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Shakespeare, Gender, the Nation State, --- and Thomas Jefferson?
During the early modern period, roughly the sixteenth century through the eighteenth century, a transformation occurred in power relationships within the home and between sovereign and subject. The Filmerian System was firmly in place by the sixteenth century. According to this theory of government the home was the state writ small; in other words, just as a king governed his subjects, so too did a husband govern his wife, children, and dependents. Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew wonderfully illustrates this ideal in Kate's last speech. Kate argues that a woman's husband is "thy lord, thy king, thy governor." She goes on to state that "Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband." To Kate, if a woman is not obedient, she is "but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor." Such powerful political rhetoric clearly suggests that the home and the state were tied in some way. This relationship placed the Parliamentarians in a precarious position as they rebelled against Charles I during the English Civil War: How can subjects justify their right to rebel, yet deny women and children the right to rebel against their husbands and fathers respectively? By the 1690's John Locke successfully answered that question in his "Second Treatise of Government" as he created a new model to challenge this gendered construct of power. This new system, the Lockean System, argued that the home and the state were not related and as such rebellion against the government could be justified. Such justification impacted the history of the United States as Thoms Jefferson turned to such reasoning in order to write the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

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Shakespeare, Gender, the Nation State, --- and Thomas Jefferson? During the early modern period, roughly the sixteenth century through the eighteenth century, a transformation occurred in power relationships within the home and between sovereign and subject. The Filmerian System was firmly in place by the sixteenth century. According to this theory of government the home was the state writ small; in other words, just as a king governed his subjects, so too did a husband govern his wife, children, and dependents. Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew wonderfully illustrates this ideal in Kate's last speech. Kate argues that a woman's husband is "thy lord, thy king, thy governor." She goes on to state that "Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband." To Kate, if a woman is not obedient, she is "but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor." Such powerful political rhetoric clearly suggests that the home and the state were tied in some way. This relationship placed the Parliamentarians in a precarious position as they rebelled against Charles I during the English Civil War: How can subjects justify their right to rebel, yet deny women and children the right to rebel against their husbands and fathers respectively? By the 1690's John Locke successfully answered that question in his "Second Treatise of Government" as he created a new model to challenge this gendered construct of power. This new system, the Lockean System, argued that the home and the state were not related and as such rebellion against the government could be justified. Such justification impacted the history of the United States as Thoms Jefferson turned to such reasoning in order to write the Declaration of Independence in 1776.			Upcoming Assignments: Summer, 2003 Complete Summer Assignment. Use the "Center Links" page to gain access to the Perseus Project.