Class discussion with guest speaker Alicia Andrzejewski

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Alicia Andrzejewski
Alicia Andrzejewski
I found our guest speaker Alicia Andrzejewski's discussion last week to be very intriguing. She got me thinking about women in Shakespeare's work in entirely new ways. When taking a second look at the text I did start to see the flirtation in Hermione's banter with Polixenes. Alicia got me thinking about how different that would have been percieved in that time period. I'm so use to my own culture that I didn't at first judge the conversation to be flirtatious. 
I liked how our discussion turned to stereotypes of pregnant women because these are still applicable today. Thinking about how people don't usually envision a pregnant women as being flirtatious or unmotherly in any way made me have much more sympathy for Hermione and women in general who are pregnant. While my thoughts strayed away from the text, I started to consider this aspect in today's culture. Pregnant women today are still expected to behave in certain ways. While they have far more freedom, they are still judged. Women are judged for having babies too soon or with the wrong guy or having a baby by a man who you don't intend on marrying or just having a baby outside of marriage in general. Alicia had said something that made me think more about the identity of a mother and how it is hard to seperate that motherness from her own self. I am definitely starting to see the conflict of these expectations in the play more than before and I certainly am thinking about Hermione's connections on a deeper level than I was at first. 

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