THEME OF GENDER

Question 1

How is gender represented in measure for measure?

Answer 1

• Shakespeare’s discussion of gender throughout the play is reflective of the patriarchal and male hegemonic forces of the Jacobean era.
• Shakespeare tempers orthodox representations of femininity with subversive representations
• Overall, the construction of gender seems to be a recurring dialectic through the play

Question 2

Isabella claims women are a frail as the glasses that they view themselves in. Feminity is a construction made by men, as men are the mirrors women view themselves through.

Answer 2

• Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves/ which are easy broke.. Women help Heaven-men their creation mar in profiting them.”

Question 3

Isabella claims that Claudio will made a man out of her vice as he doesn’t care what she wants or intends to be only that she keeps him alive. Men are made by subordinating women to masculine intention.

Answer 3

Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?”

Question 4

If women do not conform to the prescriptive gender roles of the time they are considered to be deficient, worthless and contemptible.

Answer 4

Why, you are nothing then:
neither maid, widow, nor wife

Question 5

Mariana, for example, appears to be coerced into complying with the Duke’s ruse to seduce Angelo simply because she lacks any acceptable alternative

Answer 5

I am always bound to you

Question 6

Isabella acknowledges her isolation and powerlessness in an incredibly hopeless soliloquy. The moment of realisation of her position in Viennese society is a heart wrenching one

Answer 6

To whom should I complain? Did I tell this, Who would believe me?

Question 7

Isabella subverts normative ideas of femininity. Shakespeare has Isabella acting aggressively toward male figures and rejecting her acceptance as a female heroine.

Answer 7

But man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d;
…….. like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,

Question 8

Angelo through his obejectifying and dissmissive view of women, reinforces the patriarchal notion of women as passive and subordinate to men, existing solely to fulfill their needs or desires. Highlting the pervasive patriarchal attitudes of the time that work to marginalise women,

Answer 8

“These poor informal women are no more But instruments of some more mightier member”