Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra
Tragic Women in Shakespeare’s Plays
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In Othello, we will find the young, beautiful, white, socially important, and rich girl Desdemona, who decided to marry a middle aged, black Moor, Othello. Desdemona is what we can call a girl out of her time because it still is not easy for many people, even in our days, to accept a marriage between a black and a white person. We can imagine the force of the emotions in her father, as well as the reaction of the audience in the theater.
In Macbeth, we will find and analyze Lady Macbeth. She is a different kind of character. She represents the bad and dark emotions, the deep thoughts of women. The play is about ambition, and Lady Macbeth is the voice of that ambition. She is a clear example of a domestic woman’s domination. She plays a very important role in the life of her husband, and we will find out how her fatal support carries them off to their inevitable, tragic end.
The last chapter will be dedicated to Cleopatra, the most famous woman, queen, and ruler in Shakespeare’s works. She was an outstanding and beautiful queen centuries before Shakespeare decided to write Antony and Cleopatra. But here we will try to understand her reasons, not only as a woman and a mother but also as a queen fatally in love with the right person for her but at a wrong moment for others.
The other purpose of this work is to analyze these strong female characters in the no-less-intensive plays. Most of the time, in the majority of existing critical interpretations, the writers offer extensive and deep analyses of the principal male characters, but very few of them talk about the female characters with the same or similar intensity.
We must remember that women did not have a legal status during Shakespeare’s time. They were not allowed public or private autonomy. Men controlled society beginning with the family. English society functioned on a so-called system of patriarchy and hierarchy, which was guided by Ptolemy’s theory: God existed at the top and was followed by the angels, men, women, animals, plants, and rocks.
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About the Book
In 1616, William Shakespeare shuffled loose the mortal coil.
In honor of his death four centuries ago, Ana Maribel de Moncada, Panamanian, professor of English at Panama’s Universidad Especializada de la Américas (UDELAS) created Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra: Tragic Women in Shakespeare’s Plays, a literary analysis of three of Shakespeare’s most compelling, complicated, and cherished characters.
Using information and insight gleaned from the works of her peers and other Shakespearean experts, Ana Maribel’s scholarly analysis of the importance of these three women as characters drew heavily upon the foundational works in which they appeared. The stories of Desdemona, the doomed wife of Othello; Lady Macbeth, the scheming queen from Macbeth; and Cleopatra, the all-powerful but ultimately tragic queen caught between love, rivalry, and ambition in Antony and Cleopatra are well documented through movies, novels, plays, operas, television, songs, and more. To entice students and educators alike, Ana Maribel designed her work to inspire both scholarly and casual reflection, analysis, and discussion of the works of the most well-known and respected English-language playwright. From the richness of the original plays, the author harvested the extensive detail and profound imagery found in Shakespearean text.
To best honor Shakespeare four hundred years after his death, Ana Maribel sought to inspire a global celebration and discussion of his work and its impact on language, theatre, and literature in all segments of human society.About the Author
Ana Maribel de Moncada, professor of English at Universidad Especializada de la Américas (UDELAS) in Albrook, Panamá, earned her BA in English and Education from the University of Panama. An experienced teacher, she also served on the Mayor’s Education and Culture Direction task forces in Panama City, Panama, where she lives.