Updating Shakespeare’s Heroines for Modern Audiences: Feminist Criticism and Womanhood in The Gap of Time, Vinegar Girl, and Hag-Seed
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2018-07-26
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en
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In October 2015 the Hogarth Shakespeare project was launched by the publisher Penguin Random House. The series seeks to retell Shakespeare’s classic plays; so far five of the eight commissioned books have been published. Among the published works are: The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson, a retelling of The Winter’s Tale; Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler, a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew; and last but not least, Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood, a retelling of The Tempest. This thesis aims to examine in what ways these three texts build a significant representation of womanhood that can be considered feminist, if at all. After examining feminist criticism aimed at the source texts, the representation of women in Shakespeare’s original plays will be compared and contrasted to the representation of women in the selected Hogarth Shakespeare Series novels. The representation of women will be constructed through three modes of feminist criticism outlined by Carol Thomas Neely. The representation of women in the Hogarth Shakespeare Series novels are then compared and contrasted to one another. Of the three selected texts, only Vinegar Girl establishes a feminist representation of its female characters.
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Faculteit der Letteren