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Cassandra Clark
ENG 221 - Simpson
October 13, 2017

The Domination of Female Bodies in Shakespeare

On today’s news, it seems there is a new allegation of misconduct, of sexual assault, or of

rape almost every day. Bodies, especially female bodies, are constantly scrutinized, objectified,

and sexualized in the media and on the streets. Such is one of the great tribulations of our

modern society. And yet the world has made leaps and bounds in its reaction to such attacks.

Only 400 years ago, this male-dominant social order was able to weave itself into even the most

exceptional works of Shakespeare. Spanning from rude sexist comments to horrifically violent

assault, in the case of Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, Elizabethan masculinity is shown at its most

incendiary state. Although Lavinia’s fate is extreme, acts or threats of violence against women in

Shakespeare’s plays are depressingly common, but give insight into an ongoing issue.

Shakespeare’s earliest known play, Titus Andronicus, is particularly violent towards its

female characters. Lavinia, Titus’ youngest daughter, is brutally raped and mutilated by Tamora’s

sons, Chiron and Demetrius. These men kill her husband, Bassianus, and carry Lavinia off into

the forest to “satisfy their lust” (II.iii.180). When Lavinia is discovered by her uncle Marcus in

the following scene, he remarks on her disfiguration asking “what ungentle hands / Hath lopped

and hewed and made thy body bare / Of her two branches, those sweet ornaments[?]” (II.iv.

16-18). Tamora’s sons have not only relieved Lavinia of her hands, but her tongue as well —

recognized by Marcus as a “crimson river of warm blood” bubbling from her “rosèd lips” (II.iv.

21-23). The assault of Lavinia is one of the most brutal acts of violence played on Shakespeare’s

stage. Still, it too often becomes a “peripheral catalyst for her father’s revenge
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trajectory” (Cooper 332) and nothing more. Lavinia is reduced to her rape and to her objectified

body throughout the rest of the play even being referred to in the past tense (“This was thy

daughter” (III.i.64)). She has been robbed of her voice and is now robbed of her personhood by

the men around her.

As a comedy, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream does not have such a focus on

great violence as this, but yet the possibility for violence is still very present. While wandering

the forest, Demetrius threatens Helena with “mischief” that sounds very similar to that of Titus

Andronicus. To rid himself of Helena who has been following him for some time, he tells her:

You do impeach your modesty too much

To leave the city and commit yourself
Into the hands of one that loves you not,
To trust the opportunity of night
And the ill counsel of a desert place
With the rich worth of your virginity. (II.i.221-226)

Demetrius threatens Helena by reminding her that they are alone in a forest and he could very

easily rape her if he cared to. As she refuses to be swayed by his harsh words, he swears that if

she continues to follow him, he “shall do [her] mischief in the wood” (II.i.244). Although he

never acts on these threats, violence against women is normalized even in this imaginary world.

This indifference to gendered violence comes from the belief that women’s bodies do not,

in fact, belong to them at all, but to their fathers or husbands. In Titus Andronicus, Titus uses

Lavinia’s assault to launch himself into action against the Goths as he believes it is a personal

attack. However degrading this belief is to Lavinia, he is not wrong to assume it. Just before

being carried off, Lavinia pleads with Tamora, calling on her mercy as a fellow woman. But

Tamora lacks pity and coldly replies:

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Hadst thou in person ne’er offended me,

Even for his sake I am pitiless.
Remember, boys, I poured forth tears in vain
To save your brother from the sacrifice,
But fierce Andronicus would not relent.
Therefore away with her, and use her as you will.
The worse to her, the better loved of me. (II.iii.161-167)

Here, Tamora acknowledges Lavinia’s innocence in the slights made against the Goths, but

decides to let her sons have their fun anyway, being that such a rape could serve to avenge the

death of her son (killed by Titus’ hand). To the Goths, Lavinia is seen only as property of her

father and so she becomes the pawn through which Tamora will take her revenge. Tamora’s

objectification of Lavinia is particularly important to this story, but many other characters act

similarly. Chiron, Demetrius, and Aaron liken Lavinia to a “dainty doe” to be “struck home by

force, if not by words” (II.i.124-125) and upon first seeing her mutilation, her own brother

Lucius goes so far as to reply, “Ay me, this object kills me!” (III.i.66). These men, even those

which are her family members, lose sight of Lavinia’s personhood after her assault. As Tamora’s

son, Demetrius, clears up, “She is a woman, therefore may be wooed; / She is a woman,

therefore may be won; / She is Lavinia, therefore must be loved” (II.i.86-88). Women in

Shakespeare’s era were useful only in upholding the social standing of their fathers and

satisfying the lust of the husbands. It is in ignoring the three-dimensionality of women that these

men find it in themselves to commit such acts of violence against them.

