Approaches to Literature week 5

Shakespeare Quote - "Frailty thy name is woman"

Hamlet:

Heaven and earth,

Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—

Let me not think on't—Frailty, thy name is woman!

l  Origin

Hamlet, the hero of Shakespeare’s masterpiece Hamlet, utters this famous phrase in Act 1, Scene II. In fact, he is recalling the beautiful memories of his mother and deceased father. He mourns the death of his father and changing nature of woman, referring to his mother, Gertrude, as she has married his uncle Claudius. He says, “Frailty, thy name is woman! / A little month, or ere those shoes were old / With which she follow’d my poor father’s body.” By woman, he refers to Gertrude, who is morally weak, because she has betrayed her husband by marrying his brother, Claudius just after a month of her husband’s death.

l  Meaning

Saddened by the death of his father and hasty marriage of his mother, Hamlet wants to die himself. To Hamlet’s mind, woman represents frailty, meaning breakable, weak and delicate in nature. He alludes to inherent weaknesses in women’s character. His mother, Gertrude epitomizes frailty or weakness. He also refers to his mother as a spiritually, morally and physically weak woman. She is morally weak and frail because her incestuous inconstancy drives her to remarry immediately after her husband’s death. Spiritually, she is weak because she has committed a sin and physically she is frail as women are less robust and less stronger than men. In his eyes, there is no comparison between Claudius and his father, who is “Hyperion to a satyr.” Therefore, Hamlet feels Gertrude acted foolishly.

Alice Munro

Alice Ann Munro is a Canadian short story writer and Nobel Prize winner. Munro's work has been described as having revolutionized the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time. Her stories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more than parade."

                                                                                                                   

Munro's fiction is most often set in her native Huron County in southwestern Ontario. Her stories explore human complexities in an uncomplicated prose style. Munro's writing has established her as "one of our greatest contemporary writers of fiction," or, as Cynthia Ozick put it, "our Chekhov." Munro is the recipient of many literary accolades, including the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature for her work as "master of the contemporary short story", and the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work. She is also a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction and was the recipient of the Writers' Trust of Canada's 1996 Marian Engel Award, as well as the 2004 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for Runaway.

Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (29 January 1860– 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."

Dystopia

A dystopia is a community or society that is undesirable or frightening. It is translated as "not-good place", an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, Utopia, published 1516, a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty.

Dystopian societies appear in many artistic works, particularly in stories set in the future. Some of the most famous examples are George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Dystopias are often characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Dystopian societies appear in many sub-genres of fiction and are often used to draw attention to real-world issues regarding society, environment, politics, economics, religion, psychology, ethics, science, or technology. However, some authors also use the term to refer to actually-existing societies, many of which are or have been totalitarian states, or societies in an advanced state of collapse and disintegration.

Utopia

Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More (1478–1535) published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.