The Mother, Who Is Not One: Reflections Of Motherhood In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet, The Tempest, And The Taming Of The Shrew

Abstract

The lack of proper motherhood in Shakespeare's plays has been a point of attraction for many feminist critics actively engaged in emphasizing the patriarchal aspect of Shakespeare's plays. This paper aims to analyze motherhood and the lack of mother/mother-figure in The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew through Luce Irigaray's theory of gender and the work of other feminist critics. The issues of gender, father-daughter relations and the reflections of the absent mothers will be discussed. Male/Female Subjectivity will also be questioned, in view of Irigaray's conceptualization of gender by relating it to Subject.

Keywords

• deconstruction
• feminism
• gender
• motherhood
• Irigaray
• Shakespeare