SOURCE: “The Political Effects of Gender and Class in All's Well That Ends Well,” in Rewriting Shakespeare, Rewriting Ourselves, University of California Press, 1991, pp. 57-73.

In the following essay, Erickson examines Helena's disruption of the patriarchal order in All's Well That Ends Well.

One of the most striking features of All's Well That Ends Well is its full rendering of specifically male frustration in the person of Bertram, a besieged and recalcitrant Adonis writ large.¹ But the problem of Bertram cannot be adequately discussed at the level of individual character, as though our response hinged exclusively on the question of his personal defects and of his capacity to overcome them in the end. The analysis must rather be extended to the larger cultural forces operating on, and embodied in, Bertram. This latter approach can be opened up by noting the cultural overlap between Bertram's situation and that of...