Women in Shakespeare's WorksBy paying close attention to the role of women in Shakespeare's works, we can see his works with a new perspective. But we must remember that we are examining a male playwright of extraordinary scope who wrote in a remote period when the position of women was evidently narrower and less controversial than in our own period. Sandra Gilbert writes in The Madwoman in the Attic that literature is defined as a mirror held up to society and nature, "the mimetic aesthetic that begins with Aristotle and descends through Shakespeare implies that the poet, like a lesser God, created or begot an alternative, mirror universe in which it actually seems to enclose or trap shadows of reality" (Madwoman 5). While some artists do not necessarily duplicate the "realities" of their culture in their art, they may exploit them to create character or intensify conflict, or wrestle with them, criticize them, or transcend them. Shakespeare, it seems, “contains more and preaches less than most authors, hence the age-old controversy over his religious affiliation, political views, and sexual preferences” (Lenz 4). His attitude towards women is just as complex and requires just as much scrutiny. When we begin to study female characters, we must overlook the male superiority that patriarchal misogyny implies in the literature of its era, as highlighted in many studies. In "Shakespeare: on Love and Lust," Charney explains the position taken by critics such as Janet Adelman in Kahn's "Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare's Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest" and "Man's Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare" ". He states that these two authors, as do many others, see Sh...... middle of paper ...... mother, wife, nor queen of England "The roles of women in Richard III". The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Ed. Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Galye Greene and Carol Thomas Neely. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1980. Park, Clara Claiborne still popular." The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Ed. Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Gayle Greene, and Carol Thomas Neely. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1980. Schoenbaum, S. "The Life of Shakespeare." The Companion of Cambridge in Shakespeare Studies. Ed Stanley Wells. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Woolf, Virginia. A room of one's own. The Norton anthology of women's literature. Sandra Gilberto. New York: Norton and Company, 1996.www.adfl.org/ade/bulletin/N087/0087015.htm