Gender Power and Control; Men Controlling Women from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night by Rachel

Rachel DeShone

Professor Sinowitz

TPS: Romantic Comedy 

25 February 2020

Gender Power and Control; Men Controlling Women from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night

“You know I’ll get my way” (0:1:22) is the first comment the father says to his daughter, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert), in the opening scene of the movie It Happened One Night directed by Frank Capra. When Andrews attempts to contradict her father, he slaps her across the face. From the opening scene of the movie, the audience gets an idea of the controlling role the father has over his daughter. Similarly, in the play Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare also portrays the power dynamic of men and women through the control of the father.  In the play Leonato, an aristocrat, tells his daughter, Hero, to agree to marry a Count named Claudio, whom she has never spoken to. After Hero agrees to marry Claudio, Claudio exposes Hero for false infidelity at their wedding ceremony. The embarrassment nearly leads Hero to her death. Despite the false acquisition, Leonato still offers Hero’s hand in marriage to Claudio without consulting Hero. 

A common theme throughout the movie and the play is the controlling influence of men in the women’s lives. Much Ado About Nothing is considered the first romantic comedy. In a romantic comedy movie created roughly 400 years later, the theme of controlling male figures is still present.  Although the examples given involve the father controlling his daughter, the movie and the play also show the love interests controlling the women. Because their fathers exert such a strong influence over their daughters, the women believe it is natural and necessary to obey other men in their life. The controlling nature of the fathers stem from the wealth both father figures have in the movie and the play. They provide for their daughters financially which leads them to controlling their daughter in other aspects. The controlling nature of the love interests seen throughout the movie and the play results from the men’s lack of control in their own lives, which leads to the manipulation and extortion of the women to boost the men’s ego.

            Throughout the play and the movie, the daughters are victims of their father’s control regarding who they are allowed to marry. The opening scene of It Happened One Night shows Andrews, the leading woman, getting in an argument with her father regarding her marriage while they are on a boat. Her father wants her to divorce her husband, but Andrews does not want to. In this scene, it is important to note that Andrew’s father has trapped her on a boat. The boat is a symbol of the Andrew’s confinement. She can't escape off the boat, just like she can't escape her father’s control. It is also important to notice the color of clothes worn by the characters. The father and the captain, the two most important people on the boat, are wearing black while everyone else, including Andrews, is wearing white. This is important because it shows the hierarchy of power on the boat and emphasises the control of the father over his daughter. The fight leads Andrews to jump off the boat to escape from her father. Throughout the rest of the film, Andrews does not know how to live on her own as an impoverished person. The dad has control over Andrews in the sense that she depends on him to provide for her. His control over money with Andrew allows him to believe he can control her other decisions such as who she should marry.

 In a similar situation, in Shakespear’s play, Leonato, Hero’s father, determines who Hero should marry by telling his daughter “if the prince do solicit you in that kind you know now your answer” (Shakespeare 2.1. 65-67).  Leonato was telling his daughter to agree to marry a man she had never had a conversation with before. At the end of the play, Leonato gives Hero’s hand in marriage to Claudio, despite him attempting to ruin Hero’s reputation and nearly killing her. Although the movie and the play differ in the instructions, the father is giving their daughter, both fathers are trying to control who their daughter marries. The daughters, both coming from wealthy backgrounds, depend on their fathers to provide for them, and this allows the fathers to believe they can control other aspects of their life. 

            Andrews and Hero are familiar with the control their fathers impede on them that the control of men seems normal when other men, such as their lovers, try to control them. Women are used to being submissive to their fathers. The lack of a motherly figure emphasizes that the daughters have only been under the influence of a male figure, which further suggests that women have been trained to obey the men. In It Happened One Night Peter Warne (Clark Gable), the male love interest, threatens to tell the press where Andrews was if she did not stay with him in the hotel room on their first stop on the train. Capra sets up environmental atmosphere, color contrast, and framing to show the vulnerability of Andrews in this scene to emphasize the control Warne has over Andrews. This scene takes place in the middle of a rainstorm. The rainstorm makes it impossible for Andrews to sleep elsewhere or to leave the cabin without getting wet: she is trapped. Also, the drapes cover the windows in the cabin. This further suggests that she is stuck in the room because of her inability to see out into the dark and the inability for anybody to see in. Throughout this scene, Warne is arrogant and confident in his control over Andrews. He is arrogantly taking off his clothes while talking to Andrews while she looks uncomfortable. In this scene, Warne is wearing bright white clothes which contrasts from Andrews’ black and grey outfit. This is important because the bright color brings the audiences focus on Warne, which further emphasises the power he has over Andrews at the moment. In this scene, Andrews has her back against the door while Warne has his back toward the whole room. The open space behind Warne symbolizes the freedom he has while Andrews’ back against the door which signifies that Andrews had no other option in this scenario. Warne knows that Andrews is in a vulnerable situation; therefore, he uses that to his advantage to get Andrews to submit to him. 

Although the men control the women in Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare’s control of women is not as direct as Capra’s approach. In the movie, Warne is straight-forward in making Andrews understand that she will stay with him as long as she wants to remain a secret; however, Shakespeare controls women by the manipulative nature in which the men have Hero wed. Don Pedro, acting as Claudio, convinced Hero to marry Claudio. Immediately Hero entered a marriage based on deception. This scene is an example of how the men in the play controlled the women, because it shows the Hero committing to marriage without the proper information. The men withheld information to get their desired goal. Hero’s character demeanor is quiet. Whenever men are around, she rarely speaks, and if she does, she says something in agreement with the men. Her quietness represents her submissiveness to the surrounding men.

In both the play and the movie, the male love interest exert control over the women to boost their ego. In It Happened One Night, Warne had recently lost his job in the middle of the Great Depression. With no job and little money, Warne does not have control over his own life, which causes his self-esteem to decrease. Then Warne sees a woman, Andrews, in distress. He does not have control in his life, but he knows Andrews needs him to get through the world as a person with little money. By helping Andrews, Warne exerts his control which gives him stability and satisfaction and protects his ego from the lack of control in his own life. In Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio had a friend pretend to be him to ask Hero to marry him. Claudio could not find the courage to ask Hero himself; therefore, his sense of pride had been lowered. Claudio did not hesitate to exploit Hero for infidelity. He didn’t hesitate because he wanted to show his friends that he could be bold and stand up in front of Hero. Both Claudio and Peter had lost control of their pride, so to regain the feeling of superiority they exploited the women’s vulnerabilities. 

 Capra develops a plot based on the father’s control of his daughter. Although Capra wants the audience to think Andrews is disobeying and rebelling against her father, her father still gets his way of having his daughter divorced from her husband. Capra follows Shakespeare’s plot of a male figure manipulating the women into being with them. Shakespeare set the tone in his first romantic comedy regarding the relationship between men and women that is still prevalent in modern romantic comedies. In the 1930s, when It Happened One Night was released, women’s stereotypical role in society was to be submissive to men. Society deemed women as inferior and, therefore, should do as the men say. The control of men fit in with the societal stereotype of gender roles and Shakespeare’s portrayal of gender roles.  It will be interesting to see how men’s influence over women in romantic comedies change as modern society continues to support female independence from men. 

Works Cited

Capra, Frank, director. It Happened One Night.

Shakespeare, William, et al. Much Ado About Nothing. Washington Square Press, 1995.