Shakespeare Feminist Criticism

Literature review

Shakespeare has not been looked upon the perspective of feminism as for as our indigenous literary criticism is concerned. So the researcher interested to look at him indigenously by applying a feministic theory.

After concerning with various books and research articles of different authors, the Researcher came to denote a well established literature view. It includes the concept of feminism and feministic perspective according to Shakespeare. Julia Christo (1974) has been conducted various feminist theories. According to her Feminist theory is one of the most progressive and dynamic modes of literary theory. However, there is no precise definition of feminist theory. In

Elaine Showalter (1960) is one of those critics whom highlight the distinction between male and female characters. She wrote as ““I must ‘tell’ Ophelia’s story.”But what can we mean by Ophelia’s story? The story of her life? The story of her betrayal at the hands of her father, brother, lover, court, society? The story of her rejection and marginalization by male critics of Shakespeare? Shakespeare gives us very little information from which to imagine a past for Ophelia. She appears in only five of the play’s twenty scenes; the pre-play course of her love story with Hamlet is known only by a few ambiguous flashbacks. Her tragedy is subordinated in the play; unlike Hamlet, she does not struggle with moral choices or alternatives. Thus another feminist critic, Lee Dewards(1920) concludes that it is impossible to reconstruct Ophelia’s biography from the text: “We can imagine Hamlet’s story without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet.” If we turn from American to French feminist theory, Ophelia might confirm the i impossibility of representing the feminine in patriarchal discourse as other than madness, incoherence, fluidity, or silence. In French theoretical patriarchal language and symbolism, it remains on the side of negativity, absence, and lack. In comparison to Hamlet, Ophelia is certainly a creature of lack. “I think nothing, my lord,” she tells him in the Mousetrap scene, and he cruelly twists her