From Shakespeare division of experience

INTRODUCTION

The basic distinction in human social order, since ever, has been GENDER which has determined ROLE and FUNCTION.
From this distinction it derives:
Division of labor and values
Thinking and life structures
Habitual consciousness of two sex classes
social roles are principles, expressions of a natural law, enforced by divine sanction (nature and deity)
conditioning and training led to a division of labor, considered natural in most of the Western world

The fundamental split in human thinking is not gender, but a perception of humans as SEPARATE and DIFFERENT from
NATURE (human evolution was made by both male and female to survive = superiority on animals different is better).
Women, unlike men, because their human natural functions (menstruation, giving birth, nursing,) seem to be closer to
nature, which is initially worshipped (venerato) as divine.
Human life circumstances, led to a valuing separation from nature as an absolute good, so the women closure to nature
became a stigma rather than a miracle, a part of what must be controlled.

Women divinity: worst writing is Genesis story Adams rib (costola) which shows misogyny and oppression, like the greek
Myth of Pandora, which blames woman for human condition.

Man is the image of the HUMAN, controlling all the nature including Eve, whom Adam also gave name. the proper relation
man/nature (which includes women) is DOMINION, CONTROL, POWER OVER. This is absurd because:

Women are not closer to nature than men: physical processes are identical (involuntary and uncontrollable).
Pregnancy and nursing are only an additional ability of women, not an impediment

Humans had never control over nature: they only have 2 controlling over nature: to subdue it or to kill it, but full
subjugation of earth brings to its destruction.

Myth of human dominion in the Nature control: mainly in the Western world and Judaic-Hellenistic-Christian thinking.

POWER TO TAKE: became a value because ownership is a good, and non-ownership is precarious. Since the natures last
power (death) cant be totally vanquished, humans create structures that will survies forever (monuments, empires,
poems, institutions). As power over nature increased, polarization between sexes (man/woman) also increase.

Pythagoras numerical symbology (6
th
century b.c.):
ONE man / light / good / order / right / rights
TWO woman / diviseveness / chaos / darkness / evil / magic / sinister / left hand

Throughout Western culture: distinction male/female, yin/yang POWER (God) and STABILITY (permanent order) have
became the two highest values on Earth for millennia.

Definition GENDERS PRINCIPLES: because no other term is as precise, in describing how human have conceptualized
their experience from the past three millennia. The expression of this idea, is found in every human tradition (language,
law, religion, art, philosophy, science), but especially in the greatest artist of literature.

SHAKESPEARE thinks to male/female in term of very different creatures in needs, desires, actions, judged by different
standards:
Beginning career: deep respect for masculine quality, deep suspicion of feminine once
after Two Gentlemen of Verona: he admire feminine qualities
end: fear of the masculine principle (power and violence) and idealization of certain aspects of the feminine.
Althought he never deny male legitimacy.

His work attends to harmonized and synthesize opposing qualities of the two genders.





1. THE GENDER PRINCIPLES

Ipothetic scale genders: MAN (ability to kill) WOMEN (giving birth). At the center: qualities are not gender-specific.

MASCULINE PRINCIPLES
Pole of power
FEMININE PRINCIPLES (male perception as menace)

Only ONE aspect: (uomini limitati)

Power in the world
Proud
Ownership
Physical courage
Authority
Independence
The right
Rights
Legitimacy
Justice, Law, Order, Force
Individualism
Sex as possession, aggression, rape
Possession as permanence





The Man is the HUMAN, the IMAGE
of the standard.


Target sort of IMMORTALITY
Permanence of experience
transcendence of nature
Protection and ensuring of continuation
of human race
DUALITY (pre-Christian though: Eve, Aphrodite, Kali)

INLAW aspects: benevolent pole of manifestation of nature.
Philosophy of Jesus, then Catholic for the community, but taken over by the Church to
aim power and transcendence, which dominated the Western world:

Birth and nurturing
Compassion (tempered authority)
Mercy (tempered justice)
ability to create Felicity
Acceptance of simple continuation
Present pleasure
Altruism
Sensation, feeling (submitted by though)
Subordination
Relinquishment of power in the world
Impersonal (deny herself for the community)

OUTLAW aspects: malevolent. Pole of sex and pleasure personal satisfaction.
All that male wants to eliminate because subversive and undermining the masculine
principle aspects. Men emphasize inlaw aspects, for their own interest and goals.