The reduction of women to property is seen throughout Titus, but is spelled out especially

clearly in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in regards to Hermia. Arguing about Hermia’s betrothal,

her father Egeus declares that “she is mine, and all my right of her / I do estate unto

Demetrius” (I.i.99-100). Demetrius himself echoes this same sentiment, telling Lysander to
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“yield / Thy crazed title to my certain right” (I.i.94). Hermia here is reduced to her father’s

property, to be sold to whomever he chooses regardless of her feelings on the matter. She is even

informed by the duke, Theseus, that she must obey her father or choose between life of chastity

or death (I.i.119-123). He tells her that:

To you, your father should be as a god,

One that composed your beauties, yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted, and within his power
To leave the figure or disfigure it. (I.i.48-52)

Theseus strips Hermia of her free-will, essentially telling her that she is no more than an

extension of her father, with which he has the right to do with as he pleases. Hermia’s boldness

in choosing to love Lysander against her father’s wishes usurps the patriarchal social order and

so the men reassert their dominance by threatening violence (or chastity) to any who refuse to fit

into said order.

Hermia, Helena, and (especially) Lavinia are extreme examples of this male-perpetrated

dominance over and violence towards Shakespeare’s female characters, but they are far from the

only women who experience such behavior. Even in choosing to focus attention on Titus

Andronicus and A Midsummer Night’s Dream alone, there are countless other examples of male

characters forcibly dominating their female counterparts. Both Titus’ Tamora and Midsummer’s

Hippolyta are prisoners of war, forced to marry the leader of the opposing side. Although

Hippolyta handles such a betrothal in a much more pleasant manner (as befits the comedy genre),

obtaining the consent of these women was never the intention of their captors. They are prisoners

of war forced into a sexual relationship, regardless of their feelings about such a match. And

even Midsummer’s fantastical Titania is overpowered by her husband when she refuses to
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comply with his desires. The magical doings of the play all begin as Oberon’s plot to steal a

young Indian Boy from his wife, which he does by putting her under a spell.

All this gendered violence from the male characters comes from a need to dominate the

women around them. They believe that such is the natural social order of their societies (Rome/

Athens) just as it was the order in Elizabethan England. Although the country was ruled by a

woman (Queen Elizabeth), the social order was still extremely patriarchal. The father/husband

ruled over his wife and family and women weren’t even allowed schooling such as the men

received. As it was common for a wife’s family to provide a dowry to her husband upon

marriage, women were quantified and reduced to amount of money and goods she was

“worth” (Alchin). In Shakespeare’s day, women weren’t even allowed on the stage, leaving little

room for fully fleshed-out female characters (although Shakespeare certainly comes close).

In the end, Shakespeare’s plays revolve around the trials of men. Their social domination

often manifests itself on the stage as physically overpowering the female sex, occasionally to

horrifically violent ends. Lavinia’s rape and subsequent mutilation is one such extreme, but the

threats made against Helena hint at a similar end. This commonality (sexualized violence against

female bodies) between Titus Andronicus, a brutal revenge tragedy, and A Midsummer Night’s

Dream, a fantastical comedy, goes to show the normalization of such violence as a means to

domination. Toxic masculinity and a feeling of entitlement to women’s bodies allows the men the

mental capacity to commit (or even just threaten) such abhorrent crimes time and time again.

Although the modern social order is not as strict as it once was 400 years ago, rape and sexual

harassment are still rampant in our society. It’s only when we begin to recognize the reasoning

behind such acts that we can begin to create a better and more equal world.

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WORKS CITED

Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine,
The Folger Shakespeare Library, 2005.

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and

Paul Werstine, The Folger Shakespeare Library, 1993.

Cooper, Rachel Price. “Violence Against Women in Early Modern Performance: Invisible
Acts by Kim Solga (Review)” Review of Violence Against Women in Early
Modern Performance: Invisible Acts. Theatre History Studies, vol. 35, 2016, pp.
331–333.

Alchin, Linda K. “Elizabethan Women.” Elizabethan Era, 16 May 2012,

www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-women.htm.