A fluid variable : an analysis of femininity and the female in Shakespeare's plays

Abstract

For many peoµle, especially In the West, being 'female' constitutes a particular biological anatomy and behaviour which should go with it. However, Michel Foucault rejects the notion of a pre-set 'Inneressence'. He suggests that there is no 'real' identity 'within' an individual. Rather, each individual communicates within interaction with others. It is a fluid communication and a 'technique' which can be deployed. In this thesis, Shakespearean female characters will be examined by means of an analysis of their individual communications and interactions with other characters around them. In turn, Western assumptions about the female gender as critiqued by Mary Hawkesworth shall be viewed as cultural constructs. The thesis shall problematise the assumption that there are only two genders in which gender is invariant with genitalia as an essential sign of gender. The thesis shall also argue the fixedness of the status of the male-female dichotomy and that the acquisition of a male or female 'identity' is a natural biological imposition and not a matter of choice by the individual. The examination of Shakespeare's females' interactions shall corroborate Judith Butler's disagreement with feminist theory that women are (not just) a group with common characteristics and interests but rather a 'shifting and contextual phenomenon [acting as] a relative point of convergence among culturally and historically specific sets of relations' (Butler 2007: 14). These female characters, instead, portray their femininity through fluid variables which shift and change in different contexts and times. Rutler's Performance theory shall be applied to the gender variables that inform Shakespeare's dramatic texts. Butler argues that Gender Performance is an active process in which everyone invariably participants. Therefore an individual's choice lies not in whether he or she participates in this process, but rather in what structure and capacity that participation will take place. It is the expression that one decides to adopt at a particular time and not a pre-set universal 'who you are' or 'essence' which determines one's identity. Butler herself, in her book Gondor Trouble, states that 'identity is performatively constituted by the very "expresssions" are said to be Its results' (2007: 34). In light of this theory, Shakespeare's female character's actions shall be observed as well as the way these actions shift the variables of their femininity. By examining characters such as Cleopatra, Ophelia, Katarina and Rosalind, amongst many others, the form (rather than the cause) of the nature of their gender performance shall help extract recurrent variables (not groups) present. Moreover the shifting of these variables and how most characters inter-link and pertain to more than one variable, will be investigated. An analysis of Shakespeare's plays will highlight a 'dramatic structure' within which female characters operate, behave, and interact, with other characters. This 'dramatic structure' will be considered, after Butler, as an arena of the active process within which human subjects operate. The analysis will then lead to an assessment of the identity shift of these characters which in turn highlights what Butler calls the 'creation of identity through expression'. Past Shakespearean theatrical performances shall also he invoked in order to illuminate the treatment of femininity and identity in performance. The thesis aims to apply the shifting of these variables to Butler's Gender as Performance theory. That Is, how these Shakespearean females, through dramatic effect, can potentially, and in a fluid manner, reinvent their own identity 'as socially constituted subject(s) in specifiable contexts' (2007:14).