The Mother, Who Is Not One: Reflections Of Motherhood In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet, The Tempest, And The Taming Of The Shrew

The lack of proper motherhood in Shakespeare's plays has been a point of attraction for many feminist critics actively engaged in emphasizing the patriarchal aspect of Shakespeare's plays. This paper aims to analyze motherhood and the lack of mother/mother-figure in The Tempest,Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew through Luce Irigaray's theory of gender and the work of other feminist critics. The issues of gender, father-daughter relations and the reflections of the absent mothers will be discussed. Male/Female Subjectivity will also be questioned, in view of Irigaray's conceptualization of gender by relating it to Subject.