is to kill herself with her knife if there is no other way out!
Oh, how resolute she has become! She has become bold and mature enough to look death in the face. She will do anything to embrace death 'to live an unstain'd wife to her sweet love.'
She takes the sleeping potion from the Friar and goes home 'with a woman's wild courage, but with a child's imaginative fears'. She shudders for a moment to think of the horrors of the tomb but thinks that the sleeping potion would really do its trick and keeps a dagger ready should it fail her. The potion takes its effect upon her, putting her to a deep and almost deathlike sleep and it stiffens her body too. Hence everybody believes that she is dead and they take her to her family vault for burial.
When she wakes up from her trance in that vault, she finds Romeo lying dead by her. He had earlier entered into her vault after slaying the obstructing Paris and on finding her 'dead', he had drank poison after taking her last kiss:
"..............................................And,lips,O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!"
The Friar, who has ever been the good angel of Romeo and Juliet, comes there to take her away. But she will not part from her Romeo. She asks the Friar to leave and after his departure she searches for some leftover poison in Romeo's vial and on finding not even a drop, she snatches at Romeo's dagger and kills herself. She does not kill herself out of feminine weakness, but out of intensity of love, just as Romeo did. Yet, her suicide actually requires more nerve than Romeo's; while he swallows poison, she stabs herself through the heart with a dagger.
Juliet's development from wide eyed girl living in the shadows of her parents into a self-assured, determined and capable woman is one of Shakespeare's most confident and rounded treatments of a female character. Recognising Juliet's greatness of character, though he has called his play 'Romeo and juliet', that is to say, put Romeo's name first in the title, he finishes the play with the words of the Prince:
"Never was a story of more woe,
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
-AUTUMN ELIZA.
"Romeo and Juliet' is unmatched, in Shakespeare and in the world's literature, as a vision of an uncompromising mortal love that perishes of its own idealism and intensity.
Shakespeare wrote this play much earlier in his career, probably in 1594 . It at once gained a popularity which it has never lost and can never lose and it has now gained a mythic intensity. Shakespeare was still young when he wrote this play and it has youth in its every scene. It is his first independent essay in tragedy and he writes it like one whose imagination is steeped in the raptures and the disasters of love.
It seems from the way the events are put by him and their result worked out, that he conceived 'a power' behind the master-event who caused it and meant the conclusion to, which it was brought. That's why at the very outset in the prologue he names the lovers as 'a pair of star-crossed lovers'. This power may be called 'Destiny ' or 'Nemesis'. What Shakespeare does seem to think is : that, in the affairs of man, long-continued evil, such as the hatred of the Montagues and Capulets ( Romeo and Juliet's parents and clans) or the civil wars in England, was certain to be tragically broken up by the suffering it caused, and to be dissolved in a reconciliation which should confess evil and establish its opposite good; and that this was the work of divine Justice.
This is the idea which Shakespeare makes preside over 'Romeo and Juliet'. Here the work of justice is done through the sorrow and death of the innocent and the evil's attack is nullified through the sacrifice of the guiltless. Justice, as Shakespeare saw her, moving to issues which concern the whole, takes little note of the sufferings of individuals. She uses therm, if they are good and loving, for her great purposes, as if that were enough to make them not only acquiescent but happy! Romeo and Juliet, who are guiltless of the hatred of their clans, and who embody the loving-kindness which would do away with them, are condemned to mortal pain and sorrow of death.
Shakespeare accepted the apparent injustice; and the impression made at the end upon us, which impression does not arise from the story itself, but steals into us from the whole work of Shakespeare on the story, is that Justice may have done right, though we do not understand her ways. Usually after the death of Romeo and Juliet the audience's interest in the play noticeably flags and the reconciliation of he Montagues and the Capulets makes little impression on them. But this reconciliation is the very victory of Romeo and Juliet's self-sacrifice on the altar of love!
The tender love of the two lovers and its beauty, seen in their suffering, awakens so much pity and love that the guilty are turned away from their evil hatreds and the evil itself is destroyed. and with regard to the sufferings themselves, there is that - we feel with Shakespeare- in their pain and death which not only redeems and blesses the world they have left but which also lifts them into that high region of the soul where suffering and death seem changed into joy and life. We think of them, but in a way we can not explain, no longer with pity, but with a certainty that all is well with them, that they have arisen into a true happiness. Instead of mourning over their fate, we are content. We feel rather subconsciously that they are in that kingdom of the soul, and worthy of it, where the pain and death of earth are like dreams when one awakens, where what they have become through sufferings lives for the inspiration of humanity and attracts its love.
Here Shakespeare has shown us what befalls a young pair of lovers during a short span of just four days. It seems that he felt, and we all feel, that if such love as their can be taken up into a complete character, modified and controlled by the other noble qualities which go to form a large and generous nature , the world would be the better for such pure and sacred passion. Such, it appears to me, are the ethics of this play.
