Shakespeare's Widows [Hardcover]

Shakespeare s Widows moves thirty-one characters appearing in twenty plays to center stage. Through nuanced analyses, grounded in the widows material circumstances, Kehler uncovers the plays negotiations between the opposed poles of residual Catholic precept and Protestant practice - between celibacy and remarriage. Reading from a feminist materialist perspective, this book argues that Shakespeare s insights into the political and economic pressures the widows face allow them to elude mechanistic ideology. Kehler s book provides extensive historical background into the various religious and cultural attitudes towards widows in early modern England.Precept and Practice Exemplary 'Seeming Widows Problematic Widowed Mothers War Widows Working Widows Lusty Widows/Remarried Widows Opting Out

Fills a major void in Shakespeare criticism. - CHOICE

The only comprehensive treatment of Shakespeare's widows, the book challenges manyreceived ideas of past and current scholarship, making an important contribution tofeminist criticism of Shakespeare and to the history of the early modern period. - James Schiffer, Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, SUNY, New Paltz

Kehler is ingenious both in clarifying which characters actually are widows and in teasing out the economic (and in many cases political) constraints on them, which she suggests are far more important than the sexual motivations which are often ascribed to them. This is a comprehensive and illuminating study. - Lisa Hopkins, Professor of English, Sheffield Hallam University

To the melancholy man, the resourceful heroine, and the peremptory father Kehler enables us to add the widow. Standing at the intersection of gender scripting, economics, politics, and emotional personhood, Shakespeare s thirty-one widows provide Kehler with the subject for meditations that manage to be dramatic as well as historical, imaginatively engaging as well as ideologl"