All's Well That Ends Well | Gender Issues and Desires
In this selection, David McCandless examines Helena as a desiring subject wth the masculine gaze and the "masculine privilege of choice" in selecting Bertram for her husband. McCandless rejects the characterization of Helena as a "two-faced manipulative manhunter."
The starting point for this essay is Susan Snyder's recent characterization of All's Well as a "deconstructed fairy tale": lurking beneath the folkloric narrative of the poor physician's daughter who deploys magic and cunning in order to overcome a dashing count's disdainful resistance are the unrepresentable specters of female sexual desire and male sexual dread. Indeed, the play invests the fairy-tale motifs that W. W. Lawrence believes undergird All's Well—"The Healing of the King" and "The Fulfillment of the Tasks"—with potent erotic subtexts. In adapting "The Healing...
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