The Duchess As a Very Remarkable Woman in a Man's World

2509 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Marriage in ancient Rome

The Duchess As a Very Remarkable Woman in a Man's World

The Duchess is clearly the central figure in the play and manages to

dominate proceedings, despite the untouchable power of her brothers

and the firmly established patriarchal system in early-16th century

Italy. She displays many admirably qualities, although her courageous

strength and passion could be perceived as threatening in a

male-dominated society. The Duchess is the sole female figure with any

sort of power and respect in Webster's play. This is unusual firstly,

because he based The Duchess Of Malfi on a version by William Painter

in which the Duchess was portrayed as too lusty in a sternly

moralistic fashion honourable as opposed to honourable. Also, although

the Duchess is never referred to by her name, she is a very individual

character and, having no female equals, conducts herself very well as

a free spirit in a world of stifling constrictions.

The Duchess exhibits her free will and nonchalance toward her

brothers' controlling nature by marrying Antonio irrespective of their

opinions. In response to Ferdinand and the Cardinal's bitter diatribe

against remarriage, the Duchess wittily responds completely unafraid,

"I think this speech between you both was studied, / It came so

roundly off." Not only does she marry against the rule of jealous men,

but also, she marries someone she loves instead of using her body as a

tool of commerce as was common with fathers practically selling their

daughters to their husbands. The Duchess breaks the accepted rules

regarding station as Antonio is a commoner and not a highly respected

courtier, who was worthy of receiving the famil...

... middle of paper ...

...

As he noted, unlike men, animals are kind to their young, faithful to

their mates, and do not wage war against each other. He felt the

superiority of reason was overrated, having severed men from their

natural, instinctive qualities (which the Duchess seems to possess

above her brothers).

William Painter's collection of stories The Palace of Pleasure

(1566-67), with the difference being that Painter adopts a judgmental

& sternly moralistic attitude toward the duchess because she

proves too lusty and

breaks the accepted "rules" regarding degree or station.

Webster breaks with this tradition: he presents the duchess as

courageous, strong and honorable.

Does not use body as means of power, woman as tool of commerce "sold"

from father to husband, political power found in child-bearing

capabilities.

Show More
Related

  • The Mary Prince: The History Of Mary Prince

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    The History of Mary Prince is the story of the first female British slave to escape slavery. The book is told by Mary herself, and was used to help the anti-slavery movement. This book is the main source of information on Mary’s life, but there is no way to ensure that all of it is authentic. One should be aware of who truly had the control over this book, and how it may have affected whether or not all of the stories Mary had to tell got in. Without following the standard expected of her, she may not have ever been able to share her experiences like this. Mary Prince was able to convey her story of slavery to others by following the expectations set by the Antislavery Society, such as emphasizing Christianity, only including likable character

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Prince Is The Only Possibility: Subtextual Princess

    1006 Words  | 3 Pages

    Most women in their childhood had probably dreamt of being a princess and meeting their charming prince. As Walt Disney’s figures have been influential in this sense, the ideal portrayal of princesses still attracts young girls who imitate them, their lifestyle and their physical appearance. In Sleeping Beauty (1959) and in The Little Mermaid (1989) the narration is focused on the search for true love, personified by a prince, for self-accomplishment. It is crucial to differentiate the representation of femininity of the two protagonists in the two movies to better understand if the role of Princesses has changed over those last thirty years. The main figures in both movies

    Read More

  • Emilias Contemporary Stand

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    In equation with the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare offers us a male dominated society in his renowned tragedy, Othello. Consequently, this definitely persuades a negative attitude and demeanor towards the women of the times. The female characters in the play: Desdemona, Emilia, and Bianca; play relevant roles in contributing to one’s understanding of this exhausted Elizabethan view. In contrast to the larger portion of the play, Emilia, spouse to the scandalous Iago, takes an opinionated stand for Desdemona in relation to her wholesome gone sour relationship with the Moor of Venice, Othello. I recognize Emilia’s “Betrayal lecture” as a justified outlook in accordance with today’s period and events surrounding Desdemona’s and Othello’s fatal misunderstanding.

