She need only be chaste –to exist as a walking emblem of chastity'"[1].
The preservation of a woman's virginity is a recurring theme in Shakespeare's plays; in A Midsummer Night's Dream, we see Helena make known her love for Demetrius, which of itself is a measure executed almost exclusively by men. Whilst she is proclaiming her love, albeit in an unfashionable manner, Demetrius' terse response is that she ought take care as to not lose "the rich worth of [her] virginity" in such a desert place.
If the men in Shakespeare are not worrying themselves over women's virginity, they are busy trying to take it; Caliban freely admits to wanting to take Miranda's virginity, by force, and subsequently "[people] else this isle with Calibans". Hermia spends a considerable time scolding Lysander while attempting to distance herself from him, knowing the implication of an unmarried woman sleeping with a man. Her priorities seem incongruous given the severity of her situation; she frets over Demetrius' close proximity in the forest, yet the consequences of her actions, the jeopardising of her future by defying Egeus and eloping, seem trivial to her.
The only woman who owns and controls her sexuality is Sycorax. When Prospero recounts her story, we see that she is an independent woman who maintains her power even after having had sex. However, Prospero's distaste is unmistakeable; when referring to her, he uses her name and the words "damned witch" and "hag" interchangeably. As Kristina Trajanovska comments in Patriarchy, Misogyny and Pornoglossia in Shakespeare's Tragedies, "a woman who is seen as a whore exists within the most objective and real system of male sexual domination. Additionally, a woman as a whore has to die in the end, because men have underlying fear of them which is endorsed by society". This is explicit in The Tempest: Sycorax is not only dead before the play begins, but her absence allows her to be a victim of Prospero's defamatory recount.
