The Comedy of Errors, written by William Shakespeare and first performed in 1594, deals largely with the concept of identity, from far-fetched and mistaken identities from the twins Antipholus and Dromio, to the roles of the women around them. In an exploration of accepted gender norms, readers can easily notice that the key women in the play – Adriana, Luciana, and Emilia – derive or have been conditioned to derive their identities from the men around them. However, with one key exception, Adriana, Antipholus's wife, spends much of the play in continued anguish, questioning and challenging her role as wife, as she fears that her absent husband has begun to seek the company of other women. Due to her outspokenness, it can be said that unlike the other women mentioned in the play, who strictly adhere to traditional gender roles, Adriana seeks to question her place in marriage by continually and deliberately questioning disparities of power and the place of marriage. adultery in marriage, but ultimately returns to the societal role assigned to her, that of a traditionally submissive wife. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay At the beginning of the play, we observe Adriana's confused behavior towards her husband and his radical ideas about relationships, asserting that both man and woman should have equality in marriage. When, in Act 2, Antipholus fails to arrive home in time for dinner, Adriana quickly begins to criticize the relative freedom of men in reference to their female counterparts, discussing independence and power disparity in marriage; "ADRIANA Why should their freedom be greater than ours?.... /LUCIANA O, know that he is the brake of your will./ADRIANA There are only donkeys who will be restrained like this. " (2.1.10-15). Here she gradually defines gender norms, stating that she does not want to be controlled by her husband, playing on the bridle of the world, used as a description of Antipholus' rule over Adriana's freedom, to which she responds sarcastically that only animals accept such severity. restriction on free will. The word bride is also connoted with the word bride, which corresponds to the theme of marriage addressed. To this, her sister Luciana responds with a traditional response on the sovereignty of man in relation to woman; LUCIANA Well, stubborn freedom is whipped with misfortune. There is nothing under the eyes of heaven that does not have its limit, on earth, in the sea, in the sky: beasts, fish and winged birds are the subjects and under their control of their males : men, more divine, the masters of everything. these, Lords of the wide world and wild watery seas, Endowed with intellectual sense and soul, Of more preeminence than fish and fowl, Are masters of their females and their lords: So let your will take care of their agreements. (2.1.15-25) However, we do not know if this speech illustrates what she truly believes, or if she is simply regurgitating what she has been conditioned to think. Through this view of obedience, Luciana describes men as gods, as emphasized by the word "divine", with everything under the "eye of heaven" in their hands, of the earth (" on land, in the sea, in the sky) to “fish”. and poultry” and women falling into the same category. It states that it is the duty of women, as creations of God and subordinates of men, to serve their husbands as they would a deity, following the natural order of life to which theywere prescribed. This idea follows the creationist concept of Adam and Eve in terms of man's broader "intellectual and soul sense", which allows him to command "their females" and control their destiny as a God would. Thus, this view challenges Adriana's perspective on her relationship, returning to an antiquated idea that women divine their identity and sense of purpose from their respective men. At the same time, as Adriana claims, we cannot take her advice seriously, as she says: "Those who have no other cause can be meek" (2.1.33). Because Luciana is not married, Adriana feels she cannot fully understand her sister's marital woes. However, in this exchange, it is still very evident that a disparity exists between the two; while Luciana seeks to derive her self-worth and meaning from men, Adriana challenges this notion and outwardly questions her sister's ideas. Furthermore, in the next scene, when Adriana confronts Antipholus of Syracuse, she continues her subordination of female servitude and challenges the idea that men are the sole head and body of the family unit. In the following quote, upon meeting him in the market, she complains about his absence at home and the lack of love on his part for which she feels responsible: ADRIANA ….Who, indivisible, incorporated, Am better than your dear me is better. part. Ah! don't tear yourself away from me! For know, my love, that you can as easily drop a drop of water into the breaking chasm, and take up that same drop again without mixing, without addition or diminution, as if you were taking away yourself and not me Also. (2.2.121-128) In this passage, Adriana asserts that she and Antipholus are “indivisible, incorporated” into a unifying whole, emphasizing the unity of the marital bond that permanently binds her to Antipholus. His analogy of their marriage, as inseparable as a drop of water, connects the earlier statement of