Lena Dassonville 
The Hegemonic System of Production. How Shakespeare and History Commodify and Confine the Feminine 

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Didactics – English – Literature, Works, grade: A, , course: Seminar II, language: English, abstract: Luce Irigaray, a French feminist and theorist, postulated a theory in which gender constitutes an economic exchange. Women become commodities within a patriarchal economic system and their identities are thus derived from their value to men.

Irigaray claims that the female identity is constructed from its commodification in a patriarchal society. Consequently, women are occluded from participating in cultural and socio-economic systems as the feminine can only be represented in relation to men.

This theory of gender as commodity and the various social roles of the female object can be used to analyze to Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Aurora Levins Morales’ Remedios: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriqueñas.