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Shae Saffell

Dr. Joanna Huh

ENGL 3006

26 April 2023

Why You Should Listen to Women: an Analysis of Shakespearean Female Characters’ Effect on

their Play’s Genre

Shakespearean plays are some of the most well-known and well-loved plays to exist in

modern theater. While there are four genres of Shakespeare’s plays to exist, it is the tragedies

and comedies that take center stage in modern culture. The division of a play into a comedy or

tragedy can be a simple thing: comedies end in marriages and happy endings while tragedies end

in death. Of course, that’s only one set of criteria to divide a play’s genre by. One other way to

determine how a play will end is to focus on the female characters within it—and if they’re

listened to. I argue that the genre of Shakespearean plays hinges on if the female characters are

listened to by the men. In the case of Othello and Titus Andronicus, they become tragedies

because the women’s thoughts and concerns are ignored. In The Tempest and The Merchant of

Venice, they become comedies when the women are listened to.

Othello is one of the most obvious cases of the tragedy that ensues when a woman is not

listened to. While the focus of suspected infidelity is an indicator of the play’s leanings towards

tragedy, it isn’t a given. As shown in The Merchant of Venice’s last act ‘ring plot,’ accused and

suspected infidelity can exist in a Shakespearean comedy. Considering the coexistence of

infidelity and comedy, the death of Desdemona at the hands of her husband is purely the result of

her protests of innocence being constantly dismissed.

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Even during the first confrontation in which Othello accuses her of infidelity, Desdemona

denies it: “If to preserve this vessel for my lord / From any other foul unlawful touch / Be not to

be a strumpet, I am none” (Oth. 4.2.96-98). Throughout the play, Desdemona is ardent in her

innocence. From the first time Othello brings up the rumors of infidelity to her final moments,

Desdemona insists that she “never loved Cassio” (Oth. 5.2.74). “The Women’s Voices in

‘Othello’: Speech, Song, Silence”, an article by Eamon Grennan, even the method of

Desdemona’s is cited as an example of Desdemona’s voice being silenced and ignored. Grennan

states, “We see the [murder] itself as simply an attempt to stop her voice, to smother speech that

would otherwise make Othello revise his belief, his self.” When Desdemona is smothered by

Othello, she is robbed of both her voice and life.

While she’s constant in her defense, Desdemona is not the only person who vouches for

her innocence. Emilia is also a supporter of her innocence. When Othello questions her about the

relationship between Desdemona and Cassio, Emilia insists she was always present when the two

interacted and Desdemona never sent her away. She defends Desdemona as “the purest of [all

men’s] wives” (Oth. 4.2.19). Even with the testimony of Desdemona’s near-constant companion,

Othello can’t bring himself to believe the women around him. He calls Emilia “a simple bawd /

That cannot say as much” and dismisses her completely (Oth. 4.2.22-23). By choosing to believe

the rumors Iago is feeding him over the claims of Desdemona and Emilia, Othello causes the

demise of both women.

When Emilia is murdered by her husband, it’s because she is finally listened to by the

men around her. When she informs Gratiano, Montano, and Othello about the handkerchief plot

orchestrated by Iago, Othello demonstrates his belief in her words by attempting to attack Iago.

It’s this action—proof that Emilia’s accusations are being seen as true—that causes her murder.
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Her lack of loyalty hadn’t been a surprise to him. After giving him the handkerchief, Emilia has

second thoughts: “Give’t me again. Poor lady, she’ll run mad / When she shall lack it” (Oth.

3.3.365-366). Iago had known of Emilia’s reluctance to aid in his plan but didn’t see it as worthy

of concern. While her previous attempts at hindering Iago’s plan had failed at the dismissal of

the men around her, it’s their ultimate belief that lets her succeed over him. It’s also their belief

that condemns her.