And the personages by whom the lovers are encircled are so conceived as to become critics of ideal love from their several points of view, honouring and exalting it by the inadequacy of their criticism. To old Capulet (Juliet's father), it seems that the passions of the heart are to be determined by parental authority. To Lady Capulet (Juliet's mother) marriage is an affair of worldly convenience. To the Nurse (attending on Juliet) it is satisfaction of a pleasurable instinct. Mercutio (Romeo's witty friend) is too intellectual to be capable of a passion in which the heart shows that it is superior to the brain and hence he mocks at love. The Friar (who tries his best to help the young lovers) views human passion from the quietude of the cloisters and fails to understand that botany (in which he is an expert) is not the science of life.
Night is the medium through which this play is felt and in which the lovers are most at home-night, together with fires that blaze in its depths for contrast and romance. 'Romeo and Juliet' maintains a brilliant shutter-movement of black and white, of cloud and lightening, of midnight and morning. At any rate the lovers' career derives its brilliance from the contrast we are made to feel between their notion of day and night and the normal thought about such things. For them night is comfort and day is the image of distress. Normality is their foe, as it is at last their nemesis.
One of the reasons for the fame of this play is that it has so completely and closely isolated the experience of romantic love. It has let such love speak for itself. The lovers' deep interest for us lies in their being alone in a world which does not understand them.
The characters created by Shakespeare change and grow in the course of action and in their growth they overtake each other. In this play Juliet overtakes Romeo. Let us now see the wonderful development of Juliet.
-'O she doth teach the torches to burn bright,
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Aetheop's ear.'
purity and innocence are inherent qualities of Juliet. The Nurse, who has little of moral conscience, has brought her up, but has not been able to spoil her. When Juliet is lifted into womanhood by love, and gains thereby moral power and spiritual passion, she sees the consciencelesss character of this old woman, and when this nurse advices her to marry Paris, she flings the old wretch out of her heart:
"Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!
Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain."
the real crisis in the story as well as in the brief life of Juliet comes when she is pressed to marry Paris, Romeo being banished and away at Mantua. Her father is most insistant and her mother too leaves her to her fate, "Do as thou wilt, for i have done with thee." When she then turns to the Nurse, the old woman advices her to marry Paris. Despair now stares her in the face. here we realise her tragic loneliness. But she makes up her mind at once. She goes to see the Friar. and there she meets Paris. Though her heart is writhing within, she has sense and intelligence enough to to put him off by pretending that she has come to confess. After Paris takes his leave, Juliet seeks the Friar's advice in the critical and desperate situation (past hope, past cure, past help). All that she can think of is to kill herself with her knife if there is no other way out!
Oh, how resolute she has become! She has become bold and mature enough to look death in the face. She will do anything to embrace death 'to live an unstain'd wife to her sweet love.'
She takes the sleeping potion from the Friar and goes home 'with a woman's wild courage, but with a child's imaginative fears'. She shudders for a moment to think of the horrors of the tomb but thinks that the sleeping potion would really do its trick and keeps a dagger ready should it fail her. The potion takes its effect upon her, putting her to a deep and almost deathlike sleep and it stiffens her body too. Hence everybody believes that she is dead and they take her to her family vault for burial.
When she wakes up from her trance in that vault, she finds Romeo lying dead by her. He had earlier entered into her vault after slaying the obstructing Paris and on finding her 'dead', he had drank poison after taking her last kiss:
"..............................................And,lips,O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!"
The Friar, who has ever been the good angel of Romeo and Juliet, comes there to take her away. But she will not part from her Romeo. She asks the Friar to leave and after his departure she searches for some leftover poison in Romeo's vial and on finding not even a drop, she snatches at Romeo's dagger and kills herself. She does not kill herself out of feminine weakness, but out of intensity of love, just as Romeo did. Yet, her suicide actually requires more nerve than Romeo's; while he swallows poison, she stabs herself through the heart with a dagger.
Juliet's development from wide eyed girl living in the shadows of her parents into a self-assured, determined and capable woman is one of Shakespeare's most confident and rounded treatments of a female character. Recognising Juliet's greatness of character, though he has called his play 'Romeo and juliet', that is to say, put Romeo's name first in the title, he finishes the play with the words of the Prince:
"Never was a story of more woe,
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
-AUTUMN ELIZA.
Monday 23 April 2012
Friday 20 April 2012
Shakespeare's 'Daughters'.
SHAKESPEARE'S 'DAUGHTERS'
For the first time I am presenting on my blog my college-work. This is my submission for our 'Practical Criticism's paper' which was much appreciated. I am thankful to my professor for allowing me to publish this essay on my blog.
