On objectification in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure

Written in June 2020.

Measure for Measure reflects the misogynist attitudes of Shakespeare’s 17th century England where women were often belittled and disempowered. Shakespeare includes a small number of women in his play, portraying them as important only for their relationships to men: marital, sexual, and political. Shakespeare also often uses women as devices to conveniently further his plot, without meaningful characterisation or development. Overall, in the play women are objectified by each other, by men, and by the play’s structure; however, occasionally they gain agency, refuting that they are ‘exclusively’ objectified. Additionally, this objectification is not exclusive to women, as male characters are also characterised by their sexual relationships, but this is done to a lesser extent than for the female characters.

The prostitutes in the play such as Mistress Overdone and Kate Keepdown are seminal examples of the play’s treatment of women. Mistress Overdone is the first woman we see in Measure for Measure; her bawdy name sets the tone for the way Shakespeare explores her character and women in the rest of the play. Shakespeare uses her character to turn prostitution into a comedic device, mocking the profession in which women take charge of their sexuality. This is especially achieved through hyperbole, such as Mistress Overdone’s nine husbands: a symbol of her vast and ridiculous her sexual misconduct. In 17th century England, remarriage was looked down upon by Protestant society, especially in such quantity. Therefore, when Escalus repeats “Nine!” in emphatic shock and dismay he reflects the reactions of an outraged and amused Jacobean audience. Despite being ridiculed and seen as disreputable, we also see that she is a principled woman through her loyalty to Lucio as she says “I have kept [his secrets] myself”. However, Lucio doesn’t reciprocate her loyalty: “see how he goes about to abuse me!” The word “abuse” has violent, masculine connotations where it is evident Lucio commands all of the power. This reflects how misogynist men in a patriarchal society such as the Jacobean era assert their dominance over women without sympathy as they see women as objects. Mistress Overdone is not exclusively objectified as she retains some agency by owning her own business and standing up to the men around her. She also gains power both over men and over her sexuality through her job as a prostitute and by remarrying at her own will. However, this is part of the reason she is seen as a comical character as women in the 17th century were looked down upon and ridiculed for defying gender norms like this. Mistress Overdone’s character echoes Mistress Quickly in Henry IV Parts I and II and Henry V as both characters are active women who are laughed at and who are associated with the contemptible parts of society, reflecting the prevailing misogynistic attitudes. Mistress Overdone is punished for her agency by the state as Angelo closes her business down, reflecting how the patriarchal state of Vienna, which mirrors the patriarchal state of England with King James in power, suppresses women and their attempts to gain agency. Kate Keepdown, an incredibly minor character in the play, is a typical example of Shakespeare’s portrayal of women in Measure for Measure. She is used and abused by Lucio: “Mistress Kate Keepdown was with child by him in the duke’s time; he promised her marriage: his child is a year and a quarter old”. We never see or hear her which removes any semblance of activity, urgency, or personality. By being a prostitute with a suggestive name, her identity is reduced to that of a sexual object. Lucio treats her thus, lying to her and using her for sex without acknowledging the consequences of his behaviour. Lucio is eventually forced to marry Kate Keepdown as punishment for slandering the Duke. This is the Duke using women as political pawns to punish men rather than appreciating them as humans. Overall, Shakespeare employs these women to ridicule and belittle prostitution, reducing them to their sexual exploits and giving the patriarchal state power over them.

Julietta is incredibly influential to the play as a name mentioned by more important characters and as a representation of female sexuality, but her onstage presence is rendered almost obsolete. She only has 14 lines throughout the play and there are moments such as Act 1 Scene 2 where she is present but mute. Her speech is characterised by her line “I’ll gladly learn”, where she is brief, obliging and submissive. This near-silence is reflective of her passivity and complete lack of characterisation, embodying the 17th-century belief that women should be submissive, seen and not heard. Shakespeare reduces any kind of personality or humanity from her, simply making her an object to give a reason for the complication of the plot: Claudio’s imprisonment. Julietta could have been seen as a “late addition” by Shakespeare due to her silent presence in Act 1 Scene 2 and Act 5 Scene 1 (Lever, 2019), making her seem like an afterthought and emphasising her lack of importance. Julietta’s defining characteristic is her pregnancy: a manifestation of her sexuality and femininity. Through this, it is evident that her character is reduced to her sexuality specifically because she is feminine. This follows the traditional 17th-century view that women were only important as mothers and wives. Furthermore, when Claudio speaks of their marriage, he refers to his “possession of Julietta’s bed”. Speaking of her “bed” rather than Julietta herself implies how Claudio associates marriage with sex rather than love and “possession” implies ownership and objectification. Therefore, Julietta is very much a one-dimensional character as she is treated like an object by the men around her and by the play’s structure.

