Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
In The Shape Of A Woman: Behavioral Compliance To Gendered Expectations In The Early Modern Era And The Implications For Human Identity In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Sydney Shamblin
Honors Theses
The purpose of this essay is to examine the role that gender plays in the construction of the human within Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Merry Wives of Windsor. While gender was a vital component of the immaterial essence that distinguished humans from animals, early moderns believed that true internal gender conformity could not exist if it was not accompanied by external expressions of it. Characters in each of these plays fixate on the external proofs of their own gendered identities, and in doing so, they inadvertently reveal that those traits which distinguish humanity are only cultural constructions and learned behavior …