Women of Will: The Remarkable Evolution of Shakespeare’s Female Characters

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Description

Women of Will is a fierce and funny exploration of Shakespeare’s understanding of the feminine. Tina Packer, one of our foremost Shakespeare experts, shows that Shakespeare started, in his early comedies, by writing women as shrews to be tamed or as sweet little things with out a independence of thought. The women of the history plays are a lot more interesting, beginning with Joan of Arc. Then, with the unusual Juliet, there’s a dramatic shift: Shakespeare’s women have depth, motivation, and understanding of life more than equal to that of the men. As Shakespeare ceases to write women as predictable caricatures and starts writing them from the inside, his women transform as dimensional, spirited, spiritual, active, and sexual as any of his male characters. Wondering if Shakespeare had fallen in love (Packer considers with whom, and what she may have been like), the writer observes that from Juliet on, Shakespeare’s characters demonstrate that when men and women are equal in status and passion, they are able to—and do—change the world.

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