From the opening scene of Titus Andronicus, the play is destined to be a tragedy. As a

fitting start for one of Shakespeare’s most violent works, a son of the captured Goth leader is

sacrificed for the souls of Titus’s sons. However, even though it’s his death that is the catalyst

for the revenge plot to unfold, it’s the moments preceding it that doom the play to tragedy.

Tamora begs for her son’s life to be spared and is callously ignored by the victorious Titus:

“Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge. / Thrice-noble Titus, spare my first-born son” (Tit.

1.1.119-120). If he had listened to Tamora’s pleas for mercy, the bloody plot for revenge that

unfolds throughout the play wouldn’t have existed.

In retaliation for the metaphorical loss of her voice, Tamora then encourages her two sons

to steal the literal voice of Lavinia. As Lavinia pleads for Tamora’s mercy in a scene parallel to

the opening of the play, Tamora dismisses her, stating that “[she] will not hear her speak” (Tit.

2.3.137). This wish of Tamora’s is repeated throughout the scene and finally confirmed by her

son, Chiron. Before Lavinia is dragged off-stage to be raped and mutilated, Chiron tells her,

“Nay, then, I’ll stop your mouth” (Tit. 2.3.185). With that, Chiron and Demetrius fulfill their

mother’s wish of stopping Lavinia’s speech—with the loss of her tongue, Lavinia is rendered

mute.
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The moment Lavinia loses the ability to speak is when any chance of reconciliation in

Titus Andronicus is lost. As one of two named female characters in Titus Andronicus, Lavinia

holds an amount of power in the play’s ending and subsequent genre. The other half of the

equation, Tamora, is determined to see her desire for revenge to its end. With Lavinia robbed of

her voice, she cannot counteract the brutal cycle of revenge that Tamora sets into action. Lavinia

is an outlier in the sense of the violence imposed on her; though it is Chiron and Demetrius who

inflict it, the violence is at the behest of Tamora. Because Tamora experiences her voice being

silenced by Titus, she inflicts the same fate on his daughter. With that act, Tamora holds all the

power of deciding if the play will end in tragedy.

Despite the loss of her voice, Lavinia manages to find ways to communicate. She uses the

story of Philomela to communicate what happened to her and confirms Titus’s question:

“Ravished and wronged as Philomela was, / Forced in the ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods?”

(Tit. 4.1.54-55). Lavinia even manages to use Marcus’s staff to write the names of her attackers

in the sand. Consequently, with her insistence on being recognized and seen, Lavinia takes back

a piece of her autonomy. She can have the truth of what was done to her acknowledged by her

family and gain their understanding.

However, her rudimentary forms of communication cannot convey her true feelings and

desires. She is only capable of making noise that the men in her family guess the meaning of.

Molly Easo Smith dissects those unintelligible noises in her paper “Spectacles of Torment in

Titus Andronicus” with a quote from Elaine Scarry:

In her inarticulate vocality, Lavinia visibly illustrates a connection between language and

violence that Scarry underscores: "Physical pain does not simply resist language but
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actively destroys it, bringing an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the

sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned.” (Easo Smith 327).

While Lavinia can communicate in simple forms, she can’t use language to accurately express

herself. Even if, after the loss of her voice, Lavinia wanted to stop the plans for revenge the male

members of her family articulate, there is no way for her to convey those desires. She’s confined

to the wishes of her family until she’s permanently silenced in death by her father.

In contrast to the Shakespearean tragedies covered in the previous paragraphs, the male

characters in The Tempest listen to the only female character present. Though the power dynamic

between Miranda and Prospero is skewed, as most daughter and father relationships are, it isn’t

one where Prospero is in full control. After seeing the titular tempest that her father creates,

Miranda asks him to end the storm and “allay [the waters]” (Temp. 1.2.2). Prospero obeys his

daughter’s wishes. When Miranda speaks to him, Prospero listens to her.

