Date of Award
2013
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Department
English
First Advisor
L. Monique Pittman
Abstract
The title character in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi resists patriarchal authority by marrying against her brother's will, provoking a violent and repressive response from a state that embodies Michel Foucault's "spectacle of the scaffold." However, before her murder, the Duchess deconstructs the theatrical nature of her brothers' power. By exposing it as dependent on theatrical deceptions, she destabilizes and invalidates their authority. Deploying a direct critique of her brothers' power jeopardizes her own aristocratic identity, and thus the speech and actions of the servant Cariola complement the Duchess' internal critique with an external condemnation from a lower-class perspective.
Recommended Citation
Snively, Samantha, "I Account This World a Tedious Theatre: Foucauldian Theatricality and Female Subversion in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi" (2013). Honors Theses. 75.
https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/75/
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/honors/75
Subject Area
English literature--History and criticism
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/75/