The Role of Gender and Sexuality in Dramatic Literature

Literature can create and consolidate dominant ideas about gender, but it can also criticize and undermine them. Substantiate, refute or modify this statement with reference to at least two texts drawn from different modes.

Although many people are lead to believe that 'sex' and 'gender' are the same thing, there is a distinct difference. Sex is the biological aspects that make people male or female, something that is not a choice but merely the biological structure of that person. Gender, however, is a pattern of sexuality and behavior imposed by cultural and social norms. The same goes for the words 'masculine' and 'feminine' (Lowe, pp. 267). As Moi continues to say, 'femininity is a cultural construct: one isn't born a woman, one becomes one'. These social and cultural constraints have defined gender stereotypes and some have become the way of thinking for many people, such as the idea of women being subservient to their husbands, or the idea that women are more likely to be poor and men more likely to be rich.

A drama, from the Greek "drama", is a literary form that includes parts written for actors, to be interpreted; it is synonymous with the play, or play. In a broad sense, is an accomplished and storyline for the drama; it can be written in verbal form (any work of literature that includes shares recited or sung) or improvised by an actor, or in the form of non-verbal storytelling through gestures or dance (Bates, pp. 151). The period drama, if interpreted strictly, applies only to the plays written. In opera, is generally used at the end of the book.

A drama can have tragic or comic subject, according to the situations described. In the sense of common use; however, we tend to designate by this term experience of pain or problems existential, or other events of tragic. Dramas can be represented by different types of media: live entertainment, film, television.

In theater, the drama has maintained the sense used in Ancient Greece, where indicated any composition for the scene, was it a tragedy or a comedy, and coming to be synonymous with theater (theatric). In general, the derived words have retained the original sense, related to writing for the theater: drama, drama. For the adjective, we are dramatically different usage habits: more theatrical with roots to the experts of this discipline on the concept of play as a tragic sense in common sense. For example, in the theater as it indicates a good dramatic actor who generally mastered the drama, and is usually called a dramatic actor in film and television content, solely in connection with the tragic conflict, or its recitation.

The concept of drama and drama is linked to more dialogue than a monologue or a poem (although it could be related etymologically to any form of literature intended for the scene). It is the presence of at least one other actor in dialogue that can best express the main characteristic of the drama: ...