Women-writes in english literature

Criticism
Shakespeare is deeply and diversely connected with the English reality surrounding him directly, the power of his realism rose above the national framework, which allowed him to embody and resolve in artistic images the most important issues of the historical development of Europe at that time.⁵
In his criticism of the contemporary social structure, Shakespeare constantly exposes obscurantism and the vices of feudalism, but his center of gravity falls on criticism of emerging capitalism, on showing the incompatibility of humanistic ideals with the new bourgeois world of feelings and interests. At the same time, like another great humanist of the era - Cervantes, Shakespeare, in his criticism of bourgeois-capitalist practice, seeks support in noble, partly feudal concepts, but extremely idealized by him, freed, as far as possible, from class limitations and maximally "humanized".
The measure of Shakespeare's hatred for the bourgeois way of life is not his individual attacks against petty-bourgeois vulgarity and heartlessness (for example, in the comedy "As You Like It"); not that Shakespeare colors Angelo (“Measure for Measure”), Malvolio, Shylock with puritanical tones, not that the elegant nobleman Fenton turns out to be the winner in the matchmaking for Anna Page, and not her semi-bourgeois suitors, whom her semi-bourgeois parents impose on her ( "Gossips of Windsor"), etc., but something more essential - a deep and systematic exposure of those features that constitute the very essence and basis of the capitalist order.
One of the main evils that distort human relations, Shakespeare considers greed, greed, the power of gold. When Romeo, having bought poison from the pharmacist, hands him money, he says:
Here is the gold, take it. For human souls
It has worse poison. In this pitiful world
It kills much more
Why is this unfortunate mixture of yours,
Which you are afraid to sell.
Not you to me - I just gave you poison.
In The Merchant of Venice, when Bassanio tries to guess which of the three caskets - in gold, silver or lead - contains the portrait of Portia, he says, referring to the gold casket:
... One of the imaginary truths, so cunningly
Catching in the net even the wisest,
So, I don't need you, gold...
This motif acquires special significance here because the main theme of this play is a demonstration of the monstrous cruelty to which self-interest can bring a person.
We find the same denunciation of wealth as a force that distorts all human relations, including justice, in King Lear, where Lear, having experienced the depth of humiliation and wiser with suffering, exclaims (act IV, scene 6):
Through the rags the slightest vice is visible;
Brocade and fur will hide everything under them.
Gild the vice - the spear of the law
You break about him; dress in rags
A pygmy straw will pierce him.
Falconbridge's speech ("King John", at the end of scene 1 of act II) is full of great expressiveness about Selfishness - "the mediator and matchmaker, this power that can change everything in the world."
But in its most vivid and expanded form, the idea of the pernicious power of gold is expressed in the famous monologue of Timon ("Timon of Athens", act IV, scene 3), which Marx quotes several times in his writings as a masterful depiction of the perverting power of money, their ability to transform every thing in its opposite.
Falsity, hypocrisy, "diplomacy", "politicism" - this core of bourgeois practice - constitute the second most important object of Shakespeare's satire. His gallery of hypocrites and pretenders of all shades is unusually large, ranging from petty careerists to major villains: Richard III, Iago, Goneril and Regan, Edmund, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Angelo, Malvolio ... The moment is purely stylistic, but in fact full of deep meaning: countless times in Shakespeare's imagery we meet the opposition of reality, true essence - appearance, mask, clothes.⁶
In accordance with this, "truth" in human relations, the truthfulness of thoughts and feelings - such is the highest goal towards which all truly noble natures portrayed by Shakespeare strive. Hamlet is always looking for the truth, finding only “words” in books, and deceit and hypocrisy in those around him. Lear, who at first valued only everything external, begins after his insight to strive only for internal truth. Othello is always striving for the truth; and Macbeth falls victim to a lie, which he takes for truth.
