Narratological Understandings of Gender, Genre, and Speech in Shakespeare's Infidelity Plays
Subsequent Statement of Responsibility
McEachern, Claire
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
UCLA
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2019
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Body granting the degree
UCLA
Text preceding or following the note
2019
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
Shakespeare returns repeatedly to a false infidelity plotline in his plays. In Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, and The Winter's Tale, a chaste woman is wrongly accused of adultery, risking her reputation and her life. I argue that the outcome of each of these plays is effected by the power of "scolding" or "shrewish" women who serve as helper-figures to the wrongfully accused heroine, and particularly by the extent to which the marginalized and critiqued female voice can make itself heard by male figures of authority. A narratological study of this phenomenon reveals significant similarities to our current cultural conversation about women's speech, and provides a deeper understanding of what these plays have to say about speech itself and its power to transform the world, even in the hands of those most marginalized and silenced.