Sex as abandonment
Rebellion against every permanency
Possession as pleasure, it is a threat for masculine energies (vital, attractive) aim to
transcendent goals

The Female is NOT HUMAN (anyway unnatural)
superhuman for inlaw aspects
subhuman for outlaw aspects

Target surrender to MORTALITY

The only way to control the feminine principle, is by FISSION inlaw/outlaw aspects.
INLAW: associated with CIVILIZATION (culture, control of the animal man, morality). Natural imagery: moon, sea,
menstruation, menopause, seasons, cycles of nature.

OUTLAW: seen as THREATENING, castrating, destroying the masculine principle. Natural/civilized imagery:
thunder, lighting, cities, industries, farming, human occupation every form of control.

Autonomy is impossible in females, because they are not seen as human, but as part of the nature with/against which
humans operate.

In LITERATURE
MAN: act out human role (= ethical) possibility of change, after erring and experiencing in life.

FEMALE: act out the type (= mythical, archetype, stereotype) no possibility of changing, nor after suffering or
having inflicted hurt. They can perform action that change their worlds (Medea, Elektra, Lady Macbeth,
Clitemnestra) BUT they themselves dont changes. One dimensional characters, without the possibility to grow up
or get consciousness.

The split in the feminine principle precludes to women the slightest error: when they do something in the outlaw (=
male principles) they are condemned as fiends witches and devils (es: Lady Macbeth).

Need of SYNTHESIS
Because the two genders occupy different conceptual realms, is difficult to relate, but they represent needs and urges
found in all of us. The most common form of arrangement, is to see the masculine principle as dominant.
Feminine principle is accepted in the measure it is inlaw aspect, (=subordinated of masculine) and feared and condemned
in its outlaw aspect.

Shakespeare prefer to reduce multiplicity to unity, to synthetizes the two genders, by taking the widest possible spread of
material and join it together in to a whole. More than any other poet, Shk breathed life (d respiro) into his female
characters, and give body to the principle they represent.
He was tormented by the consequences of power, he knows that themale principles is only destructive and dangerous.

Religious synthesis: the inlaw feminine is above the masculine, considered as ideal (compassion,). Even if it varies from
religion to religion.

2. FORMAL EQUIVALENT of the GENDER PRINCIPLES

MASCULINE WORKS FEMININE WORKS
PERIOD from Shakespeare to middle-late 19
th
century Medieval, 16
th
century, 20
th
century
CHARAC
TERISTIC
Works concerned with masculine principle, are
dominate by a male figure
Works concerned with feminine principle, are built
around a central female figure, although she will not
dominate the action (unlike the masculine does in
masculine works).
THIS
WORKS
ARE...
LINEAR: a narrative which progresses chronogically

TRANSCENDENT: the protagonist has a specific goal
which will/when attained (through wordly means)
place him in a transcendent position [transcendent:
becoming invulnerable in a permanent way]


In such works a clear cosmic order hovers (svolazza) in the
background, which sanctions the masculine claim to
legitimacy and right ( power & moral right)

CIRCULAR and ETERNAL: incidents with no
apparent causal (rational) connection.
Focus on interior experience, sensation, emotion...
( psychological, emotional, associational links)

NO GREAT EXTERNAL GOALS: but depiction of
the texture of life

No strong cosmic order hovering behind the action.
Legitimacy has no meaning
Masc

vs.

Fem.
Wordly structures
1) Permanence
2) Analytic
3) Legitimacy
4) Power & justice
5) individuality

1) Flux, the moment
2) Sensation & emotion
3) Anarchy
4) Love & sex
5) Community

Most literature combines the 2 principles, but one usually dominated:

SPENSERs Faerie Queene:
Books I-II-V masculine (heroes, quests, attainments conquiste...)
Books III-IV feminine (Britomart and damsels in anguish)
Book VI a true synthesis. Courtesy is a synthetic virtue, a combination of hierarchy/status/decorum, with
democracy/concern for the whole/affection)

SIDNEYs Arcadia its a feminine work because of:
Loosely structure
Concerned with love & sex
Action often comically described
The real goal of the heroes is sexual consummation with the princesses (desire outlaw feminine) rather than
marriage (marriage is permanent masculine). In fact, no goal is attained.

