Both Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters and Barbra Streisand’s Yentl portray women and their role in society. Yet they do so in distinct ways. Hannah and Her Sisters is directed by a male and features three sisters in contemporary Manhattan. Yentl is directed by a female and features a Jewish girl who disguises herself as a boy to pursue religious training at the turn of the century. In each film, the women involved attempt to find themselves and meaning in life against a backdrop of obstacles, male domination, and emotional involvements.
Yentl is a film based on a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. It is the tale of a young Eastern European girl who disguises herself as a boy to be able to pursue her passion – religious study. In this era women were expected to be wives, mothers, and homemakers. This is not Yentl’s passion and her father is very close to her and secretly helps her study religion. The film raises many questions about the roles of women in society and how, historically, those roles have been more often than not defined by men. At one point Yentl asks her father, when he suggests they close the shutters before studying, “If we don’t have to hide my studying from God, then why from the neighbors?” Her father answers in a way that demonstrates the theme of this film is rising above your socially-imposed limitations, “Why? Because I trust God will understand. I’m not so sure about the neighbors.”
In other words, Yentl’s efforts to study religion show that in order to be yourself in an oppressive environment, you often have to define your role from a higher perspective than man-made definitions. However, we see this will cost Yentl a great deal of sacrifice as she must eventually lose the man she loves and leave her native land in order to pursue her passion freely. Streisand does a brilliant job of extending this short story into a
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