Liminal Situation of Female Characters in “Othello”, “King Lear”, and “Romeo and Juliet”

In this paper, Shakespeare’s female characters in the plays mentioned in the title will be discussed in terms of their liminality process throughout the plays based on notions of prominent anthropologist Arthur van Gennep’s, and Aristoteles’s anagnorisis and catharsis terms in his work Poetics . While analysing these female characters’ liminality experiences, predetermined roles of women in that era in which the plays were written, their personal characteristics, passions, purities, or weaknesses, or ferocities will be taken into consideration.

Before analysing the female characters’ life experience and their life thresholds, it is needed to describe what liminality is at first. Liminality is a term coined and investigated deeply by an anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in his book “Rites and Passages”, in 1909. Liminality mainly refers to confusion, unsteadiness, or delusion in the middle stage of a rite. According to Gennep, rites are important as no one can remain the same before and after the rituals. In other words, one who is about passing one condition to another, or one group to another, or one place to another or unconsciousness to consciousness can no longer hold his/her pre-ritual status. In this book, Rites of Passages, Gennep asserts that there are three phases of rites generally: pre-liminal stage (separation), liminal stage (transition), and post-liminal stage (re-integration). As for Aristotle’s anagnorisis and catharsis terms, these terms can be thought as a type of ritual stages in some sense because the protagonist learns something so important which makes his life entirely change like in the post-liminal stage of rites of passages.

When it comes to analyse the female characters of these plays, Shakespeare created the most impressive characters of theatre history ever. Şener (2003) claims that in ancient tragedies, in Shakespeare’s plays, and in contemporary plays, liminal processes have been discussed and challenges of the characters in liminal stage have been shown. As the time passed, noble protagonists leave their places to new protagonists whose power is limited and who have more flaws. In Shakespeare’s tragedies, the hero of the play in the liminal period was dealt with in special conditions. According to Şener (2003), these liminal conditions ignite the passion of the hero and bring the situation to a deadlock. When it comes to analogy between the term liminality described above and the liminality in Shakespeare’s female characters can be similar in terms of women issue which has been an important problem for centuries. Either Venice or Verona in which the plays take place, are under the influence of Protestantism in the 17th century. Conservative attitudes play a crucial role in these plays as a result of traditional and religious boundaries of that era. Juliet, for instance, is only 13 years old and her parents arrange her marriage to Paris. Although she is portrayed as a girl whose only aim is to marry, her maturity and her exceptional behaviour against the authority or the norms of society about marriage can be perceived she is young but mature girl. Her insisting on marrying for love not for economic welfare is something unusual in that era. When Lady Capulet asks her if she liked Paris, Juliet answers she will look to like. “I’ll look to like...” indicates that Juliet makes her own decision, and she rebels against her family and society. If Juliet is analysed in terms of liminal process, she is in pre-liminal stage before she meets Romeo. After she falls in love with Romeo, her liminal stage starts. Her life is about changing entirely, however, the passion of Juliet and Romeo to marry, their struggling to marry shows that post-liminal stage of Juliet cannot occur. Her trying to pass from one situation to another, or trying to break predetermined roles of the society as a woman resulted in her failing, even dying. Society goes on determining the rules and roles where women can stand on. While Juliet is trying to change the condition, she is in another liminal stage, passing from childhood to adulthood. Shakespeare tries to show how Juliet is stuck between opposing forces. When her father says her child is a stranger and she does not seem like a girl who is turning fourteen, it can be understood Juliet is still in an uncommon age.

