1. Winter’s Tale criticism
    1. Contrast to Orgel’s view—
      1. Homosexual vs. Heterosexual critiques
      2. Play leads to male dominance; Paulina and women downplayed or not
    2. Carol Neely, "Women and Issue"
      1. Final reconciliations—Nature, art, the gods, time
      2. Central miracle birth—human, personal, physical and female
      3. Power of women: Perdita, Paulina, Hermione
      4. Central idea is issue—sexuality and delivery, separation and change, growth and decay; life’s rhythms
      5. Childbirth is literal and symbolic center
        1. Attention to pregnancy, delivery, recovery and nursing
        2. Imagery of breeding, pregnancy, delivery
        3. Great nature—[mentioned by Paulina—2.3. 57, 2.3.103--also Perdita 4.4. 88]
      6. Birth proscribed
        1. Antigonus threat to geld daughters
        2. Clown and Shep. Become Gentlemena born
        3. Leontes—birth of imagination 1.2.138 [Like Lear’s horror of the female hell]
      7. Birth praised
        1. Things new born
        2. Reanimation of statue imitates labor and delivery
      8. Beginnings in static masc. world that appears static—purporting to control time and space
        1. Sour memory of courtship; debased imagery of courtship and birth 1.2.138
        2. Pernicious swerve from idealization to degradation of women—Hamlet, Lear, Othello
        3. Wishes to remain boy eternal—puer eternus
        4. Stay longer in Sicily=prolong puer eternus
        5. Kings imagine their sons as copies of themselves, extensions of their own egos
        6. Both want to possess their offspring—not let them grow and be themselves and separate or associated with women [threatening to Orgel]
      9. Women are the cure
        1. Hermione is witty, sexual, fertile, moody and explicit about her separation and irritation with Mamillius 221
        2. Herm. Is idealized by her absence, the trick played on the audience, Paulina’s defense [and Leontes’ regret]—she comes to Antigonus like a protective goddess--Ceres
        3. Hermione as Ceres—making the ground barren; when Perdita returns like Persesphone, "spring returns"
        4. Like Beatrice and Emilia, Paulina is shrewish defender of wronged woman—she becomes wise counsellor
          1. She can succeed as Hermione surrogate because she takes unthtreatening, asexual role [e.g. Dr. Ruth]
          2. Long intimate close friendship, resembling that of Hermione and Polixenes
        5. Perdita’s celebration of sexuality as rebirth—not for a corse, pity for maidenhood, desire to breed by me—like Hermione at the opening—celebrated as wave: 4.4.143-6 [Surfer babe]
      10. Florizel is transformation of Leontes as lover, old shpepherd transformation of Leontes as father
        1. Youth as wantonness not innocence
        2. Encourages her wantonness and associates it with his wife, whose loss he accepts
      11. Autolycus’ celebration of pastoral sexuality—
        1. [but the extended contrast to Leontes seems forced]
      12. Revival of desire in Leontes
        1. Apprecation of Hermione’s sexuality—he becomes advocate of lovers and even admits the incestuousness of desire, but controls it
      13. Final scene
        1. Emphasis of Perdita’s and Hermione’s longing for one another
        2. Paulina shapes the desire sof the participants into a shared ritual; their speech imbues the statue with life—it becomes a she; recreate Hermione bit by bit.
        3. Leontes had wanted a stone cold woman; now he wants warmth
        4. Moment of reunion is painful, laborious and exhilirating as the moment of birth.
        5. Paulina acting as midwife, entices Hermione out of her numbness
        6. Reversing and repeating the inception of their nuptials, when Leontes wooed painfully