While Miranda is often seen singularly as a pawn in her father’s plan to reclaim his

throne and title, she is not strictly obedient to him. When Ferdinand asks her name, Miranda

gives it to him though she has “broken [Prospero’s] hest to say so” (Temp. 3.1.46). Even her

conversation with Ferdinand is going against her father’s wishes. Miranda tells him, “But I

prattle / Something too wildly, and my father’s precepts / I therin do forget” (Temp. 3.1.68-70).

Though she claims that she’s simply forgetting her father’s orders in her excitement of seeing

another man, Miranda is unrepentant of disobeying her father and continues to do so.

By the end of the scene, she’s engaged to Ferdinand. Miranda is even the one to clarify

their talk of marriage when Ferdinand does not say it outright—she asks him if he will be “[her]

husband, then” (Temp. 3.1.105). Miranda is the one to initiate the talk of betrothal between

herself and Ferdinand without any mention of it from Prospero. Even after being explicitly told
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to not speak to Ferdinand, Miranda engages herself to him. While her actions align with her

father’s hidden agenda, Miranda has no way of knowing that. The article “Seduction and Service

in ‘The Tempest’” by Melissa E. Sanchez examines Miranda’s accidental obedience to her

father. Sanchez states, “…[Miranda’s] self-betrothal to Ferdinand [suggests] that even if her

actions accord with Prospero’s she is not an inert vessel for them.” It is only by happenstance

that her desires coincide with Prospero’s.

Miranda is not only unafraid to speak truthfully to her father but also to her future

husband. This confidence speaks to how Prospero welcomes his daughter’s opinions and likely

had done so while raising her. When playing chess with Ferdinand, Miranda is quick to call him

on his lies to her: “Sweet lord, you play me false” (Temp. 5.1.200). Even after he tries to soothe

her, Miranda assures him that she “would call it fair play” (Temp. 5.1.204). By admitting her

willingness to deceive, Miranda refuses to lie about her nature to her husband. As stated in the

article “Rape and Romanticization of Shakespeare’s Miranda” by Jessica Slights, “Her moments

of domestic defiance are brief, but they constitute a repeated challenge to the dynastic

preoccupations of the men who rule her world.” Even if Miranda’s rebellion is seen through

quiet movements and words, it is still there to be witnessed and listened to by the men around

her.

The Merchant of Venice, with its parallels to Othello, is a play that has a large amount of

potential to end in death. The ones who save the play from its potential descent into tragedy are

the female characters in it. Specifically, Portia and Jessica are both offered an amount of

autonomy over their fates. Portia manages to find a loophole in her father’s posthumous wishes

for her marriage, and Jessica can escape her father’s house to decide her future. Portia extends

that control over her life into the narrative. She, along with Nerissa, is the one who saves
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Antonio from dying at Shylock’s hand. Their later jokes of infidelity are met with humor and

immediate belief by their husbands. Without the male characters listening to the women, The

Merchant of Venice has multiple avenues that could lead to the deaths commonly seen in

Shakespearean tragedy.

When Jessica expresses her desire to escape her father’s house, she’s able to, which

prevents a tragic fate. With the help of a male character, Jessica can leave without any large

consequences to her. When Lorenzo explains the escape to Gratiano, he reveals that Jessica

planned it: “She hath directed / How I shall take her from her father’s house” (MV 2.4.33-34).

With Jessica as the mastermind behind her escape, Lorenzo proves how willing he is to listen to

her. If he hadn’t taken her concerns over living in her father’s house seriously, the fate of Jessica

could easily become a tragedy. Shakespeare has shown how the fates of separated lovers tend to

end; as shown in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra, they usually end in death by

suicide.