In the play “King Lear”, there are three female protagonists in the play all of whom are daughters of Lear. Cordelia, the youngest, loves her father and never transforms into a villain like neither nor Regan throughout the play. She is portrayed innately a good female character in the play. She never misjudges her father and never desires revenge. However, Goneril, the most power -hungry woman of the play, shows extreme masculine attitudes. She manipulates everything and everyone around her. She betrays her father and cheats her husband Albany with Edmund, illegitimate son of Gloucester. She humiliates her husband Albany by saying cowards, idiots. In the fourth act, second scene, Albany says for Goneril that disgusting features of an evil makes a woman more demonic. In terms of liminality, Goneril’s pre-liminal stage ends when she receives half of the kingdom. Before seizing the power, her true nature cannot be understood; however, as soon as she gets the power, her dishonesty, quarrelsome nature debouches. Even if she has the power, she is punished, (in Shakespeare’s plays evils are always punished), she is punished by society [and Shakespeare] because being a woman having masculine dispositions was misjudged in that era. Regan, second daughter of Lear, is not as monstrous as Goneril, but her plucking of Gloucester’s beard can be an indicator how cruel she is. In terms of liminality, Regan and Goneril are at the liminal stage between humanity and monstrosity; however, they both choose monstrosity, and both die at the end of the play. When Cordelia’s liminality situation is analysed, her struggle starts when she refuses to express how deep her love is for her father. Her life also changes but she remains as she was at the beginning.

Desdemona, Othello’s beautiful wife, is punished by patriarchal society as well. Desdemona’s fate is determined by a man to warn other women what happens if they betray their husbands. Besides, rebellion against the authority, (this authority can be a father, a husband and so on,) is another reason for society to punish the women. Women’s desire for taking their own decisions for their life or with whom they marry has always been seen as a threat in terms of traditional gender roles in the society. As it is seen in Gennep’s Rites of passages stages, Desdemona’s liminal stage starts with marrying Othello who is a black commander. Desdemona is so guilty that she rebels against his father first, and what is worse, she marries a [black man]. The theme of race stems from Othello’s race. Black people were always humiliated in Shakespearean time, however, despite his race, Othello becomes a commander of the Venice army. Desdemona experiences two liminal processes in the play, like Juliet. The first one is her marrying Othello; the second one is her passing from life to death. Her fate is determined by her husband, Othello, who judged and killed her according to the morals of the society. Although some critics think Desdemona is not innocent and unvirtuous, Shakespeare portrays her as a maiden never bold by Brabantio’s eye. She does not know much about toxic masculinity and her chastity and innocence is a matter of male fantasy. Casio, for instance, sees her “a maid who paragons all description in Act 2 Scene1. At the end of the play, Othello describes her as an excellent wretch. Desdemona is defined by male gaze like her other counterparts, Juliet, Ophelia. The other female character in the play is Emilia, Iago’s wife, who experiences a liminal situation as well. After Desdemona is killed unfairly, she notices that Iago tells lies and besmirches Desdemona. She tells the truth to Othello despite Iago’s coactions. This scene is like an anagnorisis and catharsis stage or a situation passing from unaware to aware for Emilia. However, Emilia is killed by Iago as a victim of male aggression like Desdemona. Emilia in the last scene says to Iago: “I now apprehend the situation, I felt. How could I not notice your aim?” Emily’s expression reveals that women in these plays are not aware of what is going on around themselves.

Women are subjugated to obey the rules both in real life and in the plays. However, some of them choose to obey the rules and roles while others do not choose. According to Shakespeare, it is not enough to be clever, innocent, virtuous, or beautiful for women. Shakespeare's aim was to show [maybe] women who are aware in which society and situation they live, can maintain their life. Why does Portia disguise a man? Portia, despite being out of the characters discussed in this paper, is the only woman survived in Shakespeare’s characters. Compared to Juliet, Desdemona, villain Goneril and Regan, or Emilia, she is the most conscious woman among them. Depending on consciousness and awareness situation, liminality stages of these women result in dying. All women die at the end of the plays. Consequences of not being aware affects both their own lives and each other's lives. Emilia’s late awareness stage, for instance, causes Desdemona's death.

Briefly, Shakespeare's women survive as long as they are awake and conscious, and they do not exhibit masculine attitudes as there are enough men around.

REFERENCES

Van Gennep, A. (1909) The Rites of Passage. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Shakespeare, W. (1994). Othello, (Ö. Nutku, Çev.). İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi

Shakespeare, W. 1564-1616. Romeo and Juliet, 1597. Oxford: published for the Malone Society by Oxford University Press, 2000.

Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Wordsworth Editions, 1994.

Şener S. Yaşamın Kırılma Noktasında Dram Sanatı, Ankara: Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, 2003.