... to do so, and further, that she refused to explain or defend herself and was willing to risk alienation from her beloved son all suggest that Gertrude was a bold and brave woman who was strong enough to challenge social norms by rejecting them altogether. It is not necessary to judge Gertrude's actions, or those of the other female characters who have ... , morally questionable, Shakespeare challenged the reader to come to his or her own conclusions. This writer concludes that the four characters who were examined here contested gender norms and opened new possibilities for themselves by...

• Word Count: 2208
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Graduate

... as a man writes. Educational institutions began to open up to women and eventually all female universities arose and with this there became a women's writing tradition, a tradition that started with a few brave women who fought for their rights to write in the literary form but they also fought as the right to be treated as human beings, furthermore in the 19th and ... ...

• Word Count: 1471
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Graduate

... a distorted manifestation of Elizabethan court and the Queen herself, one angle presenting a warped realm, the other a cautionary tale to his dismissive monarch. The body politic is a concept born in a platonic world of ideals, eternal and a paradigm of political leadership, magnanimity, entirely separate from the body natural, this division enabled Elizabeth to disassociate her role as Queen from her inferior female body ... of what England's female monarch could aspire to. However, it is certain that conscious or not, direct similarities between the Queen's two bodies and Cleophila ar...

• Word Count: 1452
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Graduate