莎士比亚在《奥赛罗》中的复杂女性观 英语专业毕业设计 毕业论文.doc

Chapter 1 Introduction 1. Research Topic Shakespeare has been recognized as the greatest playwright in British history. In his plays, many female roles created by Shakespeare have a profound impact on the scholars’conception of the aftertime. But strangely, people find that Shakespeare seems to have held a contradictory view on women. In some his plays, women fight bravely against the feudal autocracy and pursue vigorously freedom and equality. But in other plays, the female characters seem to be weak ones or destructive ones. Why does one playwright have such a contradictory concept on women? In the past several decades or centuries, some scholars have studied this strange phenomenon, and they drew the conclusion that in different periods, the features of the female in Shakespeare’s are different. The female concept which supports the freedom of marriage, speaks highly of the humanity liberation, and advocate the love and friendship could be found in the plays of Shakespeare in the first period. Many famous characters like Juliet or Portia are created in this period .Their similarity is bravery in pursuing their love regardless of the pressure from their family. So we regard the view as a bud of “feminism”. But in the second period, Shakespeare changes his female concept completely. In this period, although bravery could be still found in these female characters, but “feminism” is incomplete. The female characters just resist the “father-right” tradition, but when they face “husband-right”, they usually choose to keep silence. Besides, in view of the times one appears in a play and their status in the plays, the female roles are weaker than male roles. We could call the phenomenon as “women-belittling”. 2 Literature Review 2.1 Studies on Women-belittling In Shakespeare’s many plays, the men are thought to be enjoyed the higher position than the women. What’s the reason of that? According to the in-depth study, many academicians believed the main reason was th