By: Renee Kaldor
(Introduction Into Topic)
What is a woman? How do humans characterize the female gender? This question of the female gender goes back to the beginning of time. The bible introduced two characters that were the so-called first male and female. The bible created a standard for both the male and female, through which society has essentially kept. Females throughout history have always been perceived the same way. According to society some traits are more feminine them masculine. In this website I want to focus on the distribution of certain feminine traits given to characters in mortality plays. I want to discuss why certain traits are received as feminine.
Morality Plays:
Morality plays are a type of dramatic allegory, performed in a theater. This type of play was very popular in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These plays originated from religiously based plays that enforced Catholicism (“Morality Play”). The main point of morality plays are to show that only God leads to true salvation. Morality plays usually have a singular protagonist. The protagonist is tested by various antagonists that try to prompt the protagonist to choose a godly life over one of evil. Antagonists aren’t usually human, but rather personified vices that pull the protagonist to sin. (“Morality Play”). An example of this is the seven deadly sins in Dr. Faustus. Some protagonists are written to personify or represent the entire human race. An example of this is the play Everyman. According to the New World Encyclopedia, “the stories usually follow a path where the protagonist is tempted to sin by the antagonists and only through God does the protagonist find peace, salvation, or hope” (“Morality Play”). Although we will find out later that this is not always the case. Morality plays are allegorical so they are supposed to convey a certain message, and in medieval times the message was about God.
Allegory:
An Allegory is a work of art that uses symbols to convey some sort of truth. The word allegory traces back to ancient Greece (“Allegory”). In some allegories characters personify concepts or abstract types. The action in the plot usually stands for something else. Something that is not explicitly stated. According to Merriam-Webster, “the term allegory can refer to a specific method of reading a text, in which characters and narrative or descriptive details are taken by the reader as an elaborate metaphor for something outside the literal story” (“Allegory”). In the case of our topic females can be made into allegories. Readers make assumptions about characters all the time based on how they act. Gender identity is represented throughout literature and it is blanketed with stereotypes.
Morality plays are blanketed with the issue of gender identity. Morality plays solidify certain issues, like the way society perceives females. These plays discuss how society places certain traits as feminine and certain traits as masculine. The titles of morality plays are just like one might expect, they all have titles that are about men. For example, Everyman literally stands for every single man. Dr. Faustus is literally about a man. Readers need to remember that these works were produced in a masculine environment. Morality plays won’t be about women and the women in the text may or may not be represented accurately. The important piece is that at least woman are being portrayed. On the next webpage I will use the concepts discussed on this page to analyze both the plays Everyman and Dr. Faustus. I will show how each of the plays touches on gender identity.
Want To Learn More About Gender Inequality in Medieval Society? Here Are Some More Academic Websites:
http://wludh.ca/dh100/2015/Eur/MedEdEn/gender-inequality/
http://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/women-in-medieval-society
Works Cited
“Allegory.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam- bwebster.com/dictionary/allegory.
“Eval Morality Play.” Morality Play – New World Encyclopedia,https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Morality_play.