Gender Roles in Much Ado About Nothing

Gender Roles in Much Ado About Nothing and Trifles

Today, gender roles have become far more flexible than as recently as 50 years ago. Women today can enter management positions, have focused careers, and expect salaries on the same level as those of men. Indeed, some women have proved themselves to be as competent, or more so, in leadership positions as men. At the same time, however, women are free to choose for themselves the lives they want, and some prefer lives as home makers and mothers. Society today is far more tolerant of women who choose either a career, homemaking, or a balance of both to live their lives. This is why it is so interesting to examine plays from earlier times, when assigned gender roles were far more rigid. Authors such as Shakespeare in "Much Ado About Nothing" and Susan Glaspell in "Trifles" offer significant comment on the social values of their times with regard to gender roles. With the perspective of today, critics can also add their own interpretations of these roles when reading such plays. In both plays, women and men have commonly accepted gender roles, but it is also true that some of the women break the norms imposed by these roles to great dramatic effect.

In Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" Claudio and Hero are the most obvious examples of traditionally assigned gender roles in the play. Claudio is the typical strapping young lad, a nobleman who is well-respected. In other words, he is a typically prince-like character to sweep the princess-like Hero off her delicate feet. Hero, on the other hand, is a sweet, sensitive, and kind woman. She plays the typical role of her gender and age, pining for marriage, and delighted when it presents itself in the form of Claudio. The two are in love almost as soon as they meet for the first time. Neither Claudio nor Hero break their traditional gender roles, even in the face of conflict.

When Claudio is deceived into believing that Hero is unfaithful, he immediately jumps to the conclusion that it must be true, again in typical male fashion. When he goes even further by humiliating Hero on their wedding day, she in turn responds in a typical female way by having an emotional breakdown. She does absolutely nothing to defend herself and neither she nor her family does anything active to uncover the truth. Instead, she submits to her father's decision to pretend that she is dead from grief and shock. The gender role assigned to Hero is reinforced by the fact that nobody, including Claudio, finds this deception difficult to believe.

What is somewhat surprising is Benedick's reaction to Claudio's treatment of Hero. The former challenges the latter to a dual. This signifies a break of gender role, since he is on the side of Beatrice, Hero's cousin. Beatrice and Benedick, who ultimately also fall in love, are less typical of the assigned or traditional gender roles of the day.

Beatrice is a strong female figure, extremely intellectual, and very unwilling to be constricted by marriage, especially to a controlling man. Indeed, she is happy never to marry or to marry only when she finds a partner who is truly equal. Despite their many word skirmishes, this is what Benedick becomes to her; a completely equal partner.

What is interesting is that Beatrice breaks out of her atypical strong female character on two occasions; first by opening herself to the relatively weakness and vulnerability created by romantic love, and second by her reaction to Hero's humiliation. In Act IV scene i, for example, she wishes to be a man so she could avenge Hero's undeserved dishonor (line 312 -- 318). Here, she acknowledges that, for all her intellectual prowess and strength, she is unable, as a woman, to defend the honor of another woman. This is a role that Benedick is willing to fulfill for her out of his love. Hence, even though Beatrice is mentally very strong, she admits that she can do nothing but "die" with "grieving" because she is a woman.

In the wake of Hero's tragedy, Benedick and Beatrice finally acknowledge their love for each other. Although this creates for them a reversion to more typical gender roles, Beatrice maintains her atypical female strength by entering into one of her word wars with Benedick before finally agreeing to marry him.

In the end, when Hero's name is cleared, all the main characters resume more typical gender roles by marrying; Hero begins her life with Claudio and Beatrice with Benedick. What is interesting about this play and the way in which the main characters handled their conflict situations is the fact that, today, men and women would be far more active in uncovering the truth of the situation. The play and its premise therefore creates an interesting platform to examine the typical social values and attached gender roles of the day.

A more recent example of a play in which gender roles are a factor is Susan Glaspell's "Trifles." Women's roles are, somewhat derisively, described as being mainly concerned with "trifles" such as running the household, quilting a blanket, and preparing meals. Men, in turn, regard their roles as important and vital to ensure the smooth functioning of society by means of values such as justice. Glaspell describes these roles mainly by means of the male characters, who appear to be the only ones interested in making such clearly delineated comparisons between the nature of women's and men's work.

The play concerns the recently widowed Mrs. Wright, who is accused of murdering her husband. Throughout the play, she is described as fulfilling her role as a woman by mostly remaining within the accepted boundaries of her gender. She married at an acceptably young age, for example, after which she conducted her duties as a wife with as much care as she could.

Her husband, in turn, was the typical "hard" male, while not being abusive to his wife, but significantly unkind. Typically of women during the day, Mrs. Wright, once a bright and happy young girl who loved to sing, found herself trapped in a house from which the joy has been sucked not only by the unkindness of her husband, but also by the lack of children and the potential joy they could have brought. One might therefore see the canary she finally acquired as symbolic of a minor attempt to escape the role imposed upon her by her husband specifically and society in general.

Even this small attempt at brightening her home fails, however, as it is later revealed that her husband has killed it. As a result, Mrs. Wright is the only woman in the play who is finally driven to completely breaking out of the typical expectation from her gender. She murders her husband, not only because he has killed the canary, but because he has killed her spirit, symbolized by the canary. Hence, the first man, Mr. Hale, who finds her sitting quietly in her rocking chair while her husband lies strangled upstairs, exclaims that she was behaving and looking "queer."