Shakespeare’s Portia: A Dominant Figure in Elizabethan Female Society
Author : Rajani Meena
Abstract :
The Merchant of Venice is a 16th-century comedy written by William Shakespeare, in which Shakespeare provides a wide range of information from the Elizabethan era through his works. Portia is a central female figure of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Portia is a rich, clever, attractive, beautiful, intelligent and quick-witted heiress of Belmont; her only weakness is being a woman in the 16th century, which she quite wittily doesn’t let get in her way of being the heroine and the center protagonist of the play. This paper mainly deals the leading role of Portia in female characters. The roles of characters, as described by Shakespeare, reveal social norms that define female and male genders. Female characters in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice are underestimated because of the stereotypical gender roles. The roles of female characters revolve around the homestead, unless where a female character is from a wealthy family, a queen or a princess.
Keywords :
Class, Elizabethan-period, feminism gender, renaissance, romantic-comedy, society, theatre, femininity, masculinity etc.