Portia, while seemingly bound by her dead father’s wishes, manages to exert control over

her future marriage. The game her father devised to win her a proper suitor is, at face value, a

fair game. Assumedly, Portia would have no control over who chose the correct casket. She,

however, finds a way to influence the game in her favor. For most of her suitors, she gives them

the bare instructions with a simple “make your choice” (MV 2.7.3). With Bassanio, Portia

demands a song to be played for him while he chooses. The song, a hint by Portia on which

casket is the right choice, ends just as he picks the correct one. Before the song begins, Portia

tells Bassiano to listen to “those dulcet sounds in break of day / That creep into the dreaming

bridegroom’s ear / And summon him to marriage” (MV 3.2.53-55). By giving Bassanio, the
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suitor Portia prefers, a hint on which casket to pick, Portia sways the game that holds her choice

of husband captive. She’s able to make sure her desires are fulfilled in the game’s outcome.

When Antonio defaults on his loan to Shylock, it is Portia, with Nerissa’s help, that saves

him. Disguised as a man, Portia enters as a Doctor of Laws who has come to judge Shylock’s

case against Antonio. It is only because of her intervention that Antonio is saved from losing a

pound of flesh—and likely his life. When Shylock attempts to enact his revenge on Antonio,

Portia reminds him of a technicality in the bond: “Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of

flesh, / But in the cutting it, it thou dost shed / One drop of Christian blood, the lands and goods /

Are by the laws of Venice confiscate / Unto the state of Venice” (MV 4.1.321-325). This

technicality forces Shylock to give up his ideas of revenge on Antonio and saves the merchant’s

life.

The fifth act of The Merchant of Venice is where the possibility of the play becoming a

tragedy is renewed. To reveal their hidden identities as the lawyer and clerk in Venice, Portia and

Nerissa tease their husbands with the idea of being cuckolded. When asked by Bassanio how she

managed to get her ring back, she answers, “Pardon me, Bassanio, / For by this ring, the doctor

lay with me” (MV 5.1.277-278). Only a few lines later, Portia clarifies that she was the doctor

and was never unfaithful. As seen in Othello, the potential of death after a woman commits

marital infidelity is a possibility. If Bassanio and Gratiano hadn’t believed their wives when they

explained how the rings had truthfully come back into their possession, The Merchant of Venice

could’ve ended in their deaths.

By having the male characters listen to women in the narrative, Shakespearean plays can

avoid becoming tragedies. Conversely, tragedies become tragedies when the female characters

are ignored by their male counterparts. In my argument, I have only covered how it functions in
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two of the Shakespearean genres. I have also only covered four plays within those genres due to

length and time constraints. How my argument stands up in histories or the more modern genre

of Shakespeare’s problem plays, or other comedic or tragic plays remains to be seen. To address

a common counterargument when Shakespeare’s female characters are mentioned: female

characters don’t have to be perfect representations of women to be integral to the narrative—or

the genre of the play.

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Works Cited

Easo Smith, Molly. “Spectacles of Torment in Titus Andronicus.” Studies in English Literature,

1500-1900, vol. 36, no. 2, 1996, pp. 315–331., https://www.jstor.org/stable/450951.

Grennan, Eamon. “‘The Women's Voices in ‘Othello’: Speech, Song, Silence.” Shakespeare

Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3, 1987, pp. 275–292., https://www.jstor.org/stable/2870503.

Sanchez, Melissa E. “Seduction and Service in ‘The Tempest.’” Studies in Philology, vol. 105,

no. 1, 2008, pp. 50–82., https://www.jstor.org/stable/20464307.

Shakespeare, William. Othello from The Folger Shakespeare. Ed. Barbara Mowat, Paul

Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Folger Shakespeare Library.

https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/othello/read/.

Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus from The Folger Shakespeare. Ed. Barbara Mowat, Paul

Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Folger Shakespeare Library.

https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/titus-andronicus/read/.

Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice from The Folger Shakespeare. Ed. Barbara

Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Folger Shakespeare Library.

https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/the-merchant-of-venice/read/.

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest from The Folger Shakespeare. Ed. Barbara Mowat, Paul

Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Folger Shakespeare Library.

https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/the-tempest/read/.

Slights, Jessica. “Rape and Romanticization of Shakespeare's Miranda.” Studies in English

Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 41, no. 2, 2001, pp. 357–379.,

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1556193.