===================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 Vol. 19:6 June 2019 ==================================================================== Revisiting Cleopatra through Feminist Lens Dr. Sneh Lata Sharma Assistant Professor Department of English Chaudhary Bansi Lal University Bhiwani
[email protected] ================================================================= Abstract Cleopatra is one of the most remarkable women that have survived through generations of human history, which has been more or less man-history. A monarch, who governed over her people for around twenty years, is considered, through historical anecdotes, no more than a royal courtesan who managed to save her career through her association with great generals of Roman empire. Following suit, the literary artists have not lagged behind; they also portray her as a seductress and a heroine of a love tragedy, the onus of which lay in her fatal flaw of inconsistency in consistent coquetry. However, recent researches reveal that Cleopatra was not a woman of great feminine charm and multifarious factors contributed to her success. The present paper attempts an analysis of Cleopatra as depicted in William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (1606) through the feminist lens of counter-historical perspective. The objective of the paper is to explore the alternate histories of her fictional image in the classic tragedy. Keywords: Cleopatra, monarch, seductress, coquetry, sexuality, inconsistency, gaps, power, counter- history, gender. Cleopatra (69-30 B.C.) was the queen of Egypt for twenty years. Generally known as ‘the Jewel of the Nile’, she is one of the most fascinating women of the world, a woman whom no man could resist. No doubt, she is an inexhaustible topic of discussion for historians, litterateurs and artists.