‘To what extent are women shackled by patriarchy in Shakespeare’s plays?’ (65%, 2008)

In this essay I will examine the extent to which women are shackled by patriarchy in William Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘The Merchant of Venice’. I will firstly apply Vladimir Propp’s tool of narrative analysis to ‘Twelfth Night’ in order to provide Structuralist evidence for the Feminist critique of this play propounded by Lisa Jardine. I will then extend Jardine’s contentions to ‘The Merchant of Venice’, using Propp’s narratological principles to highlight the various ways in which women are constrained by patriarchy in this play. The insights which arise from this methodology will be fully explored in the conclusion to this essay.[…]