Additionally, Mariana is reduced to a political and sexual pawn, disempowered by her marital status and used as a convenient plot device without meaningful characterisation or development. Before the play takes place, Angelo was her “combinate husband” but rejected her after “her brother Frederick was wracked at sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his sister”. This is poignant as it demonstrates Angelo’s relationship with her to be entirely transactional, concerned with her dowry rather than her personality or character. This objectifies her by reducing her to a commercial negotiation. She is also used by Isabella and the Duke in the bedtrick. There is a sense that she is willing to do the bedtrick as it is the only acceptable way to legitimise her marriage with Angelo and bring her family name out of disrepute after the shipwreck. When the Duke asks her if he has the best regard for her interests, she wholeheartedly agrees “Good friar, I know you do” insinuating she believes his bedtrick is in her best interest. Mariana is in a social grey area as she is betrothed to Angelo but not married to him. This characterises her within the play and Vienna at large as virtually impotent without a powerful husband, desperately in need of Angelo and willing to objectify herself for him. This was reflected in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem Mariana which depicts a woman abandoned by her lover. The isolation from Viennese society caused by her lack of marriage becomes literal isolation, as the Mariana in the poem lives in desolation. She is weak and desperate for the lover’s return, characterised by the lines:

She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
He cometh not,’ she said;

She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,

I would that I were dead!’

The line “I would that I were dead” shows her desperation as her “dreary” life is so impossible to bear that she would go to the greatest length, dying, to end her suffering. This echoes Mariana’s desperation which causes her to use her sexuality as a tool. Despite this, there is a sense that she doesn’t have much agency as she agrees to the bedtrick. Her decision about this is made offstage and we don’t see her directly agree, only Isabella insisting “She’ll take the enterprise upon her”. “Upon her” is in the passive voice, reflecting how this decision isn’t entirely hers. This is emphasised by Mariana’s near-silence for the rest of this scene. The Duke and Isabella utilise Mariana as a political pawn in Vienna’s patriarchal world through the bedtrick as she becomes a sexual object to appease one powerful man, Angelo, to save another, Claudio. Mariana is utilized by Shakespeare as a plot device when it comes to the bedtrick. She conveniently appears almost out of nowhere when Isabella is faced with Angelo’s demand for sex to free Claudio. She is betrothed to Angelo, making the bedtrick “no sin” and making her willing to carry it out to legitimise their marriage, suggesting that her character merely exists to neatly facilitate the plot. Shakespeare employs her as little as possible, only presenting her in three scenes which exemplifies how little she is valued.

Yet again, Mariana is used by the Duke in the final scene, where she is married to Angelo. Mariana is enthusiastic after their marriage is legitimised, saying “I crave no other, nor no better man”. The insistence that she wants “no better man” shows how she is desperate to marry the antagonist of the play despite his moral faults. Angelo has actively hurt Mariana and Vienna as a whole, but she disregards this, showing how she is willing to objectify herself and forget her feelings to be accepted by Viennese society. Her plea for the Duke to spare Angelo is her most vocal and active moment. She is fairly subversive to the Duke, demanding “I hope you will not mock me with a husband” and imploring Isabella to get down on her knees and plead with her. However, the fact that her only active moment is an attempt to save a man’s life only serves to compound her objectification as it seems her only purpose is to serve men. Her excitement at the marriage can also be seen as her realisation that as a woman in a patriarchal society she simply can’t resist the demands made by the most important man in Vienna. The Duke uses Mariana expressly as a punishment for Angelo where she yet again becomes a political pawn to restore order in Vienna. The punishment reaches its desired effect as we see Angelo’s distaste for the marriage in his complete silence for the rest of the play. Pascale Aebischer argues that “the open silence [after the enforced marriages] point to a view of marriage not as a happy comedic resolution but rather as both a form of state control and a kind of rape” (Aebischer, 2008). This seemingly extreme view is justified by the text as this idea of “state control” and the complete sexual violation of “rape” relates to Mariana’s lack of agency when it comes to her marriage that reduces her to a political and sexual object.

