In English, Year 9 have been learning about how young women were expected to behave in the time of Shakespeare, before considering how far his female characters met or subverted these expectations. For homework they made booklets giving advice to women about to be married, drawing on life in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras:
“Women are not allowed to enter the professions such as law, medicine or politics…”
“Even if you think your husband is wrong, he is always right. You are wrong, because you are a woman.”
“Disobedience is a crime…”
“..thy wife is thy property.”
The class has been studying Antony and Cleopatra. Livia pointed out that Cleopatra “made herself really powerful without a man’s power; she fought her way up through the monarchy and got quite far in life”, thereby not conforming to the traditional role of women at the time.
Sophie added that although Cleopatra was in many ways unconventional, “she also lived up to the expectations of a ruler in that she was educated and rich”.
