HERO

Hero is the protagonist, along with Claudio, of the main plot in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. This comedy explores the personal relationships between men and women, and in this main plot the situation of women in Elizabethan times is reflected perfectly. Hero’s situation can be compared with the majority of women at that time. Nevertheless, with the presence of a completely different female character, her cousin Beatrice, Hero’s position is highlighted. The aim of this paper is to show the way women were oppressed in Shakespeare’s times, taking as an example Hero’s character. Her development throughout the play and the defamation that she has to endure, as well as the attitudes of other characters towards her, will help us explain this important social issue.

First of all, it is important to bear in mind that by the time this play was written (around 1598 and 1599), “England had already become a Protestant country. In this patriarchal society, women were educated to believe that men were superior women and that the aim of women was to become obedient housewives and mothers of the new generations” (Benet). “Women were expected to rule the house, which became their “queendom”, to bear children and to educate them” (Manuel). Therefore, women were always subjected to men’s authority. In the first place, they belonged to their fathers, or to the brothers (in case that the father was dead). And after that, the father normally arranged a marriage, so women then belonged to the husbands. “Regarding females in this way allowed the males to use a woman as an item to bargain with as well as a symbol to reflect to outsiders their family’s status, power and reputation. The role of women in the 16^th century was very much a case of being seen and not heard. Women were regarded as possessions, initially by their fathers and eventually to their husbands” (Wells). In any case, they were in a situation of total inferiority. As regards Hero, she belongs to her father, Leonato, and at the end of the play her ‘master’ becomes Claudio.

Now we are going to consider the play’s process: since the very beginning, Hero is presented as the ideal woman of Elizabethan times. Some adjectives that Claudio uses to describe her are (all in Act 1, Scene 1): beautiful, modest young lady, the sweetest lady, a “jewel”. All these adjectives connote meekness, submission and mildness, three important features that men looked for in a woman. It is obvious that ‘shrewish’ and rebellious women, like Katharina in The Taming of the Shrew were badly regarded. Hero would be more similar to Katharina’s sister, Bianca.

In this first scene, Hero and Claudio fall in love with each other immediately, and decide to get married right away. The idea of love at first sight was very popular in Shakspeare’s times. Romeo and Juliet, for instance, also fall in love at first sight. But “Claudio’s professed love seems to be dangerously shallow: when he first professes his love for her, he is careful to ask if she stands to inherit her father’s wealth (he asks Don Pedro Hath Leonato any son, my lord?, to which Don Pedro replies No child but Hero. She’s his only heir in Act 1, Scene 1” (“Hero and Claudio”). Hero’s love seems genuine, but in the case of Claudio, it seems that he is also quite interested in money. Women at that time had to provide a dowry, and since Hero was an only child, she would be the heiress. Besides, Claudio refers to Hero as a “jewel”, and this can be looked in contrasting ways: she can be a jewel in the sense of a beautiful woman of great worth, or he may regard her as a rich woman that can provide him a fortune. It seems that she is used by Leonato, Don Pedro, and Claudio “as a pawn in a business deal, again to bring further wealth into the family, as well as an improved social status with her marriage with a count who has been successful at war” (Wells). Even Leonato tells Antonio in Act 5, Scene 4: You must be father to your brother’s daughter, / And give her to young Claudio. Even though this marriage is shown as a marriage of love, it can also be seen as an arranged marriage or a business deal. Fortunately for Hero, she is indeed in love with Claudio, but even if she had not loved him, she would probably have had to marry him.

In Act 1, Scene 3, Don John, who hates Claudio for being so admired and respected, decides to make trouble for him, and he uses Hero as a means. If he demonstrates that she is a loose woman, this will be detrimental to Claudio’s image. He believes that Don Pedro will reject Claudio as he rejected him long ago, and so he will be no longer his favourite. Again a woman is used as a mere pawn to serve men’s purposes. Don John’s plot is successful, because Claudio and Don Pedro apparently ‘see’ Hero making love with another man just the night before her wedding day. Therefore Claudio decides to humiliate her in public next morning and of course not to marry her.

In Elizabethan times, women were expected to be pure and chaste, and could not have sexual intercourse with men who were not their husbands, otherwise they would lose their honour. So they had to be virgins if they wanted to get married. “By having sexual relationships before marriage meant that she (the woman in general) would lose all social standing, a disaster from which she could never recover” (Gardner and Brian). Furthermore, this loss of honour would also affect the woman’s whole family. However, men could be unfaithful to their wives and this was totally acceptable. This control over women’s sexuality is another example of oppression. On the other hand, “for men honour depended on male friendship alliances and was more military by nature. Unlike a woman, a man could defend his honour, and that of his family, by fighting in a battle or a duel” (Gardner and Brian).

