Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare | Diane Elizabeth Dreher (essay date 1986)
Diane Elizabeth Dreher (essay date 1986)
SOURCE: "Dominated Daughters," in Domination and Defiance: Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare, The University Press of Kentucky, 1986, pp. 76-95.
[In this essay, Dreher discusses the tragic fates of Ophelia, Hero, and Desdemona maintaining that all three women are victims of patriarchal oppression],
Shakespeare offers three examples of young women dominated by patriarchal expectations. Ophelia, Hero, and Desdemona are victimized by the traditional power structure that identifies women exclusively as childbearers, insisting on a rigid model of chastity to ensure the continuity of pure patrilineal succession. This requirement leaves women highly vulnerable. What matters is not that they are modest, chaste, and obedient, but that men perceive them as such.1 Imprisoned in their passive situation, women cannot actively affirm or defend their honor. The more they seek to be good women,...
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