How does Shakespeare portray women in Julius Caesar?

Answer 1

He represents Elizabethan attitudes towards women by giving Romeo and Juliet different priviledges and personalities. Romeo is free to go where ever he pleases and is as a result very impulsive, confident and brave. Juliet is rarely allowed to leave her house and when she does she has to tell her parents why (when she goes to marry Romeo she tells her parents she is going to confession) and is therefore shy, proper and reluctant (until she met Romeo anyway.)

Answer 2

Actually lines from Elizabethan plays are a poor way to learn about Elizabethan attitudes to anything. This is for a number of reasons. The stories being dramatised may come from a different time period and may contain actions and sentiments which would not be common in Elizabethan times but made sense at some former time. This is particularly obvious in the plays set in Roman times. Second, the lines represent the opinion of the character speaking them, not Elizabethan society and certainly not Shakespeare. And finally, the conventions of theatre may involve a different attitude toward things than what is found in larger society. This is true today as well. Do you think the attitude toward bike safety shown in the movie The Pagemaster is typical of the attitudes to bike safety in contemporary America? Not.

In addition to all of that, the official attitude, the "politically correct" attitude of any time differs considerably from the real attitudes of actual people at the time.

For example, in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet, aged fourteen, is being nudged toward marriage. When Capulet thinks that they should wait until she is sixteen, Paris says "Younger than she are happy mothers made." This might make you think that Elizabethan girls were typically married in their teens. You'd be dead wrong. The typical Elizabethan bride, according to actual marriage records, was in her middle to late twenties.

Answer 3

Peripheral. Women hardly come into the story at all.