# Characteristics of Women: Moral, Poetical, and Historical

> Anna Jameson's pioneering nineteenth-century study of Shakespeare's heroines, examining the women of the plays, from Portia and Juliet to Lady Macbeth, as fully realized characters. An eloquent and influential early work of feminist literary criticism.

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## About
Long before literary criticism took women's characters seriously, one perceptive writer devoted a whole book to the women of Shakespeare, treating them not as ornaments but as minds and hearts worth studying. Anna Jameson's essays opened a path others would follow.What it's aboutFirst published in 1832 and often known by its later title on Shakespeare's heroines, this work examines the principal female characters of Shakespeare's plays, grouping them by temperament and moral character. Jameson considers figures of intellect, passion, affection, and fortitude, from Portia and Beatrice to Juliet, Ophelia, Cordelia, and Lady Macbeth, analyzing their motives, their situations, and what they reveal about womanhood and human nature. The essays are cast partly as reflective conversation, giving them a personal, essayistic warmth.ThemesJameson reads Shakespeare's women as complete and morally serious beings, and in doing so quietly argues for a fuller view of women's capacities than her age granted. Character, virtue, feeling, and the interplay of circumstance and disposition are her subjects, and beneath them runs a thoughtful engagement with the position of women in her own time.Why it still mattersAn early and influential example of criticism written by a woman about the depiction of women, the book helped shape Victorian appreciation of Shakespeare and anticipates later feminist scholarship. Its close, sympathetic attention to character remains illuminating, and its place in the history of criticism is secure. It reads as gracefully now as ever.Who it's forFor readers of Shakespeare, for students of criticism and of women's writing, and for anyone who enjoys thoughtful, well-turned essays on literature's most memorable women.

## Specifications
- language: en
- format: paperback