Bound: The Story of a Elizabethan Womanhood

Last week I extrapolated on how the character Juliet conformed to the gender role assigned to her by Elizabethan society.   Since the film Shakespeare in Love took the creative liberties to create a female lead (Viola De Lesseps) by whom Juliet was based what implied to have been based on, the film echoed the embedded boundaries and expectations that defined a women’s role in Elizabethan society.  Like Juliet, Viola De Lesseps ‘s destiny was written at her conception when the double XX chromosomes were fused.  Viola was to live a life of obedience, obscurity, and subservience to the man the ruled her, whether it be her father or her husband.  She was bartered off to Lord Wessex like a piece of property, and Wessex was assured that he could “send her back” if she did not turn out to be “fertile” and “obedient”  (Shakespeare in Love).
Viola was passionate about the poetry of words and theatre, and “just wanted to be an actor” (ibid).  Disinterested in the bores of court, she felt a kinship with artists and writers.  Her call to the theatre was desperate enough that she bound her breasts and auditioned for Romeo disguised as a male.  However, she could not escape the yoke of her destiny—her gender choked her like a noose and John Webster “outed” her and forced The Rose to halt production due to “lewdness” and “indecency.”  It seems foreign to think that the mere presence of a woman on the stage was consider a conspiracy in offensiveness.

Viola was a romantic who believed in love, but was also pragmatic.  Unlike Juliet, she did not assert her agency by changing the course of action, as it concerned her impending marriage.  She accepted was most modern post-feminist Western woman would consider in no way acceptable: that she had no choice.  What I find to be most interesting is that while most Elizabethan woman had no rights, the country was ruled by one venerable woman, Queen Elizabeth.  In the film, men of all statuses were shaking in their boots in her presence, and she even stated “I know who I am,” (ibid)by which she meant that she was fully aware of her power.  However, the only way to maintain the elusiveness of her power was by being “unsexed,” in Lady MacBeth fashion; the Queen chose to be ambiguous in her sexuality, so as not to make herself weakened, nurturing, and vulnerable.  She maintained her virginity (at least to the public) did not give her power a way to anyone.  Quite a contrast from the average woman of her day, won’t you agree?

Work Cited

Shakespeare in Love. Dir. John Madden. Perf. Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Judi Dench, and Ben Affleck.  Miramax, 1998. Film.