SHAKESPEAREs work may be roughly divided into gender categories by division comedy/tragedy in most of his plays he
tries a synthesis.

TRADITION considers serious only drama of character ( legitimate), so it is always masculine even when its main figure
is a woman. Shakespeare never really wrote drama of character, although Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth come close.

Comedies and tragedies deal with IDENTICAL MATERIAL in tragedies events are IRREVOCABLE (world of action)
Comedies and tragedies have SIMILAR EVENTS in comedies events are REVOCABLE (world of language)

1) Tragedy a woman unjustly maligned dies (Desdemona) / Comedy she seems to die (Hero, Hermione)
2) Tragedy a child is murdered (Macduffs son) / Comedy a chil left to die, returns (Perdita)


LANGUAGE

Tragedies Comedies
They present mainly actions (murders,
warfare,...) which cannot be changed, and
also language functions as action.


ex: Lady Macbeth words to Macbeth: fix
her determination to kill Duncan, but also
fix her character IRREVOCABLY

acts are as revocable as language (till language as theme).

Language as THEME turns life upside-down and mocks the beliefs that are the
foundation of Western culture. It suggests that things are not as people say they
are RELATIVITY and AMBIGUITY in human life

REVOCABILITY (conversions, forswearings rinnegare, forgiveness, penitences...)

words/action is true because they are
irrevocable and lead inevitably to DEATH
(ultimate truth)

PLAY with language (word play, equivocation, malapropism, imitation, parody of
literary styles).
It implies DOUBLENESS, even DUPLICITY, because masculine minds (=idiots )
believe that words have fixed meaning, so feelings, an can be fixed, made
permanent, irrevocable. It is equivalent to challenging the masculine principle to
deny it (=idiots ).
Only one truth
Exploit (sfrutta) not a linear truth, but a vertical/circular one (inner truth), through
disguise, word play, revocable pronounce, and changes in feeling and behaviour
Comedy presents the multiple truth, that make up a human being.


Tragedy is CONSTRICTIVE

concentrates on a single course of action
concentrates on a single mode of being
a more sharply defined world

Comedy is EXPANSIVE


Permits entertainment of the most serious questions
without necessarily involve serious consequences

P L O T S
TRAGEDY
focus are on POWER
COMEDY
Although SATIRICAL comedy is far less feminine than Shks romantic
comedy, his COMEDY IS FEMININE
Eventually SUBPLOTS, but are parallels or illuminations of the
major plot, rather than eleborations around themes

Is concerned with the INDIVIDUAL (individualism is the
extreme form of transcendent of nature)
Is linear
Is externally oriented
Is hierarchial

History plays: are primarly masculine, their subject is power-
in-the-world. But they contain more feminine elements than
tragedies because they dont concern only with one character,
but with the ongoing life of a society.

Problem plays: are also mixtures (= one of the reason they are
problematic) but mixed modes are not comfortable for
Shakespeare, raised in a world in which the gender principles
and their formal equivalent were seen as widely separated.

TRAGEDY: Hamlet contains much circular material (as
comedy)

COMEDIES: Troilus and Cressidra / Alls well that ends well /
Measure for Measure: all contain an amount of plotting (as
tragedy) unusual for a Shakespearian comedy
It aims at continuation and procreation
It is concerned with a community and accepting (rather
than be individual and transcendent)
The plays ends with a moment of exaltation: the promise
of marriage NOT the marriage (permanent = masculine)
Multiple figures have a multiplicity of goals
Comic figures want to have pleasure and to survive
None figure, none class, dominate the comedy (anarchic
world) despite the hierarchical class structure within the
characters live
Ex: A midsummer night dream: Artisans are more
important than Hyppolita to the design of the plot

Comedy are circular no strong plots. A plot is a causal
sequence: one step leading irrevocably to another
(comedies move by elaboration)

A midsummer night dream: the 2 plots provide only
an armature for the real action of the play