Chastity and the Male Perspective in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

William Shakespeare's heroines have long been remembered for their impact in his many plays. They have been representations, stereotypes, and even emotionally moving individuals. All of these women have been created in the confine of Shakespeare's literary worlds. Some of these restraints, however, were a result of the demands of Shakespeare's own time and society. Perhaps the most important of women's imposed limitations is that of chastity. In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare illustrates the societal and mythological importance of women's chastity in the patriarchal societies of Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

In Renaissance society, chastity was the quality most frequently praised in women. Chastity was the greatest gift a woman brought from her father's house to her husband's. Although bodily purity was a must, it was secondary to the "purity of mind" that a chaste woman displayed to others. Her natural modesty, humilty, and temperance were preserved as a result of her chaste existence (Kelso, 97).

Furthermore, as can also be seen in Much Ado About Nothing, in Shakespeare's society, "a man's trustworthiness in worldly matters is called into question if he cannot manage his own household, control the sexuality of his daughter or wife" (Gajowski, 84).

The sexual liberation, or assumed liberation, of Shakespeare's confined heroines must result in some form of societal disorder. Renaissance belief in the connection between women's sexuality and societal order demands that there be consequences when women's sexual behavior threatens this order.