Why Insecure Men Suck in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale

In the character of Leontes, one finds an insecure, weak, and emotional boy trying to be a king, husband, and man. He destroys his family, marriage, lineage, and reputation while blindly believing he is protecting his honor and has the ultimate authority. However, when closely examining many of Leontes’ lines, one does not find a wolf but a puppy. Other characters rarely take him seriously, often outshine him, and can easily change his convictions. This combination of Leontes’ fragile sense of self, as well as his destructive understanding of manhood, piqued my interest to want to research masculinity in The Winter’s Tale further.

      Throughout the play, the audience sees the irrational Leontes stammer in comparison to his eloquent, poised wife. For example, after calling for Hermione’s arrest, everyone listens to her speech instead of his orders so he desperately cries out, “Shall I be heard?” (2.1.115). While Leontes struggles to maintain authority as the man in charge, Hermione wins the peoples’ favor despite her gender, calling to those who favor her, “Beseech you all, my lords, with thoughts so qualified as your charities shall best instruct you, measure me” (2.111-113). Hermione does not even acknowledge or respect Leontes’ authority or credibility, instead calling out to the lords to carry out justice. Leontes’ desperate attempt to maintain authority, possession, and respect is possibly a result of insecurities surrounding his manliness. The character of Florizel serves as a good foil to show Leontes’ personal uncertainty. Florizel’s sense of self is not defined by other’s approval, but by his own will and love for Perdita, promising “I’ll be thine, my fair, or not my father’s” (4.42-43). He believes that he can be a man while also being a woman’s possession and marrying without his father’s approval. Both contradict Leontes’ view of ideal manhood where approval and possession of others, especially his wife, is essential.

       These observations are worth exploration as Leontes should inspire reflection on the nature of masculinity, not just femininity, monarchy, or gender dynamics. Leontes is afraid for his bloodline, status, reputation, honor, kingdom, and legacy. If a man is unsure of himself and watching his significance and influence fade away, perhaps the weight of these expectations and fears would drive one to madness. His diction, language, reactions, and actions juxtapose his pursuit of ideal manliness with his utter failure at being a proper man, father, husband, or king. Through researching Leontes’ relationship with himself and his masculinity, I want to understand how Shakespeare sought to commentate on the faults and issues of ideal masculinity during his time.

While many of my ideas compliment academic consensus surrounding gender dynamics in The Winter’s Tale, I want to further the discussion by exploring warped definitions of masculinity as well as femininity. Early modern manliness has an oppressive, possessive, and aggressive relationship with femininity during the time period and Shakespeare’s plays often comment on this relationship. However, I argue that his plays also invoke thought on manhood’s relationship with itself. Leontes does not pursue his wife because he hates Hermione, but because he hates that he is failing to be the ideal man. He is so wrapped up in his own need for validation, legacy, power, and respect that he destroys everything he once held dear. While Leontes is by no means a sympathetic character, this phenomenon should raise concerns about the impacts of fantastical and self-centered definitions of manhood on a man’s psyche and actions.

       My first secondary source that informs my inquiry is a chapter from Alfar’s 2003 book, Fantasies of Female Evil: The Dynamics of Gender and Power in Shakespearean Tragedy. In chapter 6, “The Neurotic Subject of Tragedy,” Alfar specifically discusses the psychological and cultural background of Leontes’ madness and pursuit of Hermione. Many of Alfar’s points, specifically about negative views towards women, allowed me to see Leontes’ faults through a historically accurate perspective. Ideal manliness during Leontes’ time seems fragile and The Winter’s Tale reveals “the paranoia at the heart of a patrilineal economic structure dependent on phantasmatic constructions of femininity for its stability” (Alfar 165). In order to have the power and authority of an ideal man, one almost had to have fantasies about the villainy of women to maintain their manliness. Leontes’ sudden uncertainty about the purity of his lineage in his culture and society is maddening. Alfar also contrasts Leontes’ masculinity with Florizel’s, pointing out how Florizel “revises the criteria by which male honor is defined, so that it is no longer based on specters of feminine identity” (Alfar 178). Florizel’s honor is not based on his possession of a woman and her virtue, but on him seeing the value in himself and his lover regardless. Her research and writing would grant a historical, societal angle to my argument.

       My second source is also by Alfar but is a more recent essay entitled “‘Proceed in Justice’: Narratives of Marital Betrayal in The Winter’s Tale.” Her essay enables me to effectively dissect the dialogue between Leontes and Hermione through her analysis of power and gender dynamics through language. Alfar showed me the power of narratives and how these confrontations between Hermione and Leontes as found in Act 2 scene 1 are “a contest for control over a narrative about their marriage and about Leontes’s kingship” (Alfar). Hermione has no legal power, but she has linguistic power, which she uses repeatedly to fight Leontes even if she cannot win. Alfar’s writing highlights a more language-based viewpoint for discussing Leontes’ failure as a man and king. Leontes’ official power does not match his oral power and his lines reflect the injustice and personal weaknesses of Leontes. Alfar’s work helps establish that as Leontes tries to compensate for his fragile masculinity, he fails his actual duties as a man, husband, and king.

My next source focuses entirely on male characters and boyhood in Bloom’s “Boy Eternal: Aging, Games, and Masculinity in The Winter’s Tale”. Bloom’s focus on the pressures of male expectations and waning significance with age seeks to accomplish something similar to my research. Bloom’s discussion on solely male characters highlights the issues and commentary Shakespeare had for men, not just men’s relationship with women. Her discussion of Leontes’ desire to escape pressure and revert to boyhood deepened my interpretation of Leontes’ personal weaknesses and insecurities. Her dissection of his lines and relationship, specifically with Mamillius, revealed to me Leontes’ underlying immaturity. Yet, Leontes’ is afraid of his own immaturity and weakness as it his “relations to boyhood, not just womanhood, that threaten to emasculate” him (Bloom 269). Bloom’s historical exploration of early modern normative masculinity deepens my understanding and is useful to look at Leontes’ relationship to his own manhood with a historically accurate eye.

       My final source is an approachable and politically focused essay by Catherine Thomas entitled “Poisoned Justice: Passion and Politics in The Winter’s Tale”. Thomas’ writing was full of validation as she spoke to Leontes’ obvious insecurity, desperation, failures, and clinginess. She supported many of my thoughts about Leontes’ nature. However, she emphasized the gravity of his duties and actions as ruler of a kingdom. She informs my interpretation of Leontes’ selfish view of masculine power and his inability to obtain true power. Her research is useful to establish and support ideas of masculine responsibilities and the distinction between “idealized notions of masculine and feminine sexual roles” versus the actual man or woman (Thomas 213). Her exploration of the consequences of Leontes’ abuse of power, as well as his insecurities as a man and king, compliment my research on Leontes’ relationship with his own masculinity. This research highlights both the overpowered nature of early modern ideal manhood as well as how Leontes’ personal weaknesses translate into tyrannical rule.

Leontes’ fragility of ego and flawed sense of manliness combine to create a complex, unsympathetic tyrant. While his flaws are partly caused by misogynistic beliefs of his era, early modern biases are not solely to blame for Leontes’ madness. Dissecting The Winter’s Tale further for clues of Leontes’ personal definition of manhood, how it relates to early modern masculinity, and even perhaps flawed definitions of the ideal man today would continue the conversation on the significance of The Winter’s Tale in discussing gender dynamics and identity.