The most important moment in the play is Act 4, Scene 1, when Claudio and Hero are supposedly going to get married. This is the climax of the play. Claudio disgraces Hero publicly, accusing her of being a loose woman. But the striking thing is that her father does not believe her, thereby supporting Don John, Claudio and Don Pedro. He even wants her death, claiming: Death is the fairest cover for her shame / That may be whish’d for […] Hence form her! Let her die!. “The language that both Claudio and Leonato use to shame her is extremely strong. To Claudio she is a “rotten orange”, and to Leonato a rotting carcass that cannot be preserved: “the wide sea / Hath drops to few to wash her clean again / And salt too little which may give season give / To her foul-tainted flesh!” (Gardner and Brian). Here it is clear that she does not enjoy the egalitarian relationship that Benedick and Beatrice do (they are very equal, and even though Beatrice is a woman, she is incredibly strong). Nevertheless, Hero ends up fainting, as a result of the overwhelming shame. In a way, this is a coward attitude because throughout her defamation she barely speaks and does not defend her truth courageously. She behaves as a weak woman, oppressed by the male figures representing the patriarchal society. “The wit and intelligence she displays in front of her own sex is hidden when men are around. Patriarchal society demands her playing the role of the silent goddess” (Davet). The only moment in the play in which Hero is more assertive and determined is when in Act 3, Scene 1, she carries out the plot to deceive her cousin in order to make her believe that Benedick is in love with her. “Hero’s deception is far more personalised and calculated than the men’s approach to fooling Benedick” (Wells). Related to women’s intelligence, we can comment that in Elizabethan times women were deprived of an opportunity to develop their intellectual potential. In fact, “after having received an education, women could not apply all those things they had learnt in a professional way, as they could not work as lawyers, doctors or politics, but as domestic servants” (Thomas).

Continuing with the scene of the ‘marriage’, it is important to comment that the only people who believe in Hero’s innocence are Beatrice, Benedick and Friar Francis. This last one, only by looking at Hero, deduces that she is innocent: By noting of the lady I have mark’d / A thousand blushing apparitions / To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames / In Angel whiteness beat away those blushes. The other characters, like Leonato and Claudio, are blind to these reactions. They seem so worked up and set in his sexist ideals that they cannot even recognise which is the truth. In the case of Claudio, “his devotion to courtly ideals seems to be the real reason he cannot distinguish appearance from reality and Don John’s slander only reinforces his natural misogyny and mistrust” (Davet).

The next step in the play (in this same scene) is to fake Hero’s death. After Don Pedro and Don John are gone, Leonato is convinced by the friar, Benedick and Beatrice that her daughter is innocent. Friar Francis proposes to maintain that Hero has died in order to punish Claudio. At the same time, it would give Hero an amount of time to regain her lost honour and to cleanse her name. If she wants to re-enter society and get married she has to be a respectable woman again, otherwise she could end up in a nunnery. If women were not pure and chaste, no man would ever want to marry them (another sign of oppression), and this is clearly reflected through the scene.

Once the friar, Leonato and Hero are gone, Benedick and Beatrice are left alone. In this moment of the play Beatrice shows her fierceness, strong personality and loyalty towards her cousin. In this moment she would like to be a man in order to defend Hero and punish the men that have wronged her. She claims: O that I were man for his sake! Or that I / Had any friend would be a man for my sake! But / Manhood is melted into courtesies […] I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving. This speech shows that women like Beatrice who are strong-minded and brave, rebel against the superiority of men. They are so defenceless that even though they are right, they are unable to perform any act of justice. “It appears that it is unacceptable for a woman to act upon her feelings of such hatred, to the extent of wanting to kill Claudio for his appalling behaviour towards Hero, but it is acceptable for a man” (Wells). That is why she asks Benedick to challenge Claudio, his best friend, to a duel. By asking him this, she is accepting the social norms of behaviour; norms that she does not like but has to accept if she wants justice for Hero.

At the end of the play (Act 5, Scene 4), Don John’s evil plot is discovered and Claudio realises that he has wrongly accused Hero. But then Leonato proposes him to marry his niece, who is very much alike Hero, and he accepts. Once they are in the church and Claudio sees Hero, he realises that she is not dead and therefore he has been given a second chance. What is most striking of this scene is that Hero forgives him immediately and does not feel any resentment towards him. Her response to him is: And when you lov’d, you were my other husband. Her attitude is that of a kindhearted and sweet woman that always forgives her husband and forgets about the pain and the shame that she has had to endure. This benevolence and submissive nature were characteristics that men looked for in women, because this kind of women could be easily manipulated.

As we have seen, in Much Ado About Nothing Hero’s character is representative of the ideal woman in Elizabethan society: beautiful, kind, chaste and submissive. Through the different scenes, we have showed how she is slandered and how her reputation is publicly tarnished. Her oppression is such that she even has to fake a death in order to regain her honour, which was extremely important at the time from a social point of view. Even though Hero is not as striking as Beatrice, she is an interesting character that helps us study women’s situation in Shakespeare’s times.

Academic year 2006/2007

siltovi@alumni.uv.es