(John Gielgud and Margaret Leighton in the 1959 Broadway production of Much Ado About Nothing)
Through reading "Much Ado About Nothing", Beatrice is the character which
I have been impressed most, as everyone else. I wanted and tried to imagine how
she affected people, especially women, at that time.
So I decided to go on with the word
"woman" deciphering how many time it is used, how it is used, by whom
it is used, when it is used, etc. I used 3 different tools for that.
I started with the Google
Books Ngram Viewer, and searched "woman" between the
dates 1500 and 1800 (basically till when First-Wave Feminismstarted). This is how
it looks like:
Then I searched between the dates 1800 and 2008,
and that is how it looks like:
Wayyy big difference, isn't it? But let’s come
to this later.
After that, I got an impulse to search for the
word "woman" in Much Ado, and of course I did! Ha! :) I
used WordHoard for that (I don't know much how
to use it, because I was too impatient to figure out.)
What I've found in this search is very interesting. It is not a play
which the word "woman" used most. Actually, it is quite the opposite,
one of the plays which "woman" used least. But it differs in a way
that how it is used. For example, all of the female characters use it at least
one. And, of course, it's not a surprise that Beatrice is the one who
use it most. Apart from female characters, and this is the most shocking
fact in this search for me, Benedick is the only male character who uses
the word "woman". While I was thinking that I started
to understand Shakespeare and to recognize his genius, this happened to
be a big huge staggering slap onto my face. When I think about
Benedick, despite his claims about women, he is the only male
character who believes, supports, and stands for women, without any
apparent reasons. (Friar also believes Hero, but he has sort of reasons for
that, like the gestures of Hero). He believes that just because they're women,
people shouldn't accuse them without thinking twice. He believes that women are
not just marriage material, or a sex object, but they're friends, a person you
can talk to and they can be as clever as men, maybe even more. Unlike the
other male characters, he doesn't look at women only regarding their "fairness",
but also regarding other virtues. How can a brain create such an algorithm
that people can observe this through some technological devices and
tools which people in that era can't even imagine? One
word: Fascinating!
Then I searched "women" in all of
Shakespeare plays grouping by speaker gender:
It looks like male characters use it more than females. It has been
always the case, isn't it? Men always has more to say about women, more than
women have. This can be another finding about the women issue at that era. But
why do we limit it, right? :)
This is a grouping by speaker mortality:
This was, again, quite interesting for me. Immortal or supernatural
characters doesn't look like caring about the concept of genders, like Puck
from "Midsummer Night's Dream".
Lastly, I searched it grouping by publication
decade:
This made me go back
to my first search on Ngram Viewer. You can also go back and take a second look
at them. The same sharp increase in mentioning women in literary works can be
observed there, too. One can conclude that Shakespeare may be the one who
encouraged putting "woman" in literary texts. I wouldn't
be surprised by this fact, though. Why doesn't a writer who
influenced centuries later influence his own era, right?
I wanted to go on with Voyant tool
this time. Since our focus is on Much Ado, I'd like to analyse the lines which
include the word "woman". It is great tool for that. Unlike the
Wordle, it gives you the chance to observe which words are emphasized and why.
(To analyse word clouds, hit the "Analyse it!" button below the
pictures.)
I got an impression from these word clouds that everyone has a point of
view regarding genders. Everyone has a perception of himself/herself and the
other people/gender. Maybe the problem starts here. We can't look at things
from a mutual point of view. We can't accept that humans are just humans. We
must categorize them all the time! Men or women, upper class
or working class, old or young, black or white, etc.. And
everyone is forced to take sides. Against what? Against another human being?
Against humanity?
I'm glad that I've made this search and looked
at the play through an individual word. It really made me go after the notion I
had while reading the play.
I hope you read this till the end…
