Acknowledging Female Stereotypes in Much Ado About Nothing Essay Example

Acknowledging Female Stereotypes in Much Ado About Nothing Women in the Elizabethan age were extremely repressed and discriminated against. Most would not have gone to school or received any type of formal education. They were not allowed to vote, own property, or freely voice their opinions. They were seen as the property of a man, subject to his wants, needs, and not allowed to have their own; men held extremely stereotypical views of their female counterparts that helped them justify the way they treated them. Shakespeare exposes many of these injustices and biases in his stage plays, which are still commonly read and performed today. In Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio moves from seeing women (specifically Hero) as goddesses and wives to adulterers, and then back again to his original views. Claudio initially views Hero according to the established stereotypes, in Act 1, Scene 1 as property. When first speaking of Hero, he refers to her as the “daughter of Signor Leonato;” while this appears to be simply for identification purposes, he actually relinquishes the power of her name to her guardian (1. 1. 119). Instead of calling her by her given name, Hero, Claudio names her in relation to her more powerful male owner. He goes on to ask Benedick if she is a “modest young lady,” not wondering only if she is sweet, but if she is literally a virgin (1. 1. 121). A woman's virginity was extremely valuable in Elizabethan England, and determined her worth as a potential wife. This outright inquiry into her purity foreshadows the later scandal surrounding it. Benedick asks Claudio if he would buy her, and Claudio responds with a seemingly noble hypothetical question: “Can the world buy such a jewel?” (1 1 134). While his question seems to imply that she is so valuable that the entire world's money could not purchase her, it still perpetuates the stereotype that women are pieces of property, albeit very beautiful and expensive ones. Later in the same scene, Claudio