Let's discuss the character of Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. Now, she is presented in many ways as a foil to Beatrice's character. Foil means when one character is used to highlight the things another character is lacking and vice versa. Hero and Beatrice, the kind of foils to each other's personalities and characters. So whilst Beatrice is very outspoken, very fiery, she goes against a lot of conventions that we expected of Elizabethan women.
So Elizabethan women were expected to be very passive, very submissive. Hero, on the other hand, is presented as a very stereotypical Elizabethan woman. She's very virginal, very modest, very chaste, very obedient.
And of course, when she is accused of the worst thing that woman could be accused of during that time, apart from of course, being a witch, when she is accused of basically not being a virgin, and when Claudio denounces her, slanders her and basically refuses to marry her, this is something that basically causes her to faint. Okay. And of course she doesn't die, but she pretends to die. And this is almost as a metaphor for how women at the time would suffer a social debt if they were not seen as virginal before their marriage, okay? Now, Hero is a key character within this space, so you do need to be very familiar with her.
Hence, I have prepared a set of quotations to remember when it comes to writing about her character, either for your coursework or for your exam. So let's go through them. Now, the first quotation when it comes to Hero's character is when we first meet her, she is shown to be very modest, very obedient. When she's talking to the different men, she states, I will do... any modest office ellipsis to help my cousin to a good husband so now here she's basically saying that she's going to do all her best to help her cousin Beatrice who's seen as really rebellious find a good husband so of course here by this stage you can see that Claudio has really fallen for her and you know the prospect of marriage is very immediate but she's still saying that she loves her cousin Beatrice and she'll do her best to try and see if she can get a husband for her Now the one level analysis you want to do here is firstly the adjective modest.
of course hair this is still highlighting and linking back to her own modesty the other one love analysis you want to do is alliteration of help and husband so the alliteration of her h hair now the other key quotations bear in mind for uh hero's character is she does seem to find beatrice's outspokenness and her very fiery temperament very puzzling she states nature never framed a woman's heart of prouder stuff than that of beatrice so she's also sometimes a bit exasperated by cousin Why is Beatrice so outspoken? Why does she not want to get married and basically act like a very modest woman like me? Okay, so she can see, even if she loves Beatrice as her cousin, she also is finding it a little bit annoying that Beatrice is so proud, which is, you know, she talks back, she's very outspoken. Now, the word love analysis here, you want to do, and of course, this quotation definitely highlights the key contrast between her and Beatrice's characters.
Number one, the alliteration of N in nature and never. also nature frames this is personification now the other quotation is what hero says which is interesting before her marriage she states my heart is exceeding heavy now this is of course before her marriage she doesn't yet know that claudio has changed his feelings towards her he's now about to accuse her of infidelity of being unfaithful so she's basically saying yes, I'm really excited to be married, but my heart is heavy. So at first, when we watch it as an audience, we're thinking, okay, maybe her heart is heavy because, you know, she's about to become married.
She's shifting from her father's house to Claudia's house. You know, we maybe think that. However, of course, we realize that this is a technique of foreshadowing, foreboding by Shakespeare to show that Hera has a bad feeling something's going to happen, okay? And the word love analysis you want to do here is alliteration of H in heart and heavy.
Now, the other quotation is when... uh during her wedding Claudio basically slanders her he says really hurtful things and accuses her of being unfaithful she is really emphatic in trying to prove her innocence she states if I know more of any man alive than that which maiden modesty doth warrant let all my sins lack mercy okay and this whole sentence is an exclamatory sentence okay so do make sure you pay attention to that structural feature but also here she speaks an euphemism if she knows more of any man and of course a euphemism is just a polite way of referring to something that socially is seen as either insulting or terrible and of course in this case the euphemism is to talk about her having sex she's saying i've never had any intimate relationship with any man okay i'm still a virgin also here she uses alliteration so or rather shakespeare uses alliteration in his writings the maiden and modesty so this is alliteration of m the other quotation of course this is still tied into when Hero is really emphatically trying to prove her innocence, she states, Oh my father, prove that any man with me conversed ellipsis, refused me, hate me, tortured me. to death. Now again here she is speaking really really emphatically she is emphatic that she is a virgin she's not done anything wrong which is true. Now the word level analysis you want to do here is she of course is talking to her dad Leonardo she's saying dad if I've done anything bad with a man you can denounce me you can disown me you know she's really kind of showing that you know please anyone prove that what I've done is wrong and of course she's saying this in order to show that she's actually innocent, she has nothing to hide. Now the word love analysis you want to do is the repetition of the pronoun me three times which is obviously showing that she is very emphatic.
There's also listing so refuse me, hate me, torture me and of course also you can argue this is also rule of three of refuse, hate and torture and finally this is an exclamatory sentence which is a structural point you can make. The final quotation for hero's character is when later at the end when of course it's revealed that Don John actually made up this slanderous information about her. and she decides to forgive Claudio and of course marry him.
And she states, one hero died defiled, but I do live. And as surely as I live, I am a maid. Now here she's basically saying, okay, the old hero basically died. So she died a slandered woman, but actually I have resurrected and I'm still a virgin. Great.
Okay. So now here, the word love analysis you want to do is firstly the alliteration of D in died and defiled. And also you want to focus on the repetition of live, okay? Because of course this is emphasising that she didn't die after all.
And finally, she talks about, she speaks in lots of euphemisms, okay? So here she's talking about she's still a maid. I'm still a virgin, so I'm still, you know, a very good woman, okay? So don't forget that Hero really represents a conventional Elizabethan woman and of course she is in direct contrast to her cousin Beatrice who goes against all these conventional expectations of women.
Thank you so much for listening.