Rebellion In William Shakespeare's A Bold Stroke For A Husband

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Parents always say that they want their children to follow their dreams, but that’s considered hypocritical when they don’t let their kids decided for themselves. In many cultures, the choice of education, job, and spouse is the parents’ decision and the children in question are expected to be obedient and learn to accept those decisions without requesting any other alternatives. The question is: how can these children obey their parents when they don’t get to live their own lives? In some rare situations, the children rebel instead of obey to get what they truly wanted from the beginning. Rebellion doesn’t necessarily mean that the children are disrespecting their parents, it means that they’re trying to prove how capable they are of living…show more content…
Throughout the whole play, Olivia’s main goal is to scare away all the suitors her father has lined up for her. Unlike the courteous females of that time, Olivia is a spirited and outspoken young woman in nature and that, for example, doesn’t fit John Gregory’s examples of proper female behavior. In A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters, Gregory states that “the art of pleasing in conversation consists in making the company pleased with themselves” (Jones 46) which, as a result, constitutes that Olivia must comply and completely agree with all her suitors without ever saying what’s on her mind. Because Olivia doesn’t behave the way Gregory describes, her father is constantly frustrated and that’s what creates the tension between a man and his daughter. Complete silence isn’t what Caesar expects from Olivia, but he expects her to be dainty and amiable in order to go through with a marriage that will bestow an heir to the de Zuniga family. At some point, Olivia pities her father for all the miseries she’s put him through but says that his “anxieties will never end” till he brings Don Julio and allows her to marry him (Cowley). She continues to don the role of a termagant and a vixen to rebel against her father and his wishes until she gets what she
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