Isabella has far more agency than any of her female peers in her determination to save Claudio’s life; however, she is not immune to being objectified. In her first appearance onstage, we learn that she is “yet unsworn” into the nunnery but has the intent of becoming a nun. Instead of seeing this as a spiritual, virtuous act, Shakespeare focuses on the way a nun’s sexuality is of primary importance to her life. The scene begins with Isabella’s reference to “strict restraint”, followed by the Nun insisting “When you have vow’d, you must not speak with men”, calling attention to a nunnery as primarily a place of chastity rather than having religious or spiritual significance. This is exemplified by Lucio addressing Isabella with “Hail virgin, if you be — as those cheek-roses / Proclaim you are no less”, reducing Isabella to an object defined by her sexuality. “No less” reflects the strict moral and sexual codes of Protestantism in the 17th century, as a woman’s sexual history became the way to decide her value, effectively objectifying her. Chastity was seen as the epitome of morality and virtuosity and defined the way a woman was treated by society, shown when Lucio effectively worships Isabella for her chastity with “Hail virgin”. Her determination to save her brother from being executed is immense and drives her to be more assertive and active, defying 17th-century gender stereotypes. She is confident as she speaks to Claudio and Angelo, calling upon Angelo to “Go to your bosom, / Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know / That’s like my brother’s fault […] Let not a sound a thought upon your tongue / Against my brother’s life”. Her use of imperatives — “go”, “ask”, and “let” — shows her fearlessness when talking to the most important man in Vienna. She is extremely eloquent and persuasive when she pleas to Angelo to save her brother’s life, but as Kathleen McLuskie articulates: “the extraordinary eloquence with which Isabella pleads her case with Angelo […] are constructed as rhetorical arguments that make her attractive as a sexual partner to Angelo” (McLuskie, 2016). Instead of seeing the persuasiveness and determination as admirable, as it would be seen for a male character, Isabella’s argument is reduced to being sexually attractive to Angelo. This objectifies her as neither her personality nor her intelligence bears any weight in this interaction, only her female sexuality. Angelo propositions her while completely disregarding anything she has said: “Might there not be a charity in sin / To save this brother’s life?” His encouragement of “sin” shows how he doesn’t care for Isabella’s virtue or her desire to become a nun, but instead only sees her as a sexual object. It can be argued that by being so dedicated to saving Claudio, Isabella shows her female subservience as an object with the sole purpose of serving her brother. However, she still retains dignity, agency and self-importance when she challenges Claudio: “Better it were a brother died at once, / Than that a sister, by redeeming him, / Should die forever”. Here, she is brutally honest with her brother, admitting she would let him die to keep her chastity and religious beliefs.

Despite Isabella’s intense agency and self-confidence in the first part of the play, we see this disappear as she regresses into an object without agency in the final act. Isabella begs on her knees with Mariana for the Duke not to kill Angelo, with no lines given to explain her change of heart. She loses status onstage by kneeling on the floor, literally below the male characters, reflecting her loss of power and emphasising her subservience. After Angelo sexually degraded both women, it does not make sense for wither to defend him. It, therefore, seems at this point that Isabella’s change in opinion is merely convenient for Shakespeare’s plot as it allows for Angelo’s life to be spared and for the play to be resolved as a comedy. The Duke asks Isabella to marry him twice in this scene; both times she responds with silence. These silences can be interpreted as “mute, accepting wonder” (McGuire, 1984) where Isabella accepts despite her shock due to her sense of duty to the patriarchal system. In Vienna, the Duke has the highest power and would expect her to acquiesce due to her lower status and womanhood. The Duke has also been crucial to saving Claudio’s life by finding Mariana and sending the pirate’s head to Angelo. Consequently, virtuous Isabella admires and feels indebted to him, causing her to see their marriage not as romantic but as a way to give herself, like an object, to him in gratitude. This would have been believed without much question by a 17th-century audience where women were seen as subservient to men. These silences could alternatively “testify to a resistance that wordlessly but effectively drives home that [the Duke’s enforced marriages] […] result far more from the Duke’s exercise of his legal authority than from the imperatives of shared erotic love” (McGuire, 1984). This shows how Isabella would be shocked and repulsed by the proposals as she doesn’t love the Duke, partially because he has been disguised up until this point and partially because she has had no romantic involvement in the text with him thus far. Perhaps most importantly, marriage violates her desire for the virtuous life of a nun which she previously had valued over her brother’s life. The Duke, by proposing to Isabella, is objectifying her as he disregards Isabella’s emotions and instead focuses on her romantic and sexual attributes. Barbara Baines argues Isabella is “not silenced but, instead, chooses silence as a form of resistance to the patriarchal authority” (Baines, 1990). This follows a traditional 20th- and 21st-century view, reflected in productions from these centuries, where this silence is seen as a rejection which empowers Isabella as she defies the Duke and the state he represents. However, if this is a rejection her silence is more indicative of her objectification than her strength as she has no real semblance of agency, especially when compared to her earlier extended and impassioned speeches. It is, therefore, most convincing that Shakespeare would have meant for this silence to represent the quiet subservience of a woman allowing herself to become an object, characteristic of 17th-century tradition. Consequently, the final and most poignant depiction of Isabella is that of her weakness and lack of agency. This journey of a woman’s waning power and activity is reflected by Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth: originally dominant over her husband, delivering impassioned speeches in much the same way as Isabella, but then becoming entirely irrelevant to the plot and dying silently, denied a voice at the end of the play. Shakespeare’s message almost seems to be that women should be punished for activity and will eventually learn subservience, or have it forced upon them.

