‘What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine’. Examine the interplay of gender and power in Far from the Madding Crowd, All’s Well That Ends Well and the Amoretti.

‘The woman is at her finest in submission’[1]states Wilson Knight in the introduction of All’s Well, perfectly expressing an historical attitude which is true in all the texts where women are seen as needing to be controlled and silenced.  In Hardy’s Victorian novel Far From the Madding CrowdBathsheba desperately seeks self-determination in a patriarchal society; however, the text punishes her for her efforts as we see her as “prisoner”[2]to Troy. Helena in Shakespeare’s early Jacobean problem play, All’s Well That Ends Wellhas a very similar character to Bathsheba who also seeks independence. She addresses the King using language of empowerment, such as “give me”[3]and “I will command”[4]. Nevertheless it is ironic that the thing she is most desperate for (marriage), reverses the power she has gained or arguably borrowed from the king. In the end Helena is just a “shadow of a wife”[5], insignificant and powerless.   Conversely in Spenser’s Renaissance sonnet sequence theAmoretti,Elizabeth seems to exude a God-like power as ‘maker’[6].  However she is also depicted as a ‘senseless stone’[7], passive and rendered voiceless. Therefore over the course of these three texts, the language seems deeply uncomfortable with the idea of a woman being self-determined. The suggestion is that women cannot be happy without the companionship of a man and has to be submissive to them.
[1]All’s Well That Ends Well(William Shakespeare), Susan Snyder, Oxford University Press, Introduction p. 35 [2]Far from the Madding Crowd,Thomas Hardy, Oxford University Press p. 162[3]All’s Well, 2.1, line 191[4]All’s Well, 2.1, line 192[5]All’s well, 5.3, line 308[6]Amoretti, Spenser, Sonnet 9[7]Amoretti, Sonnet 54