The Winter’s Tale Symbol Analysis

William Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale symbolizes the way that women’s voices and accomplishments have historically been seen as less important than those of their male counterparts. In Photograph 51, Rosalind Franklin’s attends a performance of The Winter’s Tale one weekend. (This anecdote seems to be fictional, though it’s plausible enough, given that a production of The Winter’s Tale directed by Peter Brooks was indeed playing in London’s West End in 1951.) On Monday, her colleague Maurice Wilkins admits that he nearly attended the same performance but decided at the last minute not to buy a ticket. Wilkins later reveals in an aside that he saw Rosalind ducking into the theater and wanted to follow her inside in hopes of creating at least one experience that he and his reluctant partner could share—but he was too afraid to do so. Rosalind remarks that while the actor who played Leontes, John Gielgud, was wonderful, she cannot remember the actress who played his wife Hermione; the actress simply didn’t “stand out.”

Rosalind, the play suggests, has come to adopt a kind of internalized misogyny after years of oppression and sexism—she discounts the Hermione actress’s performance as being unmemorable, not realizing that her own laborious work in pursuit of uncovering the structure of DNA will soon be overlooked in a similar fashion. On an even deeper level, the central relationship between the king Leontes and his wife, Hermione, whom he murders when he suspects that she is unfaithful—only to pray her back to life again towards the end of the play—represents the uneven and occasionally cruel dynamic between Wilkins and Rosalind. Their contentious relationship leads the frustrated Wilkins to betray Rosalind by showing her research to their Cambridge rivals Crick and Watson—it is only at the end of the play, after Rosalind’s death, that Wilkins shows remorse for his actions and begs for Rosalind to come back to life so they can begin their relationship again and anew.