Shakespeare's Heroines
I would like to call Shakespeare's heroines as his 'daughters'. Yes, William Shakespeare has created his own unique world filled with many remarkable men and women who are 'alive' even now and many people like me feel these characters much nearer to heart than our own relatives.
Being a girl I am more fascinated by Shakespeare's heroines and feel like having a strong bond with some of them.I call them his 'dear daughters'.His women have varied characters and characteristics. Just see the range! 'Love's martyr' Juliet,'Intelligent beyond her age' Portia ( Merchant of Venice),'Shy, soft-spoken and introvert' Viola (Twelfth Night), 'playful and mischivious' Rosalind (As You Like It), 'Weak and inordinately submissive' Ophelia, 'Pure-hearted but impractical' Desdemona (Othello),'Truthful' Cordelia (King Lear),'Venus-incarnate' Cleopatra, 'Innocent and child of Nature' Miranda (The Tempest), 'Flowerlike' Perdita (The Winter's Tale); and also the most cruel, devilish Regan and Goneril (King Lear) and the very blot on femininity Lady Macbeth!....
Shakespeare was always trying to dive deep into the human psyche and fathom the riddle of human nature and life. He was trying to find answers to many questions: What is the relation between human nature,circumstances and destiny? What is the place of values like love, brotherhood of man, purity, charity, chastity, righteousness, munificence, valour, selflessness etc in life? what is their value in individual behaviour? How far helpful are the beliefs in abstract concepts like heaven, hell and immortality of soul? However, he never preached or championed a particular principle or way of life. In my opinion he was secular and humanist to the core.
On this premise I am going to try to understand some of his 'daughters'. In this context it is pertinent to bear in mind the nature of Shakespeare's time and the lifestyle of women of that period. There was no education for women in those days. almost all the women were illiterate. They were however well trained in crafts and arts like sewing, embroidery,painting, music and dance. There being always war-like atmosphere, women were not able to move freely outdoors.
Yet, Shakespeare recognised the importance and the unique place of the woman in human life and moulded his woman characters accordingly. He knew that the woman is naturally more adoptive, clever, shrewd and cunning. When in love she demonstrates these characteristics more strongly. She is very romantic and dreamy while playing the games of love and equally resolute and capable of highest sacrifice when her love or chastity is challenged. Shakespeare portrayed all these subtle shades of feminine nature through various heroines, their colleagues, nurses, chaperons and even maid-servants. He cleverly juxtaposed girls with exactly opposite thinking to highlight both sides of the woman-nature.
His ideal heroines religiously preserve the purity of love. They are very noble in behaviour and never utter a single bad or 'rustic' or vulgar word which would blot their upbringing. His maid-servants and nurses are somewhat given to sharp tongue yet he never gives them overtly vulgar dialogues as he gives to some of his men in order to create laughter among the audience in the 'pit'. He plays upon the contrast in thinking and behaviour of his heroines and their colleagues, maidservants and nurses most effectively. His heroines are noble, idealistic and given to romanticism, whereas their maid-servants or nurses are extremely realistic, practical and tactful. They are very adoptive and believe in the means which would bring instant results.
For example let us take Desdemona (Othello's wife) and her maid-servant Emilia (Villain Iago's wife). Desdemona's love for Othello is intense and she is totally dedicated to him.She reveres him so much that she never opposes or questions her jealous husband who doubts her fidelity and heaps most vulgar and baseless accusations on her. Emilia, on the other hand,is of the opinion that men should be dealt with on 'measure for measure' basis. She angrily questions the one-sided ethics that men can behave as they like but their wives must remain loyal to them without uttering a word of complaint. She bluntly asks that if men start indulging in unrestrained promiscuity, then what is he harm if their women 'cuckold' them sometimes? But the same Emilia sacrifices her life on the sword of her villainous husband Iago in order to expose his guilt and thereby prove the purity and chastity of her mistress Desdemona.
Shakespeare also portrays the contrast between the characters of two girls- Heroine and her friend- from the similar social background. For example, in 'Much ado about Nothing' Beatrice is extrovert, short-tempered, sharp-tongued and quarrelsome whereas Hero is introvert, grave, quiet and simple. In 'As You like It' Rosalind is naughty, playful, forward and given to dominate whereas Celia is quiet, subdued and soft-spoken. Yet, on falling in love she acts swiftly and marries her lover before Rosalind!
All this preamble is necessary to understand Shakespeare's overall thinking about feminine nature, his understanding of the basic driving forces in the woman's mind and how they get affected by the circumstances and what are the specialities of womanly love according to him.
I will now turn to some of his famous daughters.
First, 'Love's Martyr' Juliet..........
- AUTUMN ELIZA
( to be continued over other posts)
For the first time I am presenting on my blog my college-work. This is my submission for our 'Practical Criticism's paper' which was much appreciated. I am thankful to my professor for allowing me to publish this essay on my blog.
