I come, at last, to the play's whipping post: Hero. Despite her name, she is submissive and passive, a foil to Beatrice and her fiery, decidedly un-ladylike temperament. Because of this, when her honor comes into question, it is a stunned silence that greets the accusations. To her, she had done everything in her power to acquiesce to the male-dominated and often misogynist society for her entire life, so her dramatic swoon is believable considering her world has just crashed down around her. This isn't the surprising, or disquieting, part, however. Leonato reacts to her supposed misdeed not as a father, but as a governor with a high standing; to quote noted poet and critic W.H. Auden in his work Lectures on Shakespeare, "Leonato's grief is not real - it is an expression of social embarrassment." Leonato is quick to believe Claudio's account of Hero's betrayal, but mainly because he is a count and Leonato makes a living brown-nosing royalty; why then does Don Pedro, a courtly and mannered prince himself, believe his half-brother's scheme? The answer is sexism. Hero's society is patriarchal, as shown by David W. Cole in The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare when he states that Hero is, "Submissive in a male-dominated world, she acquiesces to the Prince's anticipated suit and then quickly accepts Claudio's instead." Women were expected to go along with their man's wishes (whether that man be father or husband), but in particular are taught to be pawned off by their fathers onto a man he finds suitable. Hero's acceptance of Don Pedro's supposed offer might demonstrate an illusion of choice for women of the time, but this simply shows what was expected - no, required - of women: marriage and servitude to men.
Works Cited
Auden, W. H. Lectures on Shakespeare. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 116. Print.
Cole, W. David. The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare. Ed. Joseph Rosenblum. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005. 487. Print.
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