FEMINISM AND SOCIAL CLASS IN SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES

Abstract

The study examines female agency and class structure in the comedies of William Shakespeare's Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. From a feminist perspective, the study prepares to see how female characters navigate, resist, and at times subvert patriarchal constraints and conversely how class distinctions inform those actions, relationships, and ultimate fates. Shakespearean heroines such as Beatrice, Rosalind, and Viola are intelligent, witty, and resilient in the manipulation of gender roles for the fulfilment of their goals, but many times those means entail deception, disguise, or the intervention of male authority figures, thereby legitimizing the extent of female empowerment therein. Noting the intersection of gender and class, it investigates lower-class women such as Margaret and Audrey, who tend to have less agency than their upper-class counterparts and lead a life confined within traditionally defined roles. The argument is made that, despite allowing for occasional acts of female resistance and autonomy, in general, Shakespeare's comedies reassert traditional social hierarchies since most of their plotlines end in marriages that restore the patriarchal and class structures.