The Daughters in Shakespeare’s Plays

Abstract

This paper is a study of the daughters’ choice of husbands in Shakespeare’s plays in relation to their fathers’ reaction. I’ve shown that in Shakespeare’s plays his heroines in tragedies and comedies are given a freedom to choose their lovers-to-be-turned-husbands, but when it comes to seeking the consent of the parents (the father actually), in most plays, the father disagrees, and then complications arise with dire consequences for the daughter in tragedies and forced solutions in comedies. Bringing into discussion a number of plays where a daughter’s choice of a lover/husband clashes with the father’s prerogatives, I’ve indicated that Shakespeare has supported the larger male paradigm in which a daughter can be said as most happily married when her father gives his consent to her marriage.