In contrast to both feudal and bourgeois oppression, Shakespeare dreams of an ideal of life based on freedom, justice and the internal equality of all people among themselves. This ideal, due to its utopian nature, has a vague and contradictory character in Shakespeare, but it persists through the complex system of his artistic images.
In the comedy "All's well that ends well" Shakespeare draws the feeling of the smart and gifted plebeian Helen, the daughter of a simple doctor, to Count Bertram, who does not want to "soil" himself with an unequal marriage. The king reads a magnificent instruction to the count, proving the equality of all people by blood and the possibility of conferring the nobility on Elena with one stroke of the pen, without changing anything in her essence. In the end, Elena defeats the swaggering aristocrat with the help of cunning.
In The Winter's Tale, Perdita, who considers herself a simple peasant woman, boldly declares to the king that "the sun shines equally on palaces and huts."
In his plays, Shakespeare, without posing a fundamentally "racial" question, nevertheless gives an answer to it with his images. Othello, a man of a different race, a "wild African", is shown as morally and intellectually not inferior, but, on the contrary, much superior to the Europeans around him.
With a whole series of his images, Shakespeare emphasizes the inner equivalence of women and men. His Juliet, Portia, Cordelia, Viola, Elena, Isabella ("Measure for Measure"), in the end - Katarina are not inferior to their partners or antagonists in terms of the richness of the inner life, talent, ability to heroism. In the struggle of daughters with their despotic fathers for self-determination of their personality, for freedom of thought and feelings, Shakespeare is invariably on their side. Celia ("As You Like It") leaves her home after her evil and delinquent father drove away her cousin and beloved friend Rosalind. Jessica runs away with Lorenzo from her predatory and ignoble father, Shylock. Cordelia is not afraid to tell Lear the truth to his face and shows no remorse when he becomes enraged. Desdemona marries the man she loves against her father's wishes. Juliet breaks with her family and all her past for the sake of Romeo. Hermia flees with her chosen one from a hated marriage that her father imposes on her. But Ophelia shows complete obedience to her crafty father and close-minded brother - and as a result of this, Hamlet, with a pain in his heart, leaves her.
The idea of \u200b\u200bp_r_i_r_o_d_y underlies Shakespeare's entire worldview and his understanding of the life process. It serves as a norm and measure for him in assessing the dignity of all human actions. But since writers of very different trends have appealed to the concept of p_r_i_r_o_d_y, putting into it very different content, it is necessary to clarify Shakespeare's understanding of nature. Shakespeare distinguishes between healthy, beautiful nature and sick, ugly nature. Edmund in King Lear, who declares: "Nature, you are my goddess," worships only the dark and base instincts deeply rooted in his nature. "Snakes", "owls", "wolves", "goats and monkeys", figuratively expressing in "Othello" and in "King Lear" vile, base inclinations, even the "witches" in "Macbeth" for Shakespeare are also natural phenomena but sick and perverted nature. Shakespeare accepts only the bright and good manifestations of nature, which are identical for him with true life and true beauty.⁷
Further, nature in Shakespeare's understanding is never something frozen and complete, but is always in motion, in development - like the characters of his characters, as well as the relationships that connect them. Hence - the extreme prevalence in Shakespeare's imagery of motifs taken from plant life - images of flowering, growth, maturation. Healthy nature in the eyes of Shakespeare is a single and continuous creative process.
Along with this, Shakespeare emphasizes in nature its generosity, excess, excess of the norm strictly necessary for the maintenance of life. A direct poetic expression of this is the unbridled thirst for life, struggle, impressions, which inspires Shakespeare's brightest and most positive heroes: Portia's speech about mercy as the most beautiful addition to the "law"; the overflowing wit of Beatrice ("Much Ado About Nothing"); excessive cheerfulness of Mercutio ("Romeo and Juliet"); the roaring laughter of Falstaff, like everything in general "playful" that we find in Shakespeare's images. The exact formula for this is the wonderful words of Lear: