The Comedy of Errors Women and Femininity Quotes Page 3

Luciana admits women are easily deceived, but in the same breath reveals that women enjoy being gullible. In her immediately preceding speech, Luciana had said it’s better to trick women and keep them happy than to tell them the unhappy truth. In the quote here, it seems Luciana might be asserting that women participate in men’s deceptive games by willingly "believing" the deception. At least in Luciana’s opinion, women would rather have flattery (even if it’s deceitful) than hear the awful truth.

Here’s an unusual instance where there’s no gloss over the fact that in love, women claim as much ownership over men as men tend to claim over women. Adriana has tried to justify her possessiveness of E. Antipholus as the feelings of a good wife, but there’s a hint that her feelings aren’t really that different than Nell’s ownership claims over her man.

S. Antipholus is quick to see the supernatural (as usual), but S. Dromio seems to recognize that the real danger of this woman is that she’s a woman. Lately, it seems women have been bringing nothing but trouble to S. Dromio. It’s interesting that he teases that woman is the "devil’s dam" (or the devil’s mother), which is even worse than her being the devil. Whether her evil is supernatural or practical is immaterial – she’s evil. If she’s a supernatural devil, she’ll burn in hell. If the Courtesan is a natural devil (i.e., a prostitute), she’ll burn just as well.