Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Textual note
- Introduction: consummate play
- Part I “COME … AND PLAY”: CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, BESIDE THE POINT
- Part II DESIRING WOMEN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
- 5 “How strangely does himself work to undo him”: (male) sexuality in The Revenger's Tragedy
- 6 “My body bestow upon my women”: the space of the feminine in The Duchess of Malfi
- 7 “I(t) could not choose but follow”: erotic logic in The Changeling
- 8 “Old men's tales”: legacies of the father in ’Tis Pity She's a Whore
- 9 The passionate shepherdess: the case of Margaret Cavendish
- Afterword: for(e)play
- Notes
- List of Works cited
- Index
6 - “My body bestow upon my women”: the space of the feminine in The Duchess of Malfi
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Textual note
- Introduction: consummate play
- Part I “COME … AND PLAY”: CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, BESIDE THE POINT
- Part II DESIRING WOMEN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
- 5 “How strangely does himself work to undo him”: (male) sexuality in The Revenger's Tragedy
- 6 “My body bestow upon my women”: the space of the feminine in The Duchess of Malfi
- 7 “I(t) could not choose but follow”: erotic logic in The Changeling
- 8 “Old men's tales”: legacies of the father in ’Tis Pity She's a Whore
- 9 The passionate shepherdess: the case of Margaret Cavendish
- Afterword: for(e)play
- Notes
- List of Works cited
- Index
Summary
The issue is not one of elaborating a new theory of which woman would be the subject or the object, but of jamming the theoretical machinery itself, of suspending its pretension to the production of a truth and of a meaning that are excessively univocal …
What a feminine syntax might be is not simple nor easy to state, because in that “syntax” there would no longer be either subject or object, “oneness” would no longer be privileged, there would no longer be proper meanings, proper names, “proper” attributes.
Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not OneIn contrast to The Revenger's Tragedy, both of John Webster's most famous plays manifest a clear interest in the problems involved in constructing a female subject. The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi approach those problems, however, from very different perspectives. The White Devil presents us with two opposite, mirroring images of woman, Isabella and Vittoria – both of whom are explicitly portrayed as speaking the language of men. Isabella, who can express her unconscious rage only in the process of repeating her husband's words and sacrificing herself for him (2.1), effectively self-immolates; and although Vittoria claims to be “too true a woman” (5.6.220), her characteristic activity is “personat[ing] masculine virtue to the point” (3.2.135).
In a series of insightful analyses, Jonathan Dollimore has termed the kind of imitation that Vittoria performs “transgressive reinscription” (and, in particular, “transgressive inversion”) and has argued persuasively for its extreme radical force.
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- Information
- Desire and Dramatic Form in Early Modern England , pp. 71 - 86Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009