The Marginalization of Shakespeare's Female Counterparts: Shakespeare Birthday Event

   

     While we all can agree that we were forced to read Shakespeare in high school, can anyone recall reading a female author that lived during Shakespeare's time period? I know that I didn't get to read any female authors prior to Emily Dickenson and the Bronte sisters that wrote later on in the 1800s. Yet, authors such as Margaret Cavendish and Amelia Lanier also wrote during this time period, but are widely ignored in education until students reach college. Consequently, this is when I first encountered these female authors.

     Why are the female counterpart’s of Shakespeare not widely read? Is it because we focus on Shakespeare and his male contemporaries too much? It is difficult to go through college without reading something written by Shakespeare or Ben Johnson as their writings were highly influential. While new editions of Shakespeare's plays are released every few years, several works written by Shakespeare's female contemporaries are just now being placed in anthologies and collections. 

     Why are they not as widely read? It could be because of the subjects of which they wrote about. Since there were very few female writers during this time period, they were more restricted than men were in regards to their material. While men could write about race relations, scandals, politics and romances, women are marginalized to writing about religion and child rearing. The things that women were allowed to write about without receiving social stigma were limited to their roles within society. They could write about being wives, mothers and their religion. However, these social stigmas did not stop these female authors from using these guises to write about other topics as well such as women's rights.

      Another reason could be that they are not typically included in many anthologies. They are usually taught in classes that discuss women authors or British/English Literature exclusively. However, outside of these classes, these female authors are rarely discussed. Even in K-12 education, discussion and reading of Shakespeare’s contemporaries can be rare. While K-12 requires Shakespeare as one of the required authors for students to read, other authors can themselves be marginalized by Shakespeare, regardless of gender. Also, in K-12, many teachers touch on the most influential authors such as Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and etc. Perhaps a large part of why these authors are not taught is because of the difficulty faced by instructors to provide their texts to students. While some of these female authors have been anthologized, other female authors have not. Instructors face a lack of resources to provide to their students in order to teach these authors.

     As the discussion of these marginalized female authors increase and as they are researched more, it is likely that they will be taught more as their works become more accessible for instructors both teaching K-12 and college. However, we need to stop thinking of these female authors as existing in Shakespeare’s shadow and comparing them to him. These women faced more challenges in writing their works as well as publishing their works. It is also likely that these women became marginalized over the course of time as they were not read as widely during the Classical and Neo-Classical literary periods where both authors and readers looked back to the great writers of the past. Shakespeare would have been compared to Socrates, Plato and Johnson as they had quite a large influence. Authors such as Cavendish and Lanier may not have been as celebrated as a part of the ‘greats’ like Shakespeare was.