Shakespeare's Heroines
I would like to call Shakespeare's heroines as his 'daughters'. Yes, William Shakespeare has created his own unique world filled with many remarkable men and women who are 'alive' even now and many people like me feel these characters much nearer to heart than our own relatives.
Being a girl I am more fascinated by Shakespeare's heroines and feel like having a strong bond with some of them.I call them his 'dear daughters'.His women have varied characters and characteristics. Just see the range! 'Love's martyr' Juliet,'Intelligent beyond her age' Portia ( Merchant of Venice),'Shy, soft-spoken and introvert' Viola (Twelfth Night), 'playful and mischivious' Rosalind (As You Like It), 'Weak and inordinately submissive' Ophelia, 'Pure-hearted but impractical' Desdemona (Othello),'Truthful' Cordelia (King Lear),'Venus-incarnate' Cleopatra, 'Innocent and child of Nature' Miranda (The Tempest), 'Flowerlike' Perdita (The Winter's Tale); and also the most cruel, devilish Regan and Goneril (King Lear) and the very blot on femininity Lady Macbeth!....
Shakespeare was always trying to dive deep into the human psyche and fathom the riddle of human nature and life. He was trying to find answers to many questions: What is the relation between human nature,circumstances and destiny? What is the place of values like love, brotherhood of man, purity, charity, chastity, righteousness, munificence, valour, selflessness etc in life? what is their value in individual behaviour? How far helpful are the beliefs in abstract concepts like heaven, hell and immortality of soul? However, he never preached or championed a particular principle or way of life. In my opinion he was secular and humanist to the core.
On this premise I am going to try to understand some of his 'daughters'. In this context it is pertinent to bear in mind the nature of Shakespeare's time and the lifestyle of women of that period. There was no education for women in those days. almost all the women were illiterate. They were however well trained in crafts and arts like sewing, embroidery,painting, music and dance. There being always war-like atmosphere, women were not able to move freely outdoors.
Yet, Shakespeare recognised the importance and the unique place of the woman in human life and moulded his woman characters accordingly. He knew that the woman is naturally more adoptive, clever, shrewd and cunning. When in love she demonstrates these characteristics more strongly. She is very romantic and dreamy while playing the games of love and equally resolute and capable of highest sacrifice when her love or chastity is challenged. Shakespeare portrayed all these subtle shades of feminine nature through various heroines, their colleagues, nurses, chaperons and even maid-servants. He cleverly juxtaposed girls with exactly opposite thinking to highlight both sides of the woman-nature.
His ideal heroines religiously preserve the purity of love. They are very noble in behaviour and never utter a single bad or 'rustic' or vulgar word which would blot their upbringing. His maid-servants and nurses are somewhat given to sharp tongue yet he never gives them overtly vulgar dialogues as he gives to some of his men in order to create laughter among the audience in the 'pit'. He plays upon the contrast in thinking and behaviour of his heroines and their colleagues, maidservants and nurses most effectively. His heroines are noble, idealistic and given to romanticism, whereas their maid-servants or nurses are extremely realistic, practical and tactful. They are very adoptive and believe in the means which would bring instant results.
For example let us take Desdemona (Othello's wife) and her maid-servant Emilia (Villain Iago's wife). Desdemona's love for Othello is intense and she is totally dedicated to him.She reveres him so much that she never opposes or questions her jealous husband who doubts her fidelity and heaps most vulgar and baseless accusations on her. Emilia, on the other hand,is of the opinion that men should be dealt with on 'measure for measure' basis. She angrily questions the one-sided ethics that men can behave as they like but their wives must remain loyal to them without uttering a word of complaint. She bluntly asks that if men start indulging in unrestrained promiscuity, then what is he harm if their women 'cuckold' them sometimes? But the same Emilia sacrifices her life on the sword of her villainous husband Iago in order to expose his guilt and thereby prove the purity and chastity of her mistress Desdemona.
Shakespeare also portrays the contrast between the characters of two girls- Heroine and her friend- from the similar social background. For example, in 'Much ado about Nothing' Beatrice is extrovert, short-tempered, sharp-tongued and quarrelsome whereas Hero is introvert, grave, quiet and simple. In 'As You like It' Rosalind is naughty, playful, forward and given to dominate whereas Celia is quiet, subdued and soft-spoken. Yet, on falling in love she acts swiftly and marries her lover before Rosalind!
All this preamble is necessary to understand Shakespeare's overall thinking about feminine nature, his understanding of the basic driving forces in the woman's mind and how they get affected by the circumstances and what are the specialities of womanly love according to him.
I will now turn to some of his famous daughters.
First, 'Love's Martyr' Juliet..........
- AUTUMN ELIZA
( to be continued over other posts)
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