    Read More

  • Mary Wollstonecraft: A Radical Englishwoman

    1279 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mary Wollstonecraft lived in a time where women had no right to vote, no right to education beyond what their mother or governess taught them, and basically no right to individuality or an opinion. They were considered possessions and virtually had no mind of their own. She realized that this was a problem of society and openly voiced her opinions on the matter. She wrote the book A Vindication of the Rights of Women in response to a literary response to the society's so-called proper behavior of a woman and what her rights should be. But her opinions were brought on by more that the ability to think for herself; she suffered much during her childhood and throughout the years to come. Wollstonecraft dealt with the beating of her mother and sister, death of a close friend, and even a nervous breakdown of her sister. Her own experiences in her life inspired her to write a book that would cause her to be criticized harshly for her radical views.

    Read More

  • Essay Comparing My Last Duchess And Porphyria's Lover

    692 Words  | 2 Pages

    Love is everywhere in the world and the majority of the people will do anything for love. People will push the limits to what they do for love and it just makes you wonder of how much crazy people are out there and are willing to take it to that crazy level. Social media blows up everywhere when they hear about a story that the guy or the girl went crazy in the relationship and just did something crazy. Well there are two poems that author Robert Browning wrote about love and they are called “My last Duchess” and “Porphyria's Lover” and there are a couple things that you can compare and contrast about it like both have very jealous people and another is how crazy people can get and one that’s different is how they handle it.

    Read More

  • Mary Prince Annotation

    937 Words  | 2 Pages

    The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave For example, Mary Prince lived her life born into slavery. Living on a farm from a British colony she experienced a good childhood being treated with kindness. You could come to believe as a slave growing up Prince’s experience was very good

    Read More

  • Diary extracts from Elizabeth (Pride and Prejudice).

    1079 Words  | 3 Pages

    be of bad character. He was so proud that he didn't dance with any of

    Read More

  • Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and Renaissance Italy

    772 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ce of Aragon, Don Pedro. The political systems are also shown by the fact Don John was denied claim to his family's wealth because he was born outside of marriage. Secondly, I learned about household positions in Renaissance Italy. As displayed by the play, a noble household was headed by a man (Leonato) with daughters waiting to be courted (Hero/Beatrice), and maidservants (Margaret/Ursula). A third lesson was in medieval courtship. In those times, the girls were to be wooed and events such as the dance in "Much Ado About Nothing" were thrown to do so. When a man wished to marry her, he would ask her father for permission, just as Claudio does for Hero.

    Read More

  • Alice and The Duchess

    1357 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise” (Carroll 105). This and advice of this kind are often dispensed by the Duchess in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Alice, and like the transition from child to adult, the advice is generally rarely fully understood if not confusingly difficult to wrap logic around. Many illustrators have undertaken the task of conveying a clear picture of the struggle that Alice goes through in order to triumph over childhood and nonsense into the realm of adults and logic. Angel Dominguez shows Alice’s struggle to grow up and out of childhood, a major theme of the text, in such a way that the audience can almost feel her anxiety. The use of the body language of Alice, the Duchess and the supporting animals, in addition to compositional elements such as proximity and framing, is a principal mechanism of Dominguez in evoking Alice’s anxiety and emphasizing the uncomfortable passage into maturity on one’s own while dealing with the pressures and advances of an adult world.