However, it seems that men, too, are reduced to objects in Measure for Measure as emphasis is often placed on their sexual conduct. Angelo, especially, seems utterly obsessed with sex and its regulation in Vienna. Closing down brothels and imprisoning sexual deviants is his priority when he gains power over the state, evident in Pompey’s arrest “for being a bawd”. However, he cannot reflect this piety in his actions as he cannot repress his lust for Isabella and tries to coerce her into having extramarital sex with him. David Holbrook calls Angelo a “sexual maniac” (Holbrook, 1986), exemplifying how intense his obsession is and how important this is to his characterisation. Lucio, though a minor character, is characterised by using prostitutes with nonchalance as well as referring to women as “my dear morsel” and “fresh whore”. He is a man characterised by his sexual conduct and sin, emphasised in his name’s reference to Lucifer. The Duke also inserts himself in the sexual lives of his subjects through his enforced marriages in the final act.

In conclusion, women are mostly but not exclusively ridiculed, used, and belittled as objects in Measure for Measure by each other, the men in their life, and by Shakespeare’s writing. They are denied influence over their decisions, primarily sexual, and it seems as if they are meaningless without the men in their life who often abuse them. Most importantly, the female with a semblance of agency, Isabella, has this revoked and is objectified immediately as it is convenient for the plot in the play’s most significant final act. Shakespeare intended for this to be a morality play which influenced him to explore the relationship between sexuality and the state and the vice of lust. This explains the sexual objectification of both men and women. However, the objectification of women is far more poignant than the objectification of men and was created to reflect the patriarchal 17th-century attitudes that surrounded Shakespeare. Through his female characters he insinuates that women in society are impotent and insignificant and, despite having some agency, will eventually submit to the more powerful men.

Bibliography

Aebischer, P., 2008. Silence, Rape and Politics in “Measure for Measure”: Close Readings in Theatre History. Shakespeare Bulletin, 26(4), pp. 1–23.

Baines, B. J., 1990. Assaying the Power of Chastity in Measure for Measure. Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 30(2), pp. 283–301.

Holbrook, D., 1986. The Crow of Avon? Shakespeare, Sex and Ted Hughes. The Cambridge Quarterly, 15(1), pp. 1–12.

Lever, J. W., 2019. Introduction Section 1, The Text. In: Measure for Measure. The Arden Shakespeare ed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., p. xvii.

McGuire, P. C., 1984. Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare’s Open Silences. Berkeley: University of California Press.

McLuskie, K. E., 2016. Gender in Measure for Measure, The British Library. [Online]
Available at: https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/gender-in-measure-for-measure#authorBlock1
[Accessed 28 May 2020].

Shakespeare, W., 2014. Macbeth. Cambridge School Shakespeare ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shakespeare, W., 2019. Measure for Measure. The Arden Shakespeare ed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Tennyson, A. L., 1830. Mariana, The Poetry Foundation. [Online]
Available at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45365/mariana
[Accessed 28 May 2020].