“Better a Shrew than a Sheep?”: Disobedience through Reticence in Shakespeare’s Contrasting Models of Femininity
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Parole chiave

Early modern drama
Shakespeare
Gender studies
Silence
Rhetoric

Come citare

Righetti, B. (2023). “Better a Shrew than a Sheep?”: Disobedience through Reticence in Shakespeare’s Contrasting Models of Femininity. Linguæ & - Rivista Di Lingue E Culture Moderne, 24(2), 7–25. https://doi.org/10.14276/l.v24i2.3879
Received 2023-05-29
Accepted 2023-11-28
Published 2023-12-31

Abstract

Shakespeare’s production has depicted female characters according to a dichotomic model of femininity which distinguishes between a talkative, often shrewish, woman and her silent counterpart (Friedman 1990; Boose 1994; Allen Brown 2003; Rackin 2005; Kamaralli 2012). Still, little attention has been given to female silence and reticence as a site of resistance and potential subversiveness of patriarchal control (Luckyj 2002).

The present paper analyses two couples of opposite models of female linguistic attitudes – Kate and Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew (1593) and Portia and Jessica in The Merchant of Venice (1595) – to show how silent unruliness may provide women with a safer means to disrupt the patriarchal notion of obedience while avoiding the threatful label of ‘shrew’.

https://doi.org/10.14276/l.v24i2.3879
PDF (English)
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Copyright (c) 2024 Beatrice Righetti