| This thesis examines the various connections between male friendship, family bonds and service by analysing two Shakespearean tragedies, King Lear and Othello. Chapter One introduces male friendship and connects it to marriage, emphasizing that both rely on constant reinscription through a system of words and actions, thus providing stability for masculine identity. Chapter Two demonstrates how this can be undermined through the manipulation of the language of friendship and service relationships. Chapter Three examines how women appropriate masculine modes in order to come to power and why a complete inversion of hierarchical formations is not a viable way of equalising gender and power relationships in the social order. Chapter Four looks at how reciprocal bonds create a unified sense of self and why they cannot be hierarchical or binary in their construction. |