Antipholus of Syracuse in which he said: "I am to the world like a drop of water/Who in the ocean seeks a another drop/Who, falling there to find his comrade,/Invisible, curious, gets confused. (1.2.35-38). In saying this, he considers his missing mother and brother as drops of water linked inseparably to himself, as water binds to water, and therefore he feels that family is linked to family. With "the ocean" as a metaphor for a world teeming with many people, he thus recounts the difficulty of his task of discerning another "drop", or another person, among millions. For this reason, Antipholus "gets confused" as does Adriana, both seeking to fill a gap in a family or relationship they feel is broken. Although the man Adriana speaks to in this scene is not actually her husband, but her brother-in-law, it is interesting to observe this repetition of a quest for identity, in which two unrelated individuals talk about their self-esteem. and connecting to others in parallel ways. Just as Antipholus of Syracuse laments the fact that finding his family in this strange city is as simple as discerning a single drop of water in an ocean, just as Adriana warns her "husband" that tearing himself away from her would return to misplace a single drop of water in the ocean and fish out the same one later. In a sense, this can be interpreted as the completion of a broken half in that, while Antipholus of Syracuse previously searched for his missing family, Adriana completed him as "the better part of her loved one", claiming that as his wife she is he is looking for the other half of himself. What he doesn't know is that Adriana is the family member he longed to find, completing the blood connection he had lost.previously at the time of separation from his family. This metaphor of a drop of water speaking of the unity of the family thus connects Antipholus's search for his father and brother to Adriana's search for her husband; she considers her marriage to Antipholus as a blood bond as strong as that of parental kinship. In a following monologue in the same scene, Adriana continues her idea of ​​marriage as mutualistic; ADRIANA Come, I will tie your sleeve: You are an elm, my husband, I a vine, Whose weakness, married to your stronger state, Makes me communicate with your strength: (2.2.172-175) This quote continues from support its verse that the woman and man provide for each other and contribute equally to the relationship. Adriana suggests that, like an elm and a vine, she “clings” to Antipholus for support, not dependence. She says her “stronger state” gives her strength, and vice versa. However, because she embodies weakness and strength, she reverts to ancient ideas about marriage in terms of female submission and dependence. Although she seeks to be an equal in her relationship, conditioned ideas about her behavior predominate and she is desperate to continue to receive her husband's love and attention. Although throughout the play she struggles with her desire to have a voice and to give, rather than accept her husband's orders, her weakness is ultimately literally married to his strength as a man and in as a lord as in reality. This highlights the text's important theme of Adriana's progressive ideas on the role of women in marriage; Through her speeches to Luciana and her continued harassment of her husband, Adriana does not give off the image of a shrewd and jealous wife, but rather a woman who desperately seeks equal influence in her relationship. Her character is unique in the play because unlike the other women portrayed, Adriana's perception is not dictated by men. For example, Emilia the Abbess, after losing her family, retreats into a life of solitude, far from the company of men. On the other hand, we can say that Adriana's attitudes and destiny do not depend solely on men, as her counterparts do. She seeks to be loved and appreciated almost in the same way as a man, a particularly exclusive quality here in reference to the other women around her, who only seek to be shaped by others rather than to act to shape them . , in a final segment of character development, Adriana realizes her errors in her treatment and demands of her husband, and returns to a hybrid version of her own and Luciana's ideas about married women. When, in the last act, Adriana comes to the abbess where her husband is hiding to plead for his return home, the abbess refuses to release him, saying that she will take care of his "madness", because they are Adriana's harassment which drove him crazy; THE ABBESS And it followed that this man was mad. The venomous clamors of a jealous woman Poisons more deadly than the teeth of a rabid dog. (5.1.68-70) She compares Adriana's codependent behavior to the "venom" that poisoned her husband, to which Adriana accepts with resignation, claiming that "she betrayed me, much to my reproach" (5.1 .90). As a result, Adriana cannot complete her epiphanic rise to independence of mind and self, she accepts that her astute behavior was inappropriate and consequently drove her husband to madness. Even if the Abbess, who is described as omniscient and merciless, is wrong in her diagnosis of Antipholus, who is hiding in the monastery not out of madness but as a place of refuge from prison and from the charlatan Doctor Pinch, her Son attitude towards Adriana is,.