UNIVERSITY “GOCE DELCEV” – STIP

PHILOLOGICAL FACULTY
English language and literature

SEMINAR REPORT
WHY THE WORKS IN THE 16TH CENTURY EXPRESS A MYSOGYNISTIC (AGAINST
WOMEN) VIEW OF THE WORLD

Mentor: Candidate:
Professor Andrew Goodspit Simona Jankova
162061

Stip, December 2017

 CONTENTS

Introduction………………………………………………………………….............................3
Ben Johnson’s “Simplex Munditiis”……………………………………………………………4
John Donne’s “The
Flea”………………………………………………………………………..5
Female characters in the play “Macbeth” by
Shakespeare………………………………….6
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….9
References……………………………………………………………………………………..10

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INTRODUCTION

It is known that the 16th century is famous for having misogynistic views, about how
women were powerless and inferior to men. It also included a lot of prejudices about the
female sex, as well as sexual discrimination, violence against them, degradation and
sexual objectification of women. A lot of famous authors and poets around this time
used these views in their work of art, making women seem as objects for passion and
sex only, making them evil and superstitious, engaged with dark and black magic,
horrific and manipulative leaders and wives and so on. One of the famous poets at that
time, William Shakespeare, also took advantage of this misogynistic view, including it in
his famous play “Macbeth”. Some other authors as well like, John Donne and his poem
“The Flea”, portrait women as sexual objects only, in which they solely see the pleasure
of having intercourse with them. Others, like Ben Johnson and his “Simplex Munditiis”
express that women are fake, covering their true self by wearing makeup and perfumes
and nice clothing. However, there are different perceptions of all these works of art, but
all of them lead to the fact that most of the poetry is against women, and not in their
favor.

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MAIN PART

Ben Johnson’s “Simplex Munditiis”

Still to be neat, still to be drest,

As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdr’d, still perfumed:
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art’s hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Give me a look, give me a face
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all th’ adulteries of art;
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

As the name itself says (Simplex Munditiis is Latin for elegant in simplicity), this poem is
about embracing the natural beauty and grace of a woman. When you first read the
poem, it gives out a nice and pleasant feeling, how someone should praise women for
their natural self and see what’s inside, not look at the fake things outside of someone,
like makeup, perfume, clothes and accessories, but is this poem really a work of art that
favors women? It clearly indicates that all women of that time, were fake, creating a
false image of themselves by wearing makeup. This is still a debatable topic in modern
society and many people think that women should not wear that much makeup because
it seems “unnatural”. Just like the makeup, Johnson is also commenting on what the
woman is wearing, giving her a feedback that all of that is making her look like she isn’t
herself. “Give me a look, give me a face” is also an aggressive way of asking someone
to be natural. This misogynistic and stereotypical view about how women are being fake
if they enjoy taking care of themselves, is still present in today’s world. One of the things
the author didn’t mention is if the women did all those specific things just to impress
him. Maybe she did her makeup, dressed up and perfumed herself because she wanted
to look good for herself, not because she was trying to impress a man. Women were
somewhat entitled to men at that time, and didn’t have much freedom to do things on
their own, or for themselves, so the audience is assuming that she is trying to entice him

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by “being fake”. Taking care of yourself and your body cannot be called fake in any
sense.

John Donne’s “The Flea”

In this poem, the author uses an example of “a flea” in order to talk in a girl to go to bed
with him. The flea has bitten both of them, and has their blood mixed in it, so the
speaker makes a statement by saying that if their blood is mixed together in the flea,
they should have intercourse as well. The girl opposes, because it is portrayed that she
would “be judged” or feel “immoral” if she goes to bed with him. One of the reasons why
this poem isn’t really written in women’s favor, is because it is giving the sense of
women being judged based on their sexual wishes and sex life. But what’s mostly
expressed in this poem, is how the author views the woman, that is a sexual object.
Notice that in the poem, never did the author mention the way she looks or what her
personality is. Women are constantly being portrayed as sexual objects, toys for
pleasure and they’re being sexualized in every possible way. The poem expresses a
misogynistic proclamation towards women by objectifying them, saying how the only
reason they serve is to give pleasure. When you are writing a poem, and only putting a
big accent on how to persuade a girl to go to bed with you, it will clearly be understood
in a negative connotation. Some people claim that, the poet however had the tendency
to make everything seem sexual and sound that way, and some say that this is just an
art of taking something so simple and turning it into passion. We cannot deny that, but
we also cannot neglect the fact that he is only making a woman to be his love interest.
No personality is given, which means the author believes women have no personality,
or that it is not that important to pay attention to, the only thing that is important
according to him, is her body. In essence, women at these times operated as empty
vessels for men to project their wants and needs onto. It was a rarity for men to inquire
about the women’s wants and needs. When women are represented this way, it
encourages men to mistreat and disregard them – or to treat them as comedy fodder –
because the perception is that they aren’t bright enough to know what’s going on
anyway. Perhaps even more destructive is that it encourages men to be more
aggressive when women are not acting the way they “should” be acting, when they

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aren’t responding in the way men would like them to respond. People should be treated
with respect and empathy, not dehumanized and objectified, and we need to be better
about representing women more positively.

Female characters in the play “Macbeth” by Shakespeare

Even though this play is written in a time where there was an ambient in which men
dominate and rule, female characters are not at all less important. Actually, women play
very important role in this play. Shakespeare’s point of view though, can be considered
misogynistic because all of the female creatures (except Lady Macduff) are portrayed
as evil human beings who deal with black magic and can be very manipulative. In fact,
there aren’t many female characters in the play, the only ones that are present are Lady
Macbeth and the Three Witches or Weird sisters as Shakespeare calls them. Even
though he follows the norm of the 16th century that women are powerless, his play does
show the idea that women possess a power of their own. The misogyny and sense of
masculine authority in Macbeth go hand-in-hand and because of Shakespeare’s
inconsistent approach of women, the misogynistic tendencies lead to disastrous results.

Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth is the focus of much of the exploration of gender roles in  Macbeth. Lady
Macbeth longs to escape the feminine roles of mother and wife and hotness her society
associates with women, however. She feels trapped, because she is a character who
was born to lead, but as a female she is only dependent of her husband. She
surrenders herself to the darkness and black magic, and asks to be “unsexed” in order
to have power to murder king Duncan. She also condemns her own breasts, wishing
her “milk” to be taken for “gall” – which clearly indicates she wants to leave her
womanhood behind. This statement tends to bear “sexist” stereotypes, such as the
woman’s role is supposed to be nurturing, and it also expresses that women are
monstrous and murderous. Unsexed by her own will, Lady Macbeth is now no longer a
conventional ‘lady’: because she has refused to behave as dutifully as her society
suggests she should, she seems to become an inhuman creature. The line “make thick

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my blood” also represents a dark parody of femaleness whose blood is too ‘thick’ and
clotted for menstrual fertility and whose maternal milk is bitter, dangerous, galling. In
unsexing herself she almost appears to have dehumanized herself and stepped out of
‘nature’ – that is, out of the natural order of things in which the ‘milk of human kindness’
nurtures moral feeling.

Ironically, Lady Macbeth is often portrayed as trying to accomplish her goals and her
purposes by using traditionally “feminine” tricks. Some view her as manipulative and
seductive, luring her husband towards crime by playing the role of his “dearest love”. By
the end of the play, Lady Macbeth lapses back into the feminine helplessness she had
earlier rejected. Her loss of control is most theatrically manifested in her guilt-ridden
sleep-walking scene. Here the sleep, whose murder she had commanded, overwhelms
her, forcing her to confess her sins while failing to ‘knit up the ravell’d sleeve of care’.
But some critics say that Lady Macbeth is the main villain in the play, creating an
unstoppable monster out of Macbeth, turning him into a murderous, ruthless king
because of her ambitions to become queen and live a good life, full of power and luxury.
The character of Lady Macbeth shows a manipulative woman who is prepared to do
anything in order to lure her husband to grant her wishes, and she is aligned with the
supernatural and witchcraft. Depending on the production, she can be portrayed as a
virago (a brazen, war-like woman) and a manipulator, the seed of Macbeth’s evil
thoughts, or as his devoted queen.

The Three Witches (The weird sisters)

The Witches in “Macbeth” represent the supernatural. They are doing a witchcraft which
plays a big role in the tragedy, and they trick Macbeth into believing he is going to be
king. When they first appear in the play, we don’t know who they are, or what they are,
they actually start the play by saying “When shall we three meet again? In thunder,
lightning, or in rain?” which tells us that they always go together as a group of three.
Even though they seem to know a lot of things, and predict the future, their statement
“Hail king” addressed to Macbeth, will provoke thoughts in him, on how he should kill
the king and take his place. If Lady Macbeth was evil for manipulating him after he got

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the idea, we can say the exact same thing about The Witches too, because they put
that idea in his mind. Again, here we see three female characters who deal with dark
magic and throw out manipulative ideas. If Macbeth hadn’t met them, he wouldn’t have
gotten the idea to kill the king, or to say to his wife that he might become king, making
her ambitious for the throne. The Witches, by telling him two truths about his life, and
one “to become reality”, encourage him to think in a way that is not acceptable. Some
believe that the term “Weird” that’s used to denote The Witches (Weird Sisters)
originates from the Old English “wyrd” which means “fate”, so that indicates that they
are somehow associated with the three fates of the classical mythology. And since “the
fates” are supposed to control a man’s destiny, this shows that Macbeth didn’t have
control over his actions, and the choices he made weren’t really his. In fact, The
Witches were those who put that idea in his mind, or “shaped” his destiny by tricking
him, and the rest was done by Lady Macbeth and her gimmicks and manipulations.
That’s why many cases show Macbeth as a victim of the female ideas and sly mind.
The intervention of the supernatural can be a common motif in Shakespeare’s plays,
and in Macbeth, The Witches show the darkness and depravity of a human’s soul, they
are the eternal forces that tempt humans. What’s misogynistic about this, is the way
they are given to the reader. We don’t see any male characters included in making
black magic of course, and even though “beard” is added to their look, they are still
female characters that represent how evil women can be, and how capable they are of
tempting men to do vicious things. The witches are also an outward manifestation of
Macbeth's wickedness and the horrible acts he commits.

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CONCLUSION

As a summary of everything that’s been written in the previous pages, it can be

concluded that, the view of the world back in the 16 th century was quite misogynistic.
That is strongly expressed through the art we are reading today. All of the female
characters in the works are shown as fake, evil queens, ruthless, fate-creating dark
creatures that deal with black magic, objects for pleasure and so on. The hating of
women during the 16th and 17th century was far from being a new phenomenon – in fact
its roots were deep in the male psyche. The idea that was most present around was
that, women were inferior to men, they were objects of insatiable lust who were prone to
evil, and idea was widely spread and developed over the millennia.

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REFERENCES

1) http://www.witchtrials.co.uk/misogyny.html
2) http://www.brighthubeducation.com/homework-help-literature/61498-symbols-in-
macbeth/
3) Shakespeare, W. (2010). Macbeth. Boston, MA: English Play Press. (Original
work published 1699).
4) https://www.shmoop.com/the-flea/

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