This section contains 5,355 words (approx. 18 pages at 300 words per page) |
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SOURCE: “Not Saying No: Female Self-Erasure in Troilus and Cressida,” in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring, 1993, pp. 44-56.
In the following essay, Tiffany asserts that Cressida has been misread by most critics as either reprehensible or victimized, when in fact she is the product of a patriarchal culture still present today that misunderstands women who do not communicate forcefully.
One half of me is yours, the other half yours, Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.
—Portia, The Merchant of Venice III.ii.16-181
Like Shakespeare's Trojans and Greeks, scholarly evaluators of Shakespeare's Cressida divide themselves into two warring camps that only seem radically opposed. In fact, both camps share a common perspective and language that produce a disturbing vision of woman as passive creation of her patriarchal culture. Cressida as wanton and Cressida as victim present...
This section contains 5,355 words (approx. 18 pages at 300 words per page) |
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