- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
Alsana tells Clara that she must “look at the thing close up” in order to see it for what it is: in this case, the “thing” is their husbands, who, at closer inspection, are unremarkable, unsuccessful men obsessed with the past. Alsana claims that looking closely at something reveals its flaws and takes away some of its authority. On this note, Clara sees her husband, Archie, for what he is, and this proves disappointing (since she originally thought of him as her “savior,” capable of rescuing her from her confining life with Hortense, her pious mother).
The novel often exposes…