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Connections Between Female Sexuality And Hell: Misogyny In Shakespeare’S Sonnets, Jordan Kohn-Foley

USF St. Petersburg campus Master's Theses (Graduate)

This paper explores the primary way misogyny is exhibited in Shakespeare’s Sonnets and finds that it is through a connection between the female body and sexuality with Hell. The link between the two continues a long-standing literary tradition which includes medieval Catholicism, and is also expressed by writers including Petrarch, Chaucer, and Boccaccio. Shakespeare continues this tradition in the Sonnets, and it becomes the primary way that women are presented in a misogynistic manner within them. This conflation of female genitalia with Hell furthers early modern anxieties regarding the control of women’s bodies, as well as the expression of lust …