Women’s Place in the Renaissance Era

Abstract

To portray the situation of women in the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare’s works can be used as a rich source to put aside the curtain and see women’s real lives. This article is divided into two major parts. Firstly, it will look at women’s lives and their role in Renaissance society; secondly, it will represent Shakespeare’s female character Ophelia from Hamlet as an example of female life representation in literary work. During the Renaissance era, women’s place in society was largely determined by their social status and the prevailing cultural norms. Women were generally expected to fulfill domestic roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers. Their primary purpose was to support and serve their husbands and families. Generally, what I will try to do is study women’s lives in Renaissance society and the representation of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. When talking about women in Renaissance society, it is necessary to compare them with their opposite sex, men. At the time Shakespeare was writing his
plays, the idea of the chain of being had an excessive influence on each aspect of Renaissance society. In the Renaissance era, women were believed to be physically, mentally, and emotionally weaker and inferior to men. Greek medical science claimed that “men were physically different from women and superior. The elements composing the human body were combined differently in each sex”.