Women on the Margin

a Critical Analysis of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Abstract

Although many scholarly writings investigated William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611), a large number of these studies analyzed the play from the perspective of the colonial power, especially the relationship between the European colonizers and the colonized natives. In other words, the play was normally analyzed along with the postcolonial theory. In case, a few scholars investigated the play from the feminist approach, their coverage is insufficient because they mostly focus on one female character. This paper is intended to examine the marginalization of women in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, paying attention to the whole female the characters in the text: Miranda, Sycorax and Claribel. Since the analysis is supposed to uncover the patriarchal ideology that dominates the text, I have appropriated the feminist theory to frame my discussions. The paper concludes that though The Tempest is about knowledge, power and usurpation, its context possesses an obvious patriarchal ideology as seen in the author’s portrayals of the three female characters: Miranda, Sycorax and Claribel. For instance, those women are depicted as body, emotional, naïve, foul witch and sometimes as a political commodity. In other words, the research confirms that The Tempest is loaded with misogyny which stands beyond marginalizing the female characters. This marginalization uncovers Shakespeare’s viewpoint of women and it might reflect the English society’s attitude towards women at the Elizabethan era.