    Read More

  • The Role of Women in Richard II

    2164 Words  | 5 Pages

    Throughout the historical literary periods, many writers underrepresented and undervalued the role of women in society, even more, they did not choose to yield the benefits of the numerous uses of the female character concerning the roles which women could accomplish as plot devices and literary tools. William Shakespeare was one playwright who found several uses for female characters in his works. Despite the fact that in Shakespeare's history play, Richard II, he did not use women in order to implement the facts regarding the historical events. Instead, he focused the use of women roles by making it clear that female characters significantly enriched the literary and theatrical facets of his work. Furthermore in Shakespeare’s history play, King Richard II, many critics have debated the role that women play, especially the queen. One of the arguments is that Shakespeare uses the queen’s role as every women’s role to show domestic life and emotion. Jo McMurtry explains the role of all women in his book, Understanding Shakespeare’s England A Companion for the American Reader, he states, “Women were seen, legally and socially, as wives. Marriage was a permanent state” (5). McMurtry argues that every woman’s role in the Elizabethan society is understood to be a legal permanent state that is socially correct as wives and mothers. Other critics believe that the role of the queen was to soften King Richard II’s personality for the nobles and commoners opinion of him. Shakespeare gives the queen only a few speaking scenes with limited lines in Acts two, four, and five through-out the play. Also, she is mentioned only a few times by several other of the characters of the play and is in multiple scenes wit...

    Read More

  • Women In Othello Essay

    886 Words  | 2 Pages

    All through history, the role of women and their place in the general public has tremendously changed. William Shakespeare’s Othello was established during a time period where the role of women and their collective value were downgraded in the Venetian and Elizabethan era. During the Venetian era women were dominated by their sexual orientation. The Venetian era had a patriarchal society. In a patriarchal society, the father is the head of the household and men have authority over women and children. During the Elizabethan era the conduct toward women was vicious. Women were considered second class citizens. Males only consider women as possession, who is obligated to remain submissive and meek. Additionally, women are expected to be quiet, obedient to male figures, and chaste. Women were either considered a good wife or a whore. There are only three women in Othello; Desdemona, Emilia, and Bianca. Desdemona is the passive wife of Othello who has a quite idealistic take on life and marriage. Emilia is the cynical, perceptive women who seem to have a bitter take on her marriage to Iago. Bianca is portrayed as the whore of the play, and she has relations with Cassio. Although, each woman varies in roles and personality, they all had a common trait; they lived in a patriarchal society and suffered together. Each of them live in a society where it was ideal to think women were psychologically and physiologically inferior to men, however in reality each of them knew their role in society.

    Read More

  • Comparing My Last Duchess, La Belle Dame Sans Merci and A Woman to Her Lover

    1934 Words  | 4 Pages

    over his wife as he refers to her as a belonging; it also shows that

    Read More

  • My Last Duchess

    488 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Duke of Ferrara was made jealous by everything the duchess did, no matter how unimportant it was. He was especially jealous of Fra Pandolf, the man who painted the duchess in the poem. A woman should be pleased only by her husband, as was not the case with the duchess and Fra Pandolf. She was “too easily impressed'; by the painter (line 23). Fra Pandolf was not the only man that made the duke jealous. Everyone who passed the duchess received “much the same smile'; as the duke (line 44). The duke expected to be the only man to receive a smile from his wife.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Women In Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice

    729 Words  | 2 Pages

    The play, The Merchant of Venice drastically altered the perception of women during the time as Shakespeare makes women during the Italian Renaissance appear independent and intellectual, such as the beautiful Portia and the young Jessica. This play shows that women are not only beautiful people to look at but also powerful and intelligent individuals. The characteristics of the women in this play show the possibilities of equality between men and

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The Duchess Of Rpeari And The Duchess Of Malfi

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    Andrews Honors Program. She did her honors thesis on the history of this specific story, and her findings included that “The Duchess of Malfi is arguably one of the more famous and studied of the non-Shakespearean revenge tragedies” (5). Webster’s play would not have been so well-known today if he chose to make this a typical love story. He took elements of all sorts of horrors such as plotting against family, friends deceiving one another, the vengeance of corruption, the madness of murder, and he even was sure to include a variety of different forms of sexual inappropriateness. None of these things were extra effects; each played an important part to his theme of destruction, not only of the court, but of the individuals who lived

    Read More

More about The Duchess As a Very Remarkable Woman in a Man's World

Open Document